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The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

(gabrielsieben.tech)
733 points gjsman-1000 | 2 comments | 26 Jul 22 03:46 UTC | HN request time: 1.594s | source
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Gh0stRAT ◴[26 Jul 22 06:26 UTC] No.32235028[source]▶
I'm completely missing how his example of a Word document that can only be opened by approved users on approved hardware within the corporation is supposed to be a bad thing.

Honestly, that sounds pretty fantastic. I've been using 3rd party tools/extensions to do this sort of thing in corporate and government environments for years, but having the attestation go all the way down to the hardware level is a big value-add, especially with so much ransomware/spyware/extortion/espionage going on these days.

Can someone please explain to me how the author might see this level of security as a bad thing?

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BiteCode_dev ◴[26 Jul 22 06:45 UTC] No.32235149[source]▶
The capacity for abuse is huge, way beyong the potential benefits.

From the USA, we get news of banned book in some states. When I read that, my head goes back to my european history, and I reach the Godwin point very quickly.

Those kind of people will abuse such system to prevent things to be shared.

It will be used for putting DRM on everything and create a more and more closed web.

It will be used by corporations and govs to prevent wisthleblowers and journalists to do their job. Or to prevent employees to get evidences of mistreatments in case they need to sue.

Because if you look at it, it's basically just a system for information control. And bad actors love that.

And of course it will be "for security reasons".

Trusting people with a terrible track record to not abuse a massive power in the future, espacially one that can be scaled up with the push of a button once the infrastructure is in place, is not a good bet.

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aaronbrethorst ◴[26 Jul 22 07:00 UTC] No.32235233[source]▶
Ron DeSantis doesn't need hardware-level DRM to ban math books.

https://www.baynews9.com/fl/tampa/news/2022/05/06/florida-ba...

If you're worried about book bannings in states like Florida, DeSantis is up for reelection in just over 3 months. Go volunteer or donate money to his opponent (probably Charlie Crist).

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ajvs ◴[26 Jul 22 07:57 UTC] No.32235549[source]▶
Mein Kampf is a banned book which I don't think many would disagree with. There are many other such books filled with propaganda that are rightly banned. I don't see why other propaganda-filled books that are being pushed on unsuspecting children shouldn't be banned too, unless the only reason is that you dislike the direction of the propaganda.
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1. rockemsockem ◴[26 Jul 22 16:18 UTC] No.32240286[source]▶
If you're in the US there are not really any truly banned books. There are books that are banned from certain libraries (mostly school libraries).

But, imagine that a school adopts the DRM processes described in the article and requires this study level of control even on personal devices that are used for school. Suddenly those book bans can be enforced digitally by the school and will totally cut off access to certain books that the school chooses.

You might say that it's within the school's rights to do this for a device that is used for school and if you don't like it then use a different device. Now that's a system where there is a class-divide on the information that one is physically able to consume on their devices.

You might think Mein Kampf is ban-worthy, but the whole point is actually that you should not ban any book at all, because once you start banning books it becomes far too easy for more books to be banned. All it will take is one regime change in a school district's PTA for new books, that you maybe think should not be banned, to be added to the list.

It's worth considering the most banned books in America. His Dark Materials. A fantastic young adult fantasy novel that pokes harder at religion than some Christians can bear.

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2. shagie ◴[26 Jul 22 17:54 UTC] No.32241489[source]▶
> But, imagine that a school adopts the DRM processes described in the article and requires this study level of control even on personal devices that are used for school.

The prerequisite for this to happen is that the school removes all physical editions of the books and has digital editions for all content, and a lending program for the books that is sufficient to satisfy publishers... and all students have digital book readers able to access the school library.

I don't see this happening in the near (or even within the decade) future. There is far too much content that is physical only, publishers haven't embraced digital editions for libraries, school libraries don't have the technical resources (physical or in many cases human) to convert their collections to digital.

The hypothetical school book ban for digital editions is needlessly alarmist.

When those resources are available to schools, then yes - lets talk about it... though the school banning books will continue to mean "that resource isn't in our collection" and a student can go to another library (or in many cases book store) and get a copy of that book for themselves. This is no different than today.