Talk:Trusted Computing/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

a plea to those with an agenda

Hi all. I've come to this article to read up on exactly what Trusted Computing is. I'm a free-software user and it looks like I may have some concerns about the concept or technology or whatever, but I haven't made my mind up because I don't have the facts.

Reading the article today, I don't feel I've come away with an objective and un-biased description of the technology. With a bit more study I might be able to make more suggestions, but so far, I'd say:

• the first four paragraphs serve as both an abstract and a conclusion (they summarize all the arguments and wrap up). The beginning needs to just introduce the technology, explain that there is controversy, maybe some other poignant (and missing) facts such as existing implementations or timescales etc. (so-and-so plans to do it some-time isn't very helpful).
• debating the difference between trusted and trustworthy in the opening para should be left until later. It seems that this is an attempt to dispel the layman's understanding of the term "trust". Surely the trusted systems article does that? Why isn't the wikilink sufficient?
• the second para opens "The controversy over TC...". This makes the assumption that the reader knows that TC is controversial.
• Remove all mention of proponents or opposers of the technology these paras. It is enough to suggest it is controversial and explicitly describe the controversy in a later section.

I would like to make a plea also: if you have worked on or are working on this article and have a strong opinion on the subject one way or the other, please don't edit it. Let someone else do the job: you may try your best to be objective but it doesn't appear to have worked for many editors so far. -- Jon Dowland 10:05, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi there,

I'd have to say I'd agree with most of your points, and I've made an attempt to try and clear up the article a bit. I think that much of the earlier sentiment in the Talk page is valid - a lot of the article as it currently stands has a negative view towards TC, or at least implies a lot of negative things. I'll try and work through the text to find more neutral ways to phrase some of the issues.

Trusted Computing is a controversial subject - and thus we need to be more careful to explain the facts and let readers reach their own conclusions. --Boxflux 06:34, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Having just re-read the article, I'm more concerned that the whole thing is in need of serious rewriting. For one thing the 'criticism' section is longer than the sections which describe what TC actually is - not forgetting that TC has yet to be deployed or used to protect data in any largescale way. Most of the criticism is abstract, and focuses of what TC *might* end up looking like - a bit like objecting to NASA's space program because they *might* require you to move to the moon. Ok, a bit flippant, but I think the point is valid. --Boxflux 06:31, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

It appears that Boxflux joined WP with a specific and strong pro-TC agenda. His/her edit history is basically entirely devoted to adding advocacy of TC to this article. Such a POV-pushing is clearly contrary to WP:NPOV. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 06:16, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Even so, the "criticisms" and "opponents" sections are longer than the pro-TC and "proponents" sections. Maybe Boxflux is just adding some much-needed balance. DWalker59 16:04, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Explain Linux's TC?

The article briefly mentions that since 2.6.13, the Linux kernel has had support for TC. Could you explain that a bit further? Is it simply compatibility? Or what? -Matt 15:10, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

linux fully supports some TPM chips . see the link to trousers FAQ to see how you can use a TPM udenr linux . Dbiagioli 17:32, 19 February 2006 (UTC)Dbiagioli

Recent kernel versions (even prior to 2.6.13) have added support for various Trusted Platform Module chips... but it's important to note that TPM and TC aren't the same thing. All TPM is, at its heart, is a hardware-level cryptography provider with some facilities to make sure that the private keys are very, *very* hard to get it, even if the OS is compromised. Newer Thinkpads and Dell Optiplexes and the like have TPM chips in them, so Linux is providing some degree of support for those chips. Indeed, it's been IBM that has been providing code. But to really make use of the the chips, software needs to be written to do so. Check out TrouSerS, which is an OSS implementation of the Trusted Software Stack.

I'd write some of this stuff into the article myself, but my machine with a TPM chip in it doesn't have Linux installed on it, and I really prefer to fact-check by running the code myself. :-) Warrens 17:35, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

There is a project called Enforcer with Linux modules and LILO patches that use the Fritz to check system integrity against stored values, see:

http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/%7Esws/abstracts/msmw03.shtml

And there are some TrouSerS related projects one of which a GNU GRUB patch:

http://sourceforge.net/search/?words=tpm

Chinese security chip

according to this article , http://www.informationweek.com/industries/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=180201733 "TPM hardware itself is rapidly becoming ubiquitous. “The TPM is standard across 100% of our product line,” says Clain Anderson, director of wireless and security at Lenovo. “We make a few low-end machines without them, but only for foreign governments that have their own specific requirements.” He cites China and Israel as examples.

