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The more details leak about ME the more shocking it becomes. Why is this accepted in any free democratic society? There can be discussions, there can be deba

by throw2016 9y ago

The more details leak about ME the more shocking it becomes. Why is this accepted in any free democratic society? There can be discussions, there can be debates but in everyday life this is already accepted. And even if one does not want to accept it what are the choices given similar technology is now integrated in other processors? If we accept that computers are essential to operate in modern society then this is akin to a company taking control of the water supply with the ability to stop supply and do other unknown actions with zero accountability. If you expand this thought this is a kind of fascism. We could be left with a shell of freedom and democracy while the government in partnership with corporates take deeper control of day to day life.

baq 9y ago
intel gets asked for features, intel develops them, intel gets paid. you can be sure that intel wouldn't develop ME for free. follow the money.
jjawssd 9y ago
Has it ever occurred to you that just perhaps - we do NOT live in a free democratic society? The USA has a whole caste of untouchables - and I don't mean the ostracised. Just look at how surprised they were that Trump got elected. In a "free democratic society" this would have been a "so what?" moment.
zanny 9y ago
This is just a footnote in the decades long trend away from ownership and the right to repair towards control and magic. Up until the 80s, anything you bought would, reasonably, provide schematics, diagnostic info, and at worst on request details on the original designs or how substitute parts would work in almost any mechanical system, including TVs. Phones were extraordinarily unique at the time in how proprietary they were, in that Bell Labs had a government monopoly until that decade that gave them carte blanche to not care about consumer satisfaction and let them extort people en masse both for money and never giving an inch of control in the PSTN. Then computers happened, and they were sufficiently magical for a sufficient number of people to tip all of our society away from the autonomy to own things and know how they work towards having magical black boxes that seem to do what you want them to. The Intel ME is just one aspect of this. Of how government will seize the opportunity to take advantage of the willful and tolerated ignorance of the people as a tool to spy on whomever they want. This trend is also not even close to reversing. Cars made in the 90s were still fairly open, but introduced OBD computer systems that were proprietary black boxes of diagnostic info. Now, every new car is entirely computer driven, and that computer controls the whole vehicles operation in undocumented and proprietary ways. Talk to any garage that isn't a brand dealer - the newer the car, the less they can actually do to fix it. This is applying to everything now. New tvs are now completely irreparable. Cell phones are holistically compromised and proprietary. New appliances all have proprietary computers in them. Your new house is built with proprietary computers that control the climate, the power, everything. If something breaks? You have to send it to the manufacturer I guess because you aren't allowed to know how it works or how to fix it anymore. Its "too complicated", is the excuse. Its the same excuse why the FCC is trying to cripple open source firmware on routers, or why ham radio and broadcast television are being sabotaged at every level of government. People gave up trying to understand computers, to be able to treat them like any other machine they use - and break - in knowing how to fix them. And so governments and companies took full advantage of that yielding of knowledge and authority and now hold it over all of us as a tool of subjugation and exploitation.
rsync 9y ago
"There can be discussions, there can be debates ..." Can there be ? If ME is part of DRM platforms (and I believe it is) then disabling it is circumvention of a digital copyright mechanism which brings the DMCA into play. "The lawsuit against 2600 magazine, threats against Professor Edward Felten's team of researchers, and prosecution of the Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov are among the most widely known examples of the DMCA being used to chill speech and research. Bowing to DMCA liability fears, online service providers and bulletin board operators have censored discussions of copy-protection systems, programmers have removed computer security programs from their websites, and students, scientists and security experts have stopped publishing details of their research."[1] [1] https://www.eff.org/wp/unintended-consequences-under-dmca https://www.eff.org/wp/unintended-consequences-under-dmca
- wolfgke 9y ago
  This is rather an argument against DMCA or an argument why researchers working in this area should consider leaving the USA.
INTPenis 9y ago
> Why is this accepted in any free democratic society? Likely because of good intentions lining the road. It's my understanding that Intel ME is the basis for an anti-theft and recovery platform for laptops. Which is something that has always been of importance to portable device makers. How do you think "Find my iPhone" works?
confounded 9y ago
> And even if one does not want to accept it what are the choices given similar technology is now integrated in other processors? Unfortunately, there are few, but alternatives are being pursued by a few different groups which you can support in various ways. In rough ascending order of time horizon: - Minifree sell old ThinkPads, with old processors which predate the ME, and use Libeboot[0] - Purism use new processors, but do their best to neuter the ME, by buying processors with minimal remote control features, stopping the ME from being able to control the networking card, using and running Coreboot. They're working to use me_cleaner to completely neutralize the ME on new processors, but there's lots of work to do to fix bugs caused (e.g.[1]). I think they'll get there in the end![2] - Raptor Engineering are trying to fund a run of fully open POWER processors (less powerful cores, but loads of them). Avoids Intel altogether. Very large upfront costs. - The RISC-V team at Berkeley are working on a new instruction set. Years before you can buy anything, but I'm sure there's a way to send them beer money, or apply to work there![4] None of these is projects is ideal, but by supporting them you're enabling people who care to keep working on the this problem. [0]: https://minifree.org/ https://minifree.org/ [1]: https://puri.sm/posts/neutralizing-intel-management-engine-on-librem-laptops/ https://puri.sm/posts/neutralizing-intel-management-engine-o... [2]: https://puri.sm/ https://puri.sm/ [3]: https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/ https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/ [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V

baq 9y ago

intel gets asked for features, intel develops them, intel gets paid. you can be sure that intel wouldn't develop ME for free. follow the money.

