Re: "For those interested" -- nice link, thanks.
Adams describes the reasons I have resisted owning a smart phone, and why I regard my (rooted) Android tablet as an untrusted toy; and one of the several reasons I have abandoned Windows:
"There are psychological elements where individuals may feel their rights have or even their person has been violated where their legal rights or technical control over things they own do not match their expectations. ... [Bruce] Schneier called this the 'feudal security' model in blog posts. As in the feudal social model, the overlords are not trustworthy and the moral hazards of their position without strong external regulation leads them to abusive practices such as spying on users' locations without their knowledge."
Rutkowska's presentation -- and the potential for pre-boot programs like UEFI to become lock-down mechanisms for preventing user control of the OS -- reminded us that some aspects of our PCs are currently "owned" by manufacturers. But for the nonce we can still choose to run OSes of our choice, and to control the programs running at the OS level.
Perhaps in 10 years we'll look back on this as a Golden Age...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