Even these low-end machines aren’t without a security chip. “Lenovo ships a lot of PCs inside China with a Chinese government chip instead of the TPM,” he says. “We don’t know what it does.” " anyone knows something more about that chip ? do you think we should talk about it in this page or this topic is not suitable for the 'trusted computing' page ,because ,after all , that chip does not follow the TCG specs ? Dbiagioli 17:46, 19 February 2006 (UTC)Dbiagioli

Eww Eww Eww

Please rid this article of all second person tenses. Eww Eww Eww. This is an encyclopedia, not a phone conversation.

BTW, if Microsoft ends up doing what is described in here I will personally sue them as a user of OpenOffice. — Ilyanep (Talk) 23:41, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

POV

"Users can't change software"
"Users don't control information they receive........"
....? --Off! 12:27, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

In the context of a section about criticisms of trusted computing, such statements are fine. They should probably be placed in quotes for the sake of claity, but the whole article doesn't need a POV template. Warrens 13:21, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

It's just a wild guess what (or whether) Off! thinks is POV in those sentences, anyway. They don't look terribly mellifluous to me; but minor flaws in wording aren't a POV dispute, just a reason to edit for flow. If a dispute is claimed, the claimant needs to do a lot more than this: specific issues with clear ideas about how they could be resolved. This page, unfortunately, attracts a lot of people (of various political positions) who slap on a spurious POV tag as soon as they have a vague feeling they don't like the article as a whole, or some small part of it. It borders on vandalism. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 18:15, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Regardless of the actual language, some of the claims in the criticism section can't be justified technically. A good example of this was in the "users don't control their data" section, which made some unsubstantiated claims. It is true that a program could do some of the things listed, but (a) no such program exists at present; (b) it might never do so. Debate: would Wikipedia contain an article about what an unelected politician might do should they ever become president (not what they say they will do, but what others think they might - is that verifiable?). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Boxflux (talk • contribs)

To User:Fubar Obfusco - please be more helpful in working with this page. People are making careful, considered edits to bring it up to a higher standard of factual accuracy. The recent edit by BoxFlux was a technically accurate review of a very contentious issue; sure, it's not perfect, but it was a step in the right direction. To mindlessly revert edits accusing people of a 'whitewash' helps nobody and contributes nothing to the progress of the article. I won't jump in and revert your change: I don't want to start an edit war, and I think you did it for the right reasons! But any progress we can make with this page, even on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis, is welcomed; can you see if you can work with the two edits to salvage something worthwhile? StephenHildrey 10:09, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I've reverted the changes Fubar Obfusco made. I do so as someone who actually *has* a TPM chip and sees absolutely no sign of what this editor is writing about. This article is bad enough with baseless conjecture as it is; adding more does not help. Warrens 13:32, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Dude, the concerns deleted are ones that have been raised by well-known groups such as the Free Software Foundation. Removing them wasn't a matter of removing claims that the article was making about trusted/treacherous computing; it was rather an act of deleting the reporting of notable views about it. The section title is "Criticism" -- it isn't for reporting on the technical details of the technology, but rather on the social and political responses by folks who don't like it. Deleting notable criticism is whitewashing, whether it's meant that way or not. --FOo 18:22, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

This article isn't titled "FSF Talking Points Concerning Trusted computing". It's titled "Trusted computing". We're here to write an encyclopedia. Let's stick to encyclopedic content. If you want to start a separate article titled "Criticisms of Trusted computing" as a clearinghouse for criticisms (justified or otherwise), by all means, feel free to do so. Perhaps I'll even do it myself, so *this* article can focus on what "Trusted computing" is, rather than being dominated by what its opponents think it is (or worse, what they want you to believe it is, so as to promote their own political platform.....) Warrens 19:02, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

That isn't how it works on Wikipedia. If you're going to have an article section discussing the concerns of critics of trusted/treacherous computing, then you have to honestly represent their concerns. That means we don't delete them and replace them with what you wish their concerns were.

Trusted/treacherous computing is not merely a technical phenomenon, any more than Internet filtering is. It is also a social and political phenomenon, and a Wikipedia article on the subject must discuss this honestly. Treating the promises of marketers as "encyclopedic content" and the concerns of critics as "talking points" or a "political platform" is not an intellectually honest standpoint for encyclopedists. We need to represent all sides reasonably here -- not whitewash and slander critics.

