Del jardín vallado a la muralla china



Ayer me puse a ver una conferencia de Cory Doctorow, de Boing Boing y cruzando sus dichos con otros artículos, incluyendo alguno que escribí aquí, me puse a pensarlos y llegué a un escenario bastante paranoide pero realista.

La charla de Doctorow se llama "The Coming War on General Purpose Computation" y básicamente trata de cómo estas guerras por el copyright y leyes como SOPA son apenas la punta del iceberg que nos espera, no es una guerra, es una escaramuza y la guerra está por venir.

La guerra es legislativa y es por nuestros derechos.

Quería combinar un poco aquella charla que ha dado con ciertos artículos que he visto estas semanas, los servicios en la nube y la pérdida de control que está significando.



Antes de adentrarme en lo de Doctorow el otro día leía como Google Health, un servicio que aquí nunca usamos, se daba de baja. Es decir, un servicio en la nube desaparece, tus datos, sirvan o no, desaparecerán. La forma de administrarlos no la podés bajar, como mucho los datos crudos, pero no el software.

Ese problema escencial del software en la nube, no lo poseés, no lo tenés ni siquiera instalado en una PC vieja, no, simplemente se esfuma, desaparece.

La nube sirve perfectamente cuando ésta subsiste, pero apenas apagan el switch del servidor y desaparecieron todos tus datos, todas tus cosas.

Aquí es donde la charla de Doctorow comienza a tomar forma, en la pérdida del control absoluto al pasar de tener todo en nuestra PC a no tenerlo y a que la PC misma se nos vaya de las manos.

Ya no es cuestión de si tenemos las cosas en la nube si no si los fabricantes insertan rootkits y malware para controlar lo que hacemos con la computadora.

El fin de la era de las computadoras de uso general está planteado desde nuestro principal proveedor de servicios en la nube: Google.

La ChromeBook es el caballo de troya ¿por qué? porque al no plantear el almacenamiento local es muy fácil que, sea por una ley o una medida, desde un país que no es el tuyo alguien dictamine si tu contenido personal es válido o no de ser poseído.

Tenés tu colección de MP3 que vos mismo convertiste desde unos vinilos inexistentes, ellos dicen que no podés tenerlo, ellos te lo borran, se perdió.

El fin de las computadoras de uso general es la verdadera guerra. Es ese lugar donde los poderosos actualmente pierden todas y cada una de las batallas, donde sus leyes carecen de sentido y donde estan apuntando las verdaderas armas.

Así como Sony incluyó un Rootkit en CDs que se metían en tu PC para controlarte e impedirte ripear un CD, así como Google te ofrece una Chromebook para que muevas todo a la nube o como Apple te sincroniza con iTunes y no te quiere permitir meterte a mano en tu iPod.

De la misma forma van a querer lanzar una PC que controle todos tus movimientos y elimine lo que no les guste. Los verdaderos poderosos, que ya no son ni la industria cinematográfica ni musical, si no todo el resto (petróleo, granos, energía, etc.) , podrá demandarle a los fabricantes de PCs que incluyan un BIOS que satisfaga su demanda, ej: que no permita al usuario consumir contenido que no le sea beneficioso a ellos o pueda molestarles.

¿qué se los impide? la mayoría de nosotros ignoramos como funciona una PC por dentro ¿alguna vez analizaron el código fuente de su sistema operativo? ah, cierto que no puede ser leído salvo que sean Linuxeros/BSDeros.

¿quien te proteje de eso? nadie realmente, sólo vos. Pero ¿cuanto falta para que ni nosotros entendamos como hacerlo? Si mañana entrar a The Pirate Bay nos da error lo primero que nos preguntaremos será ¿lo bajaron? pero nunca nos preguntaremos si es nuestra propia computadora la que impide que lo hagamos.

Imaginen una PC que responda a las directrices de la MPAA y baje DNSs de tu PC sin consentimiento tuyo, es más, que cuando iniciás tu computadora por primera vez te hagan aceptar unos términos y condiciones donde les das el control a ellos si no, no podrás usarla.

Es posible y es hacia donde nos quieren llevar porque ya está sucediendo o... ¿acaso no miraron el teléfono?

