Agree that 'open source software' may very well be a prerequisite. My point being that a laptop put together to 'minimize blob use' is not necessarily the same as one put together to respect privacy. Without some evidence to the fact it should not be endorsed as such. Can someone dig up the motherboard design documents, should Librem publish them & the transparent process by which components were selected to 'respect liberty'? -Travis OT aside - If someone were to ask what laptop they should use for 'privacy' I'd personally direct them to buy a chromebook with cash at a brick and mortar, wipe & install Qubes (the pixel 2 has some outstanding specs) TAILS and so on. On Mon, Sep 14, 2015 at 11:43 AM, Cathal Garvey <[1]cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me> wrote: Absolutely, yes; If you ask first for privacy, and there is a good option for privacy, then that's the correct answer. Privacy without free software is a total joke. Ergo, given a potentially spyware rich platform that *markets* itself as Private, as Google, Apple and Microsoft for example *all do*, or a free software platform which can be trivially and fairly-well rewritten to not be spyware-rich, you choose the latter. It follows that for a privacy respecting laptop, you must necessarily begin with a laptop that can, to some degree of certainty, be wiped clean and installed with trustworthy software. There are many options here; the FSF certify hardware that can be as blob-free as possible. There are also lots of pitfalls, because the Linux architecture in many places implicitly trusts the intentions of device firmwares; it's likely that memory checks aren't implemented well enough on so many layers that you can never be sure without literally CMOSing your own device control hardware. Given all these options and pitfalls, draw a "sanity line" somewhere and pick some hardware that lets you do modern stuff without torturously long waits. In that short-list, the Librem still ranks quite well, I feel. On 14/09/15 16:32, Travis Biehn wrote: What does 'privacy respecting' even mean? It's certainly a win for the FOSS crowd but FOSS isn't synonymous with 'Privacy and Security'. If a product markets itself as 'privacy respecting' (is the Librem /actually/ marketed this way) then it had better back up it's claims. If someone on cpunks asks if it's a reasonable 'privacy laptop' and the answer isn't a bet-your-life on it yes, then the response should be clearly no, even if it's 'a nice /n/th step'. -Travis On Mon, Sep 14, 2015 at 11:15 AM, Cathal Garvey <[2]cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me > wrote: TBF, nobody's going to make that Privacy-Respecting laptop if people reject the "most privacy respecting laptop so far" for not being good enough. Because, we can keep moving the goalposts, here. Librem isn't perfect, and its BIOS isn't fully free. But it's free-er than almost any other laptop being sold that's worth owning, and it even comes with a hardware switch for some key sensors. I could ask for more, but bitching and rejecting the Librem because it's not-good-enough, and buying a laptop with NO respect for me on the basis that "I can just roll my own", continues to send the market the message that: 1) Free software doesn't sell 2) Privacy doesn't sell On 14/09/15 13:37, Travis Biehn wrote: Oshwm: Seems reasonable. It would be cool if consumers started valuing privacy-oriented products, now the whole plot is lost once a company uses a 3rd party load balancer? Nice. "Every hardware chip individually selected for being freedom-respecting" Is that in the datasheet for each chip "no backdoors & 100% certified vulnerability free"? Does an Intel chipset laptop manufactured in Shenzen really count as 'thoughtful and freedom respecting'? “Getting rid of the signature checking is an important step. While it doesn’t give us free code for the firmware, it means that users will really have control of the firmware once we get free code for it.” - Dr. Richard M. Stallman And without signature checks how will we prevent un-solicited BIOS modification? Securing their Trisquel derived distro? RMS doesn't have 'robust against nation state attackers' on his platform for GNU. They're still just trying to get people to comply with the license & refer to it as 'gnu / linux'. Don't mistake a 'FOSS' laptop for a 'Privacy Laptop' just because they installed a switch for the webcam. The privacy stuff is just the work of marketing. -Travis On Mon, Sep 14, 2015 at 1:36 AM, Oshwm <[4]oshwm@openmailbox.org >> wrote: Links go via cloudflare so privacy already abused before even purchasing. On 14 September 2015 03:11:12 BST, Alfie John <[8]alfiej@fastmail.fm >> wrote: Just saw these this morning: [12]https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism [13]https://puri.sm/ Although a physical switch to kill the webcam and mic seems obvious, this is the first laptop I've seen with them built in. Overall thoughts? Alfie -- Twitter <[14]https://twitter.com/tbiehn> | LinkedIn <[15]http://www.linkedin.com/in/travisbiehn> | GitHub <[16]http://github.com/tbiehn> | TravisBiehn.com <[17]http://www.travisbiehn.com> | Google Plus <[18]https://plus.google.com/+TravisBiehn> -- Scientific Director, IndieBio EU Programme Now running in Cork, Ireland May->July Learn more at indie.bio and follow along! Twitter: @onetruecathal Phone: [19]+353876363185 miniLock: JjmYYngs7akLZUjkvFkuYdsZ3PyPHSZRBKNm6qTYKZfAM [20]peerio.com <[21]http://peerio.com>: cathalgarvey -- Twitter <[22]https://twitter.com/tbiehn> | LinkedIn <[23]http://www.linkedin.com/in/travisbiehn> | GitHub <[24]http://github.com/tbiehn> | TravisBiehn.com <[25]http://www.travisbiehn.com> | Google Plus <[26]https://plus.google.com/+TravisBiehn> -- Scientific Director, IndieBio EU Programme Now running in Cork, Ireland May->July Learn more at indie.bio and follow along! Twitter: @onetruecathal Phone: [27]+353876363185 miniLock: JjmYYngs7akLZUjkvFkuYdsZ3PyPHSZRBKNm6qTYKZfAM [28]peerio.com: cathalgarvey -- [29]Twitter | [30]LinkedIn | [31]GitHub | [32]TravisBiehn.com | [33]Google Plus References 1. mailto:cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me 2. mailto:cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me 3. mailto:cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me 4. mailto:oshwm@openmailbox.org 5. mailto:oshwm@openmailbox.org 6. mailto:oshwm@openmailbox.org 7. mailto:oshwm@openmailbox.org 8. mailto:alfiej@fastmail.fm 9. mailto:alfiej@fastmail.fm 10. mailto:alfiej@fastmail.fm 11. mailto:alfiej@fastmail.fm 12. https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism 13. https://puri.sm/ 14. https://twitter.com/tbiehn 15. http://www.linkedin.com/in/travisbiehn 16. http://github.com/tbiehn 17. http://www.travisbiehn.com/ 18. https://plus.google.com/+TravisBiehn 19. tel:+353876363185 20. http://peerio.com/ 21. http://peerio.com/ 22. https://twitter.com/tbiehn 23. http://www.linkedin.com/in/travisbiehn 24. http://github.com/tbiehn 25. http://www.travisbiehn.com/ 26. https://plus.google.com/+TravisBiehn 27. tel:+353876363185 28. http://peerio.com/ 29. https://twitter.com/tbiehn 30. http://www.linkedin.com/in/travisbiehn 31. http://github.com/tbiehn 32. http://www.travisbiehn.com/ 33. https://plus.google.com/+TravisBiehn