Privacy Respecting Laptops

[Cathal Garvey]

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 <oshwm at openmailbox.org
> <mailto:oshwm at openmailbox.org>> wrote:
>
>     Links go via cloudflare so privacy already abused before even
>     purchasing.
>
>
>     On 14 September 2015 03:11:12 BST, Alfie John <alfiej at fastmail.fm
>     <mailto:alfiej at fastmail.fm>> wrote:
>
>         Just saw these this morning:
>
>            https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism
>            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
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Scientific Director, IndieBio EU Programme
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