By the way, your proposal to create a separate article entitled "Criticisms of trusted computing" is expressly contrary to Wikipedia policy on POV forks. I hope that you are in fact willing to follow policy and represent criticism as well as marketer promises in this article. --FOo 05:22, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, maybe we should create a separate article for Proponents of Trusted Computing to put all the marketroid propoganda into :-) (like some of the recent "whitewash" edits). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 06:06, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Critics and proponents

I agree that this Wikipedia article needs to sensibly and calmly discuss the merits and problems that Trusted Computing has. However it is important to remember that Trusted Computing itself has yet to be widely used, and that much of the criticism is based on very early marketing and publicity, and not on actual implementations. I've amended the "Users don't control their data" section to be "Reduced Data Freedom" - I'm not too happy with that title, but I think it is more accurate than the former. With Trusted Computing users 'might not' control their data *or* they 'might'. It certainly isn't definite at the current time. --Boxflux 06:17, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Editing with the sole purpose of removing criticisms of TC, and substituting pro-TC marketing propoganda is clearly contrary to WP:NPOV. Writing a bunch of really badly worded circumlocutions to defend TC in the "criticisms" section is hardly appropriate... and given that your entire WP edit history consists of only this agenda, in only this article, it raises a certain suspicion in my mind. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 06:20, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Rather than enter a debate about personal integrity - which I find slightly upsetting - I would like to respond with an honest question; how 'should' criticism of this topic be reported upon? I would have thought it better to try to provide balanced criticism, where the nature of the problems are discussed, rather than simply list some worst-case scenarios. --Boxflux 06:34, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Lulu, I appreciate your concerns but let's be honest: if Boxflux were to edit 100 other articles, it doesn't magically make him more qualified to write this one - Occam's Razor etc :) StephenHildrey 09:06, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

We should not devote the "criticism" section to advocacy of TC! The criticisms should be what actual critics write, not a "balanced" substitution of proponents' claims for criticism. The mistake that you seem to be making is believing that whatever marketers claim about TC is the "consensus belief", while critics simply don't count. For a topic that is more political than technical, especially, this is an entirely unencyclopedic approach. It would be like writing a whole article on software program A that was devoted to proving it was better than a competing software program B; and considering the only sources of information to be A's manufacturer. Actually, it's worse than that since the topic is political... I guess it would be more like writing an article on political candidate A devoted to proving s/he was better than competing candidate B, and using only material from A's campaign staff. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 06:47, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Beware False analogy, Lulu. I agree that a "criticisms" section should contain coverage of the criticisms. But there is no excuse for the article as a whole, including commentary under the "criticisms" header, to be inaccurate. What Boxflux has contributed this far is, technologically, an entirely accurate reflection of the current specifications and designs available. In a balanced article, it is only fair that speculative criticisms are addressed by drawing on fact. Many of the criticisms date back years, containing concerns that have since been addressed, and I think this article needs to reflect that. This article needs more factual reference - if people want to refute critical claims, they should back it up with references from now on. StephenHildrey 08:53, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

The change the section titles from names describing the actual criticisms to names describing what the strongest proponents of TC wished the criticisms were is extremely biased! And it's precisely what Boxflux did in her/his edits. An "entirely accurate" reflection of (what proponents claim is) what TC does is not criticism. I've never seen anything that indicated that criticisms listed are non-current either. However, if you have support for the idea that, e.g. "The FSF has stated they are not longer concerned with X", we can certainly include that. 17:13, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I really strongly suspect that some editors, yourself included, are not interested in creating a really good, NPOV article here. Again, this article isn't titled "FSF talking points concerning trusted computing". It is titled, simply, "Trusted computing". I fully realise that free software advocates, who have their own competing platform to advocate, are very, VERY interested in making Trusted Computing sound as bad as possible, in much the same way that politicians create "attack ads" to make their opposition sound worse than they actually are. The quantity of criticisms in this article is now larger than the remainder of the article, which suggests a strong need on the part of certain editors to lambast a subject which they probably know little about other than what clearly non-neutral parties have told them to think. In terms of what people think about any given subject, that's fine -- just about everyone gets brainwashed by some group or another without even realising it's happened --, but in terms of creating good Wikipedia articles, we need to aim higher than that. As it stands, this article is a disgrace to Wikipedia because it focuses much more strongly on the criticism of the topic, than the topic itself. Not good, not good at all. Warrens 17:04, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

