[wordup] Who told Dean to scream for lock-down, TCPA computing?

[Adam Shand]

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Adam.

From: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/35126.html
More: http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/001696.shtml

Who told Dean to scream for lock-down, TCPA computing?
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 27/01/2004 at 02:53 GMT
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Last week we noted how "empowering the edges of the network" had become 
a mindless mantra for techno-utopian pundits eager to profit from 
Howard Dean's presidential campaign. As we wrote then, this kind of New 
Age cobblers did a huge disservice to both Dean and his supporters. But 
it looks even less clever now than it did a week ago, when Dean's 
campaign stalled badly in the Iowa caucuses.

As it turns out, Dean was doing more to advocate locking down the "edge 
of the network" than any other Democrat candidate. And the finger of 
suspicion for feeding the Presidential Candidate this line of argument 
points firmly to his campaign manager, Joe Trippi.

Trippi was a stockholder, employee and booster for Wave Systems, the 
company contracted by Intel to implement TCPA (Trusted Computing 
Platform Alliance) specifications. Microsoft's implementation of this 
architecture was unveiled as 'Palladium' two years ago; now it's called 
NGSCB, and is slated to ship in the next major version of Windows, 
Longhorn.

Viewed by copyright holders as the ultimate silver bullet, TCPA turns 
the open PC into a lock-down system where software can't be executed 
and media can't be played without the right-holders' permission. As 
Ross Anderson explains here.

"The music industry will be able to sell you music downloads that you 
won't be able to swap. They will be able to sell you CDs that you'll 
only be able to play three times, or only on your birthday. All sorts 
of new marketing possibilities will open up."

So TCPA represented a dramatic shift from end users (at the "edge of 
the network") to centralized copyright holders, spawning sites such as 
Against TCPA and No TCPA.

"TCPA will set standards for the OEMs in June," vowed Trippi three 
years ago, as proof of his affection for Wave Systems stock. [Thanks to 
Gary Wolf for unearthing that gem.] Trippi continues to list Wave 
Systems as a client of his marketing consultancy, Catapult Systems.

Dean himself enters the picture with a speech that he gave to a 
conference co-sponsored by Wave Systems in March 2002 entitled 
"Workshop on States Security: Identity, Authentication, Access Control" 
reported by Declan McCullagh at CNET today, on the eve of the New 
Hampshire primary.

In the speech, which you can read on uh, Wave Systems website, Dean 
describes privacy as an "urban myth" and explains "little has been 
spent to secure the most vulnerable part of the network - the PC, the 
laptop, the government and corporate desktop computers – all at the 
perimeter of the computer network system." Yes, it's the national 
security angle that TCPA-vendors have been peddling, with the active 
encouragement of the law enforcement lobby.

Open PCs are dangerous, Dean argued.

"This is a mistake because the computing power at that perimeter can be 
used - Napster style - to take the entire network down," said Dean, 
according to the transcript. Dean suggested the cure should be 
interoperability between states' ID cards. "We must move to smarter 
license cards that carry secure digital information that can be 
universally read at vital checkpoints."

Reinventing the Internet?

McCullagh's entry into the 2004 Presidential campaign has been eagerly 
anticipated. In the 2000 Presidential race his coverage of a claim by 
Al Gore to have 'invented the Internet' reached national notoriety.

"If it's true that Al Gore created the Internet, then I created the 'Al 
Gore created the Internet' story," McCullaghboasted.

Although technical luminaries such as Vint Cerf came to Gore's defense 
("It is very fair to say that the Internet would not be where it is in 
the United States without the strong support given it and related 
research areas by the vice president in his current role and in his 
earlier role as senator," said Cerf) the coverage made Gore the butt of 
jokes nationwide.

"We don't need 'Dean is Big Brother'," a consultant to the Dean 
campaign told The Register today. "'Al Gore invented the Internet' 
still won't go away."

McCullagh doesn't pass up the opportunity to moralize. "It's possible 
that Dean has a good explanation for his uniform ID card views, and can 
account for how his principles apparently changed so radically over the 
course of just two years.," writes McCullagh. "Perhaps he can't. But a 
refusal to answer difficult questions is not an attractive quality in a 
man who would be president."

And moralizing isn't always an attractive quality in a man who would be 
pundit either, Declan. So it's worth parsing what Dean really said, and 
on what basis McCullagh formed his stentorian, five cigar conclusion, 
before we can judge either party.

Omitted from McCullagh's CNET commentary account is Dean's plea to 
preserve privacy.

"We will not, and should not, tolerate a call to erode privacy even 
further - far from it," said Dean. "Americans can only be assured that 
their personal identity and information are safe and protected when 
they are able to gain more control over this information and its use."

Dean pointed out that privacy was already compromised as vast amounts 
of personal information are already shared between financial 
corporations and logged by Internet companies. (And lest we forget, 
harvested by social networks like Friendster). He wasn't advocating a 
national ID card, and said that public trust depended on Chinese walls 
built into the card.

Privacy advocates are mistrustful of such Chinese walls: believing that 
the benefits of data sharing are too tempting for corporate and federal 
interests to resist. There's also plenty of skepticism that local, or 
function-specific introductions of smartcards morph into all-purpose 
'Big Brother' cards. But Dean is clearly well aware of the privacy 
concerns, and his advocacy leaves Dean guilty of little more than 
naivety.

And on that count, Dean can justifiably question the advice of his 
campaign manager, who was more interested in serving his stock 
portfolio (and marketing clients) than the Candidate.

What a long strange Trippi it's been

So there we have it: Dean wasn't advocating a national ID card, nor was 
he blithely inviting smart card vendors to breach citizens' privacy 
even further. However, it was remarkably ill-advised of him to advocate 
locking down the PC "at the edge of the network" without examining the 
implications for the consumer, or even the software industry.

Only that wouldn't be a story now if it hadn't been for the 
techno-utopian pundits getting carried away with an almost religious 
belief in power "at the edge of the network". What does this Forrest 
Gump-style fortune cookie mean, exactly?

As far as we can tell, it describes one characteristic of one model of 
collective behavior. 'Collective' is a word you don't hear too much 
nowadays, but Microsoft Corporation is one form of collective 
organization, as are the Teamsters, the Catholic Church, and the Santa 
Fe Institute. When people unite around collective action, the results 
can be very far reaching.

But the word has been deprecated in favor of much more fashionable 
rhetoric usually touted by supporters of "emergent" capers such as 
Poindexter's Terror Casino.

Dean supporters will hardly be thanking these commentators and experts 
for this foolish flirtation with New Age rhetoric, which has handed 
Dean's opponents with an unexpected PR opportunity. It certainly wasn't 
sought. But the 'blogosphere' may soon want to 'self-correct' this 
unwanted mini-industry of pundits and 'consultants'. ®