Cada vez que uno se compra un teléfono nuevo se la pasa aceptando términos y condiciones en cada aplicación que uno no mira, cada vez que compramos o descargamos algo desde una AppStore estamos aceptando que eso y sólo eso es lo que podremos usar, lo que ellos nos digan, lo que ellos nos seleccionen.

Todo en pos de "hacernos la vida más fácil" estamos entregando más control del que deberíamos al punto que los sistemas operativos nos empiezan a tratar como retardados (OSX, Unity, Windows 8, iOS, etc.) como que no necesitamos entender, sólo hay que aceptar y consumir.

Por eso los invito a que vean este video y abajo les dejo la transcripción, todo en inglés pero super recomendable.

The Coming War on General Purpose Computation







Introducer:

Anyway, I believe I've killed enough time ... so, ladies and gentlemen, a person who in this crowd needs absolutely no introduction, Cory Doctorow!

[Audience applauds.]

Doctorow:

[[27.0]] Thank you.

[[32.0]] So, when I speak in places where the first language of the nation is not English, there is a disclaimer and an apology, because I'm one of nature's fast talkers. When I was at the United Nations at the World Intellectual Property Organization, I was known as the "scourge" of the simultaneous translation corps; I would stand up and speak, and turn around, and there would be window after window of translator, and every one of them would be doing this [Doctorow facepalms]. [Audience laughs] So in advance, I give you permission when I start talking quickly to do this [Doctorow makes SOS motion] and I will slow down.

[[74.1]] So, tonight's talk -- wah, wah, waaah [Doctorow makes 'fail horn' sound, apparently in response to audience making SOS motion; audience laughs]] -- tonight's talk is not a copyright talk. I do copyright talks all the time; questions about culture and creativity are interesting enough, but to be honest, I'm quite sick of them. If you want to hear freelancer writers like me bang on about what's happening to the way we earn our living, by all means, go and find one of the many talks I've done on this subject on YouTube. But, tonight, I want to talk about something more important -- I want to talk about general purpose computers.

Because general purpose computers are, in fact, astounding -- so astounding that our society is still struggling to come to grips with them: to figure out what they're for, to figure out how to accommodate them, and how to cope with them. Which, unfortunately, brings me back to copyright.

[[133.8]] Because the general shape of the copyright wars and the lessons they can teach us about the upcoming fights over the destiny of the general purpose computer are important. In the beginning, we had packaged software, and the attendant industry, and we had sneakernet. So, we had floppy disks in ziplock bags, or in cardboard boxes, hung on pegs in shops, and sold like candy bars and magazines. And they were eminently susceptible to duplication, and so they were duplicated quickly, and widely, and this was to the great chagrin of people who made and sold software.

[[172.6]] Enter DRM 0.96. They started to introduce physical defects to the disks or started to insist on other physical indicia which the software could check for -- dongles, hidden sectors, challenge/response protocols that required that you had physical possession of large, unwieldy manuals that were difficult to copy, and of course these failed, for two reasons. First, they were commercially unpopular, of course, because they reduced the usefulness of the software to the legitimate purchasers, while leaving the people who took the software without paying for it untouched. The legitimate purchasers resented the non-functionality of their backups, they hated the loss of scarce ports to the authentication dongles, and they resented the inconvenience of having to transport large manuals when they wanted to run their software. And second, these didn't stop pirates, who found it trivial to patch the software and bypass authentication. Typically, the way that happened is some expert who had possession of technology and expertise of equivalent sophistication to the software vendor itself, would reverse engineer the software and release cracked versions that quickly became widely circulated. While this kind of expertise and technology sounded highly specialized, it really wasn't; figuring out what recalcitrant programs were doing, and routing around the defects in shitty floppy disk media were both core skills for computer programmers, and were even more so in the era of fragile floppy disks and the rough-and-ready early days of software development. Anti-copying strategies only became more fraught as networks spread; once we had BBSes, online services, USENET newsgroups, and mailing lists, the expertise of people who figured out how to defeat these authentication systems could be packaged up in software as little crack files, or, as the network capacity increased, the cracked disk images or executables themselves could be spread on their own.