And it's also not titled "Microsoft talking points concerning TC", despite your apparent desire to turn it into that. Your comments show extremely bad faith. If you look at the edit history of this page, you'll see that I've probably done more than anyone to push it toward NPOV, including getting rid of emotionally-laden rants against TC. But having a couple brand new editors come along to push a pro-TC agenda... leading off with the above threat against all the longstanding editors that they should leave because they "have an agenda". The truth is that every single edit that you or Boxflux have made have made the article worse; and it's also true that Boxflux joined WP with sole edits of adding pro-TC material to this article. And your user page explicitly states that you wish to advance the agenda of "all things Microsoft". In contrast, I have no such agenda, either pro- or anti-TC... instead, I want to the article to reflect in a NPOV way both proponents and critics of TC (but I don't pretend that "proponents=consensus" truth, which is the very definition of POV). FWIW, there's a lot more of this article devoted to the proponents than there is to the critics, including essentially the entire lead. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 17:13, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Warrens, I'm not sure what makes you believe that TC is a "competing platform" to the platforms provided by the FSF; the issue the FSF has with it is that TC reduces (or removes) the user's ability to change their software away from approved versions. There is nothing that prevents an approved version of (e.g.) Linux from being created, it's just that to do so violates the spirit of the free software movement, because if the user subsequently changes it, the approval is lost. The FSF stands to gain nothing from criticising TC, other than that they have a belief that the technology violates principles of freedom that are central to their cause. You suggest that we should aim higher than parroting what "clearly non-neutral parties have told \[us\] to think", but I fail to see how we should achieve this alongside the aims of WP:Verifiability. If you can point us to a neutral expert who can be cited in this article, we'd like to see it. I don't know of any; supported for trusted computing seems to have been strongly polar. JulesH 17:43, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

See, the problem is that a lot of free-software advocates have bought into the whipped-up hysteria surrounding the subject, stirred into action by the FSF and other decidedly politically-motivated groups. The TC initiative was put forth by no less than Bill Gates himself, so people who already had an axe to grind with Gates, Microsoft, and non-free software in general latched on to this subject, found a way of presenting it that makes it sound eeeeeevil, and will now adamantly refuse to accept any other possibile interpretation of the information, especially new information that's appeared on the subject in recent times. Linux already has support for the Trusted Platform Module, by the way; it's a crypography provider that offers hardware-level protection against the private keys from being stolen. It's just a tool, just like ACL's, POSIX permission sets, SHA-1, SSH, and so on. Of course, as Ani Difranco once said, "Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right". The software & hardware implementations behind TC are just as capable as protecting us from "them", perhaps even more so, than the reverse. Nobody seems to want to talk about that with any seriousness, perhaps because you can't sex that up the same way you can sex up "the evil companies are out to get us!" ... And yeah, finding a neutral expert on the subject would be as difficult as finding someone who's really neutral in any kind of political discussion. On a personal level, I try to focus on TC and TPM as they exist as tools, and less on what content creators, or the FSF, or any other involved & opinionated party has to say about it, especially considering that most of the opinions surrounding it are built on conjecture that isn't backed up with technical proof.

Speaking of technical proof, I actually have a working TPM module in a computer here, and it works as it is advertised, not as how many the criticisms in this article make it out to be. When I get some time, I'll flesh out the Trusted Platform Module with more technical details. Warrens 18:42, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Just to clarify a point that JulesH made above, Trusted Computing doesn't really have a notion of "approved versions" of software. This is a misconception that is often repeated. What TC does have is the ability to report a state metric which reflects what code has executed on a platform - assuming all previously executed code co-operated. This means that a TCG-compliant BIOS will adjust the TPM PCRs to reflect the BIOS code executes, then to reflect the MBR that is about to run. The MBR will then adjust the PCRs to reflect the boot manager that it is loading and so on. At no point in this chain is a decision made about 'allowing' code to execute.

However, once booted - into whichever operating system you want - your TPM now contains PCR measurements which you can use to attest to a 3rd party what state you are in. It is at this point - and not before - that an "allowability" decision is made. The 3rd party, using the metrics provided, decide whether or not to interact with you. This has advantages in situations such as network access control - where an admin might want to restrict the systems that can connect to a corporate network to be those which are fully updated. It could also have a chilling-effect in the consumer space, where it can be used to more strictly enforce things such as DRM, or anti-cheat measures on online gaming.