jjawssd 9y ago

Has it ever occurred to you that just perhaps - we do NOT live in a free democratic society? The USA has a whole caste of untouchables - and I don't mean the ostracised. Just look at how surprised they were that Trump got elected. In a "free democratic society" this would have been a "so what?" moment.

zanny 9y ago

This is just a footnote in the decades long trend away from ownership and the right to repair towards control and magic. Up until the 80s, anything you bought would, reasonably, provide schematics, diagnostic info, and at worst on request details on the original designs or how substitute parts would work in almost any mechanical system, including TVs. Phones were extraordinarily unique at the time in how proprietary they were, in that Bell Labs had a government monopoly until that decade that gave them carte blanche to not care about consumer satisfaction and let them extort people en masse both for money and never giving an inch of control in the PSTN. Then computers happened, and they were sufficiently magical for a sufficient number of people to tip all of our society away from the autonomy to own things and know how they work towards having magical black boxes that seem to do what you want them to. The Intel ME is just one aspect of this. Of how government will seize the opportunity to take advantage of the willful and tolerated ignorance of the people as a tool to spy on whomever they want. This trend is also not even close to reversing. Cars made in the 90s were still fairly open, but introduced OBD computer systems that were proprietary black boxes of diagnostic info. Now, every new car is entirely computer driven, and that computer controls the whole vehicles operation in undocumented and proprietary ways. Talk to any garage that isn't a brand dealer - the newer the car, the less they can actually do to fix it. This is applying to everything now. New tvs are now completely irreparable. Cell phones are holistically compromised and proprietary. New appliances all have proprietary computers in them. Your new house is built with proprietary computers that control the climate, the power, everything. If something breaks? You have to send it to the manufacturer I guess because you aren't allowed to know how it works or how to fix it anymore. Its "too complicated", is the excuse. Its the same excuse why the FCC is trying to cripple open source firmware on routers, or why ham radio and broadcast television are being sabotaged at every level of government. People gave up trying to understand computers, to be able to treat them like any other machine they use - and break - in knowing how to fix them. And so governments and companies took full advantage of that yielding of knowledge and authority and now hold it over all of us as a tool of subjugation and exploitation.

rsync 9y ago

"There can be discussions, there can be debates ..." Can there be ? If ME is part of DRM platforms (and I believe it is) then disabling it is circumvention of a digital copyright mechanism which brings the DMCA into play. "The lawsuit against 2600 magazine, threats against Professor Edward Felten's team of researchers, and prosecution of the Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov are among the most widely known examples of the DMCA being used to chill speech and research. Bowing to DMCA liability fears, online service providers and bulletin board operators have censored discussions of copy-protection systems, programmers have removed computer security programs from their websites, and students, scientists and security experts have stopped publishing details of their research."[1] [1] https://www.eff.org/wp/unintended-consequences-under-dmca https://www.eff.org/wp/unintended-consequences-under-dmca

wolfgke 9y ago
This is rather an argument against DMCA or an argument why researchers working in this area should consider leaving the USA.

INTPenis 9y ago

> Why is this accepted in any free democratic society? Likely because of good intentions lining the road. It's my understanding that Intel ME is the basis for an anti-theft and recovery platform for laptops. Which is something that has always been of importance to portable device makers. How do you think "Find my iPhone" works?

confounded 9y ago

> And even if one does not want to accept it what are the choices given similar technology is now integrated in other processors? Unfortunately, there are few, but alternatives are being pursued by a few different groups which you can support in various ways. In rough ascending order of time horizon: - Minifree sell old ThinkPads, with old processors which predate the ME, and use Libeboot[0] - Purism use new processors, but do their best to neuter the ME, by buying processors with minimal remote control features, stopping the ME from being able to control the networking card, using and running Coreboot. They're working to use me_cleaner to completely neutralize the ME on new processors, but there's lots of work to do to fix bugs caused (e.g.[1]). I think they'll get there in the end![2] - Raptor Engineering are trying to fund a run of fully open POWER processors (less powerful cores, but loads of them). Avoids Intel altogether. Very large upfront costs. - The RISC-V team at Berkeley are working on a new instruction set. Years before you can buy anything, but I'm sure there's a way to send them beer money, or apply to work there![4] None of these is projects is ideal, but by supporting them you're enabling people who care to keep working on the this problem. [0]: https://minifree.org/ https://minifree.org/ [1]: https://puri.sm/posts/neutralizing-intel-management-engine-on-librem-laptops/ https://puri.sm/posts/neutralizing-intel-management-engine-o... [2]: https://puri.sm/ https://puri.sm/ [3]: https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/ https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/ [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V