[[296.4]] Which gave us DRM 1.0. By 1996, it became clear to everyone in the halls of power that there was something important about to happen. We were about to have an information economy, whatever the hell that was. They assumed it meant an economy where we bought and sold information. Now, information technology makes things efficient, so imagine the markets that an information economy would have. You could buy a book for a day, you could sell the right to watch the movie for one Euro, and then you could rent out the pause button at one penny per second. You could sell movies for one price in one country, and another price in another, and so on, and so on; the fantasies of those days were a little like a boring science fiction adaptation of the Old Testament book of Numbers, a kind of tedious enumeration of every permutation of things people do with information and the ways we could charge them for it.

[[355.5]] But none of this would be possible unless we could control how people use their computers and the files we transfer to them. After all, it was well and good to talk about selling someone the 24 hour right to a video, or the right to move music onto an iPod, but not the right to move music from the iPod onto another device, but how the Hell could you do that once you'd given them the file? In order to do that, to make this work, you needed to figure out how to stop computers from running certain programs and inspecting certain files and processes. For example, you could encrypt the file, and then require the user to run a program that only unlocked the file under certain circumstances.

[[395.8]] But as they say on the Internet, "now you have two problems". You also, now, have to stop the user from saving the file while it's in the clear, and you have to stop the user from figuring out where the unlocking program stores its keys, because if the user finds the keys, she'll just decrypt the file and throw away that stupid player app.

[[416.6]] And now you have three problems [audience laughs], because now you have to stop the users who figure out how to render the file in the clear from sharing it with other users, and now you've got four! problems, because now you have to stop the users who figure out how to extract secrets from unlocking programs from telling other users how to do it too, and now you've got five! problems, because now you have to stop users who figure out how to extract secrets from unlocking programs from telling other users what the secrets were!

[[442.0]] That's a lot of problems. But by 1996, we had a solution. We had the WIPO Copyright Treaty, passed by the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization, which created laws that made it illegal to extract secrets from unlocking programs, and it created laws that made it illegal to extract media cleartexts from the unlocking programs while they were running, and it created laws that made it illegal to tell people how to extract secrets from unlocking programs, and created laws that made it illegal to host copyrighted works and secrets and all with a handy streamlined process that let you remove stuff from the Internet without having to screw around with lawyers, and judges, and all that crap. And with that, illegal copying ended forever [audience laughs very hard, applauds], the information economy blossomed into a beautiful flower that brought prosperity to the whole wide world; as they say on the aircraft carriers, "Mission Accomplished". [audience laughs]

[[511.0]] Well, of course that's not how the story ends because pretty much anyone who understood computers and networks understood that while these laws would create more problems than they could possibly solve; after all, these were laws that made it illegal to look inside your computer when it was running certain programs, they made it illegal to tell people what you found when you looked inside your computer, they made it easy to censor material on the internet without having to prove that anything wrong had happened; in short, they made unrealistic demands on reality and reality did not oblige them. After all, copying only got easier following the passage of these laws -- copying will only ever get easier! Here, 2011, this is as hard as copying will get! Your grandchildren will turn to you around the Christmas table and say "Tell me again, Grandpa, tell me again, Grandma, about when it was hard to copy things in 2011, when you couldn't get a drive the size of your fingernail that could hold every song ever recorded, every movie ever made, every word ever spoken, every picture ever taken, everything, and transfer it in such a short period of time you didn't even notice it was doing it, tell us again when it was so stupidly hard to copy things back in 2011". And so, reality asserted itself, and everyone had a good laugh over how funny our misconceptions were when we entered the 21st century, and then a lasting peace was reached with freedom and prosperity for all. [audience chuckles]

[[593.5]] Well, not really. Because, like the nursery rhyme lady who swallows a spider to catch a fly, and has to swallow a bird to catch the spider, and a cat to catch the bird, and so on, so must a regulation that has broad general appeal but is disastrous in its implementation beget a new regulation aimed at shoring up the failure of the old one. Now, it's tempting to stop the story here and conclude that the problem is that lawmakers are either clueless or evil, or possibly evilly clueless, and just leave it there, which is not a very satisfying place to go, because it's fundamentally a counsel of despair; it suggests that our problems cannot be solved for so long as stupidity and evilness are present in the halls of power, which is to say they will never be solved. But I have another theory about what's happened.