To summarise - having TC technology in your system doesn't prevent you using any software you want, or doing anything you can do today. What it might one day allow is third-parties to make decisions about interactions with you and your system, based on the software you are running; and it is this which the FSF is rightly concerned about. --Boxflux 22:51, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Getting more eyes on article

(dedent) I completely disagree with you [i.e. LotLE], and frankly, it's crossed over the borderline of playing nice as per Wikipedia policy. This is irreconcilable. I'm going to refer this to moderation. Warrens 17:24, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

That's an excellent idea. Well, not really moderation (since there's no such thing at WP)... but if you could file an article RfC to try to attract some fresh editors to this page, that would be great. I did quite a bit of cleanup work some months back, and had the article in moderately good shape. Unfortunately, since then, a lot of much worse writing has snuck in (both from proponents and critics; unfortunately not from editors whose devotation is to Wikipedia itself). I just haven't had the energy to argue against each of the "thousand cuts" since my cleanup effort.... still, other than some outright vandalism, the recent substitution by Boxflux and you of proponents rhetoric for the criticism section is about the worst of the changes. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 18:16, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree; this article (like its subject matter) needs more eyes looking at it! --FOo 18:42, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I have listed it at WP:RFC/SCI. --FOo 18:45, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm also in favour of Warrens' suggestion. To that end, I've been thinking carefully about the changes both I, and others, have made recently and I'd like to make the following points:

• Please can editors try to avoid the accusations and insinuations on both the talk page, and in edit comments, that have been creeping in recently, and remember to assume good faith. Personally speaking I find these a bit upsetting, and they certainly don't encourage me to contribute to Wikipedia.

:* I think we could usefully archive some of the older discussion on this talk page. I'd do it myself, but I'm concerned I might be accused of whitewashing... :(

Wow, it took an entire bullet point to get from complaining about how upset you were to insulting other editors! Of course you should archive older stuff rather than make some snide insult about other editors. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 07:53, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

My apologies if you think I'm being snide - that really wasn't my intention! As you yourself have noted I'm fairly new to editing articles on Wikipedia, and I probably would have just made the change. However, recent comments have made me pull back from making large changes (which a talk archive might have looked like, I thought), so I decided to suggest it rather than do it. --Boxflux 08:02, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

• More importantly I think this article suffers from that which all controversial subjects can; namely the desire to put both sides of an argument can lead to Wikipedia:Original_research - specifically the creation of new arguments to refute others. I'm going to hold up my hands on this one; my most recent changes (whilst, I belive being technically justifiable), were not ideal for a criticism section on Wikipedia. However I don't think that means that the text that is currently there is perfect. Thus...
• Following the above point, maybe the entire article should be refactored, and I raise the following as a suggested outline - based on an earlier suggestion on this page:

• Abstract/Conclusion - summarise what TC is, explain that it is controversial - and who the main proponents and critics are, and describe the current status of the technology.

How does that differ from what we currently have? Of course the language of this article isn't perfect, but that sounds like exactly what we do now. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 07:58, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

• A more detailed history of the technology (TCPA roots), and terminology (DoD definition of trust), before moving on to the detailed definition of what TC is.

That sounds useful. Some greater historical information (if it's not original research or speculation) would be great. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 07:58, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

• A discussion of the controversial aspects of TC, cited appropriately. Should there be counter argument? I'm not sure. [1] is a example of rebuttals of much of the criticism publicly made, so is it sufficient to cite some of the content from there (for example), rather than continue the debates here? I think so.
• ...whatever else others think necessary...

What are other editors' opinions?

--Boxflux 07:45, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

A few observations

Currently there are two shortcomings to the article. Firstly the technology itself isn't well described. This is partly due to the lack of good technical statements - not specs - by the TCG (vs. the marketing stuff they put out), and also because it is yet to become an established technology, and thus there is a degree of flux about what TC actually is. Secondly the criticism / controversy section doesn't disambiguate well between where quotes start and end. Currently there are the headings such as "Users can't change software" which have been derived from the origins of this article in Seth Schoen's paper. That's not so terrible, but another heading in that section is "Proposed owner override for TC" which isn't a criticism so much as an EFF-proposed alteration to the TPM specs. Would it be appropriate to have either the criticism section sub-headings in quotes (although they aren't direct quotes, so I doubt this is a great idea), or to add something along the lines of "Criticism 1 : Users can't change software"? Or lifting the owner-overide paragraph out of the criticism section might be an acceptable alternative? --Boxflux 08:22, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I think owner override should probably move elsewhere in the article. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 15:55, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

The trouble is that it doesn't fit very well elsewhere in the article - I've tried moving it to a few different places, but it breaks the flow of the text. Any suggestions? --Boxflux 16:31, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

"Many security Experts"

Let's discuss this a bit. I'll number the links 1 to 5:

