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Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

grapheneos.social

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Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#201

Post by EmbarrassedHelp »

armada651 wrote: post #139
varispeed wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corruption. A taboo topic people prefer to downvote and pretend it does not exist. But even bigger problem is that institutions designed to prevent this from happening are not doing their job. Thousands security service and civil servants take their wages and look the other way.

I think it's actively harmful to your own cause when you suggest corruption without any evidence. Just because politicians don't take action on an issue you think is important doesn't mean they're corrupt. It's more likely that the issue you think is important is simply not important to most voters. Suggesting politicians are corrupt without any evidence will make that worse. If people think their politicians are cor…

The EU Commission was caught breaking the law in order to lobby for Chat Control: https://noyb.eu/en/gdpr-complaint-against-x-twitter-over-ill...

The EU Commission also gave a foreign tech company called Thorn (they pretend to be a charity), special access to government officials: https://netzpolitik.org/2022/dude-wheres-my-privacy-how-a-ho...

I think both of those cases would be examples of lobbying and corruption.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#202

Post by ryandrake »

zozbot234 wrote: post #46
daishi55 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are mountains of academic research showing that even in “democracies”, public opinion rarely translates into policy (by design).

The problem with that argument is that there really is no such thing as public opinion at scale. You can poll people/the general public on just about any issue and the answers are going to differ massively depending on framing effects. In the end, it's hardly better than just flipping a coin.

Even if public opinion is unified, if they want something to happen, they are just going to ignore the public and do it anyway. Like the recent cases of data enter projects where they just ignore the public voting against them. Democracy’s weakness it it requires people to follow the rules, but if nobody voluntarily follows the rules, then we don’t really have one.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#203

Post by userbinator »

lxgr wrote: post #193
userbinator wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell yes. I was going to post the same comment. I don't give a flying fuck how it's implemented. Remote attestation is inherently evil. I remember the WEI apologists trying to do the same thing to derail the argument. The problem is the goal, not the details. Just say no: DO NOT WANT!

Remote attestation is a technology, not a policy or a political effort, so it can't be inherently evil. You can disagree with all its known or proposed uses, but then I think it makes more sense to name these.

Then explain why RA was invented? It is inherently against user freedom, just like "secure" boot and the rest of the corporate-authoritarian crap.

People have woken up to the truth as the pieces come together.

This article from 2022 is fun to look at and see how prescient it was: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29859106

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#204

Post by surgical_fire »

miohtama wrote: post #149
palata wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remember ChatControl? That thing that got refused multiple times already? Because not all politicians think like you does not mean they are corrupt. Seems like enough politicians have voted against ChatControl until now. I always wonder what people who say stuff like "politicians discussed this topic I hate and refused it, but the mere fact that they discussed means that they must all be corrupt" understand about p…

The Commission got it through on the last round, though, so eventually it passed.

Bullshit.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/eu-parliament-blocks-m...

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#205

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

palata wrote: post #136
noir_lord wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because the reply was written by someone without technical skills. I’ve written to politicians over the years about technical matters and it’s uniformly either a clearly form response or an inaccurate summation of the technical risks, if I’m been charitable because they don’t understand them either. At a certain point it begins to feel pointless.

> At a certain point it begins to feel pointless. I think you're right that they are incompetent. The point is not to make them understand it, but rather to make them see that enough people care . The problem is that most people don't write, so the politicians don't see that they care. Same thing for companies. How many GrapheneOS users say "well when it stops working, I just move to another service, and if there is…

> How many GrapheneOS users say "well when it stops working, I just move to another service, and if there is none, then I live without the service entirely".

Being prepared to be this voice is one of the reasons I'm a Graphene OS user. Another is that it helps me avoid accidentally writing code that depends on google play services. When you've got an agent doing most of the driving, it's easy to not realize that your app is broken without google, unless you're testing it on a degoogle'd device.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#206

Post by palata »

samplifier wrote: post #7
ChuckMcM wrote: post #2

This is a really good thread on why this technology is becoming a problem for "open" anything. The argument "we can create our own separate web" is fine until all of your services are behind the web that locks you into owning a Google approved or Apple approved mobile device.

Are there enough of us to run our own country? It makes me feel dumb, but this is a serious question.

The problem with "us" is that it's not enough to agree on one small question ("is hardware attestation good or bad") to happily live together in our own country. "We" have a wide variety of opinions about pretty much everything.

In other words, "we" exist only to fight against this one thing we disagree with. And even there, we probably don't all agree on how to fight it or what to do instead.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#207

Post by krupan »

userbinator wrote: post #161

In 1999, Intel received an absolutely massive amount of opposition when they decided to include a software-readable serial number in their CPUs, so much that they reversed the decision. Then the "security" and Trusted Computing authoritarians continued pushing for TPMs and related tech, and contributed to the rise of mobile walled gardens. Windows 11's TPM requirements were another step towards their goal. The amount…

Totally with you until you brought in AI, a completely centralized and proprietary tool.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#208

Post by EmbarrassedHelp »

miohtama wrote: post #149
palata wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remember ChatControl? That thing that got refused multiple times already? Because not all politicians think like you does not mean they are corrupt. Seems like enough politicians have voted against ChatControl until now. I always wonder what people who say stuff like "politicians discussed this topic I hate and refused it, but the mere fact that they discussed means that they must all be corrupt" understand about p…

The Commission got it through on the last round, though, so eventually it passed.

Chat Control hasn't passed yet. But the Chat Control lobbyists are still lobbying for it behind the scenes, and are currently pushing for all phone calls in the EU to be covered.

Source:

https://www.patrick-breyer.de/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/861...

https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#209

Post by xinayder »

lxgr wrote: post #192
xinayder wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we stop normalizing being surveilled online and on our devices? Saying something like "the problem is not hardware attestation, but that they don't use ZKP". You are normalizing the new behavior. You shouldn't. It doesn't matter if they use ZKP or the latest, secure technology for hardware attestation. The issue is hardware attestation. It's the same with age ID. The issue is not that Age ID is prone to data leak…

You're not necessarily being surveiled just because you're forced to authenticate yourself. It often is the case practically, but it's not inherent, and mixing the two up makes the discussion too imprecise in a technical forum. Hardware attestation often also has problems of centralization, but that's something else as well. By just labeling it as an abstract bad thing without seeing nuance, I'm afraid you won't be c…

Those in power who need convincing are the same ones pushing for mass surveillance online.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#210

Post by palata »

revolvingthrow wrote: post #83

Is it possible to dual-boot on android? It sounds defeatist but I no longer believe it’s possible to change course - the increasingly authoritarian governments, google and most moneyed interests are all on the same side, so it’s just a matter of when. Being on the palantir-approved google ranch for the few Apps You Need + graphene (or some other alt OS) for everything else would be quite inconvenient, but still bette…

Well, authoritarian governments don't like to be at the mercy of another country. So even for authoritarian governments it would make a lot of sense to allow open source alternatives like GrapheneOS instead of depending entirely on US monopolies.
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