[[644.4]] It's not that regulators don't understand information technology, because it should be possible to be a non-expert and still make a good law! M.P.s and Congressmen and so on are elected to represent districts and people, not disciplines and issues. We don't have a Member of Parliament for biochemistry, and we don't have a Senator from the great state of urban planning, and we don't have an M.E.P. from child welfare. (But perhaps we should.) And yet those people who are experts in policy and politics, not technical disciplines, nevertheless, often do manage to pass good rules that make sense, and that's because government relies on heuristics -- rules of thumbs about how to balance expert input from different sides of an issue.

[[686.3]] But information technology confounds these heuristics -- it kicks the crap out of them -- in one important way, and this is it. One important test of whether or not a regulation is fit for a purpose is first, of course, whether it will work, but second of all, whether or not in the course of doing its work, it will have lots of effects on everything else. If I wanted Congress to write, or Parliament to write, or the E.U. to regulate a wheel, it's unlikely I'd succeed. If I turned up and said "well, everyone knows that wheels are good and right, but have you noticed that every single bank robber has four wheels on his car when he drives away from the bank robbery? Can't we do something about this?", the answer would of course be "no". Because we don't know how to make a wheel that is still generally useful for legitimate wheel applications but useless to bad guys. And we can all see that the general benefits of wheels are so profound that we'd be foolish to risk them in a foolish errand to stop bank robberies by changing wheels. Even if there were an /epidemic/ of bank robberies, even if society were on the verge of collapse thanks to bank robberies, no-one would think that wheels were the right place to start solving our problems.

[[762.0]] But. If I were to show up in that same body to say that I had absolute proof that hands-free phones were making cars dangerous, and I said, "I would like you to pass a law that says it's illegal to put a hands-free phone in a car", the regulator might say "Yeah, I'd take your point, we'd do that". And we might disagree about whether or not this is a good idea, or whether or not my evidence made sense, but very few of us would say "well, once you take the hands-free phones out of the car, they stop being cars". We understand that we can keep cars cars even if we remove features from them. Cars are special purpose, at least in comparison to wheels, and all that the addition of a hands-free phone does is add one more feature to an already-specialized technology. In fact, there's that heuristic that we can apply here -- special-purpose technologies are complex. And you can remove features from them without doing fundamental disfiguring violence to their underlying utility.

[[816.5]] This rule of thumb serves regulators well, by and large, but it is rendered null and void by the general-purpose computer and the general-purpose network -- the PC and the Internet. Because if you think of computer software as a feature, that is a computer with spreadsheets running on it has a spreadsheet feature, and one that's running World of Warcraft has an MMORPG feature, then this heuristic leads you to think that you could reasonably say, "make me a computer that doesn't run spreadsheets", and that it would be no more of an attack on computing than "make me a car without a hands-free phone" is an attack on cars. And if you think of protocols and sites as features of the network, then saying "fix the Internet so that it doesn't run BitTorrent", or "fix the Internet so that thepiratebay.org no longer resolves", then it sounds a lot like "change the sound of busy signals", or "take that pizzeria on the corner off the phone network", and not like an attack on the fundamental principles of internetworking.

[[870.5]] Not realizing that this rule of thumb that works for cars and for houses and for every other substantial area of technological regulation fails for the Internet does not make you evil and it does not make you an ignoramus. It just makes you part of that vast majority of the world for whom ideas like "Turing complete" and "end-to-end" are meaningless. So, our regulators go off, and they blithely pass these laws, and they become part of the reality of our technological world. There are suddenly numbers that we aren't allowed to write down on the Internet, programs we're not allowed to publish, and all it takes to make legitimate material disappear from the Internet is to say "that? That infringes copyright." It fails to attain the actual goal of the regulation; it doesn't stop people from violating copyright, but it bears a kind of superficial resemblance to copyright enforcement -- it satisfies the security syllogism: "something must be done, I am doing something, something has been done." And thus any failures that arise can be blamed on the idea that the regulation doesn't go far enough, rather than the idea that it was flawed from the outset.