1. ZDNet article
2. Bruce Schneier's Cryptogram
3. Copy of a NYT article
4. Blog post
5. Link to 1

• Link 1 - Short news item on ZDNet. Definitely worthy of mention. Current and from a good source. Quotes Ross Anderson and Alan Cox, both acknowledged experts discussing TC. Some quotes: "[TC] could have negative consequences for customers and rival software makers, according to security experts", "Trusting Computing is not inherently 'evil'".
• Link 2 - Bruce Schneier's Cryptogram from 2002 - a recognised security expert. Again, worthy of mention. Some of the information in it is no longer current (e.g. references Palladium a lot - Microsoft stopped using that name a long time ago; also discuss some technology that got ditched after one of the early Longhorn Beta's as I recall). Probably the best quote to sum up the article is "There's a lot of good stuff in Pd, and a lot I like about it. There's also a lot I don't like, and am scared of. "
• Link 3 - Seems to be a blog of some kind containing a summarised version of an article from the New York Times from 2003. Secondary reporting of a good media source, although the website linked to is probably breaking NYTimes copyright by quoting verbatim, and you can't get to original content without paying the newspaper, so I don't think we can quote it. Article again quotes Ross Anderson, Dan Sokol from the HomeBrew Computing Club, Bob Meinschein from Intel, Mario Juarez from Microsoft, Steve Jobs, Mitchell D. Kapor, Bill Gates and Stuart Schechter a researcher from Harvard. There are some good quotes for and against TC there, but I don't think it's usable material (correct me if I've misunderstood the WP rules!).
• Link 4 - Blog post from 2005. Quotes this article and the WP article on TPMs. Quotes Cory Doctorow being pretty negative towards Apple's rumoured inclusion of a TPM in Intel development kits. Quote from Doctorow "An application can write documents in “open formats” but use Trusted Computing to prevent competing applications from reading them". There's a reference to Doctorow's essay on Tim O'Reilly's blog too ([2]).
• Link 5 - From 2006 - links to Link 1, without adding any more commentary.

I think we can discard links 3 and 5; Cory Doctorow doesn't ever seem to have been quoted as a 'security expert', but I'm happy to be corrected here. I don't think they show that 'most security experts distrust TC' - being completely honest with the citeable evidence suggests about three acknowledged security experts don't like TC, so I'm going to change it to 'a number of security experts', and remove the un-citeable links. --Boxflux 08:56, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Your edit looks very good. I guess I got a little ticked off at a brand new editor with no history or userpage who deleted longstanding material claiming to be "an infosec expert". As someone who actually is a published technical author on cryptography and security, bad edits combined with unsupported "arguments from authority" annoy me. But my hasty list of cites were of mediocre quality, and you've picked the best of them, and rephrased in a neutral fashion. Thanks, Boxflux. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 09:09, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Would you have any objection to removing the Cory Doctorow link? I'm not sure it's the best source to go in the paragraph using it and so I don't think it adds much to the article at that point. If you felt it had merit, it might be better just in the External Links section. --Boxflux 09:17, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

No problem. As long as we can get the general sentiment expressed, I'm not too concerned with the specific citations or their number. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 09:24, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

I think it is OK to quote Cory as one of the most visible campaigners against trusted computing, but not as a security specialist and certainly not as an expert as he isn't either. Given the state of Infosec today I don't think there are many people who should be calling themselves experts and certainly none of the visible ones. Security is a form of power and power is political. Pretty much every security scheme that works alters the balance of political power. --Gorgonzilla 21:44, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

POV language?

"It has also been compellingly argued that many of the assumptions which underly TC are impractical "in the real world," to the extent that many users will find it pragmatically necessary to employ Owner Overrides on a regular basis, or simply decline to use the features altogether ... even if this puts them at odds with software vendors who may wish to insist upon its use."

Does anyone have a reference / quote for this? Who has argued compellingly? Who said the arguement was compelling? --Boxflux 16:38, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I found the argument compelling. After all, "data wants to be free". 206.208.110.32

Talk page history

I really encourage some of the new pro-TC editors to look at the history of this article and of this talk page. I was skimming through, and it really sort of drove in how absurd and insulting the accusations against me are. Reading above, I've worked even harder to prevent the insertion of POV anti-TC rants as I have recently to prevent the latest pro-TC apologetics.

Moreover, in general there's nothing remotely novel about the latest set of "discoveries" of bias in the page. They are almost identical to what tin-eared new editors claim every couple months (well, half of such newbies, the other half are POV to the same degree, but in the other direction). It's frustrating for sure. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 08:27, 25 February 2006 (UTC)