Privacy Respecting Laptops

[Travis Biehn]

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 <
cathalgarvey at 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 <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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>> <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: +353876363185
> miniLock: JjmYYngs7akLZUjkvFkuYdsZ3PyPHSZRBKNm6qTYKZfAM
> peerio.com: cathalgarvey
>



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