Re: Beware of encrypted processors bearing gifts...

[Steve Schear <azur@netcom.com>]

The fly in this somewhat "paranoid" ointment is that if it were believeably
rumoured to be true it would set off a stampede to alternate platforms
(Alpha, Power PC, etc.), potentially destroying Intel.  I would not trust
such a platform, but many of the sheeple might until a few high-profile
cases surfaced.

>	I find the notion of an extremely wide deployment (as any Intel
>x86 product will be) of machines with processors that support encrypted
>instruction sets and associated smart cards deeply disquieting.
>
>	It seems to me that this is enabling technology that would allow
>the insertion of autonomous encrypted 'little brothers', into operating
>systems and perhaps major net applications such as web browsers as
>well..  These 'little brother' observers could be made completely opaque
>to even determined and sophisticated users - with encrypted code and the
>potential for encryption of all their data it would require breaking the
>encryption for an independant entity to understand what such an agent
>was doing and who it was doing it for.  And by making support of such
>agents part of the encrypted inner ring of an OS (Win99?), it might be
>very nearly impossible to run the OS without the agent or agents present
>and operating properly.   And as more and more PCs are net connected,
>such agents would not need to operate entirely autonomously, as they
>could communicate over encrypted links with their Big Brother somewhere
>else.


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