[[931.2]] This kind of superficial resemblance and underlying divergence happens in other engineering contexts. I've a friend who was once a senior executive at a big consumer packaged goods company who told me about what happened when the marketing department told the engineers that they'd thought up a great idea for detergent: from now on, they were going to make detergent that made your clothes newer every time you washed them! Well after the engineers had tried unsuccessfully to convey the concept of "entropy" to the marketing department [audience laughs], they arrived at another solution -- "solution" -- they'd develop a detergent that used enzymes that attacked loose fiber ends, the kind that you get with broken fibers that make your clothes look old. So every time you washed your clothes in the detergent, they would look newer. But that was because the detergent was literally digesting your clothes! Using it would literally cause your clothes to dissolve in the washing machine! This was the opposite of making clothes newer; instead, you were artificially aging your clothes every time you washed them, and as the user, the more you deployed the "solution", the more drastic your measures had to be to keep your clothes up to date -- you actually had to go buy new clothes because the old ones fell apart.

[[1012.5]] So today we have marketing departments who say things like "we don't need computers, we need... appliances. Make me a computer that doesn't run every program, just a program that does this specialized task, like streaming audio, or routing packets, or playing Xbox games, and make sure it doesn't run programs that I haven't authorized that might undermine our profits". And on the surface, this seems like a reasonable idea -- just a program that does one specialized task -- after all, we can put an electric motor in a blender, and we can install a motor in a dishwasher, and we don't worry if it's still possible to run a dishwashing program in a blender. But that's not what we do when we turn a computer into an appliance. We're not making a computer that runs only the "appliance" app; we're making a computer that can run every program, but which uses some combination of rootkits, spyware, and code-signing to prevent the user from knowing which processes are running, from installing her own software, and from terminating processes that she doesn't want. In other words, an appliance is not a stripped-down computer -- it is a fully functional computer with spyware on it out of the box.

[audience applauds loudly] Thanks.

[[1090.5]] Because we don't know how to build the general purpose computer that is capable of running any program we can compile except for some program that we don't like, or that we prohibit by law, or that loses us money. The closest approximation that we have to this is a computer with spyware -- a computer on which remote parties set policies without the computer user's knowledge, over the objection of the computer's owner. And so it is that digital rights management always converges on malware.

[[1118.9]] There was, of course, this famous incident, a kind of gift to people who have this hypothesis, in which Sony loaded covert rootkit installers on 6 million audio CDs, which secretly executed programs that watched for attempts to read the sound files on CDs, and terminated them, and which also hid the rootkit's existence by causing the kernel to lie about which processes were running, and which files were present on the drive. But it's not the only example; just recently, Nintendo shipped the 3DS, which opportunistically updates its firmware, and does an integrity check to make sure that you haven't altered the old firmware in any way, and if it detects signs of tampering, it bricks itself.

[[1158.8]] Human rights activists have raised alarms over U-EFI, the new PC bootloader, which restricts your computer so it runs signed operating systems, noting that repressive governments will likely withhold signatures from OSes unless they have covert surveillance operations.

[[1175.5]] And on the network side, attempts to make a network that can't be used for copyright infringement always converges with the surveillance measures that we know from repressive governments. So, SOPA, the U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act, bans tools like DNSSec because they can be used to defeat DNS blocking measures. And it blocks tools like Tor, because they can be used to circumvent IP blocking measures. In fact, the proponents of SOPA, the Motion Picture Association of America, circulated a memo, citing research that SOPA would probably work, because it uses the same measures as are used in Syria, China, and Uzbekistan, and they argued that these measures are effective in those countries, and so they would work in America, too!

[audience laughs and applauds] Don't applaud me, applaud the MPAA!

[[1221.5]] Now, it may seem like SOPA is the end game in a long fight over copyright, and the Internet, and it may seem like if we defeat SOPA, we'll be well on our way to securing the freedom of PCs and networks. But as I said at the beginning of this talk, this isn't about copyright, because the copyright wars are just the 0.9 beta version of the long coming war on computation. The entertainment industry were just the first belligerents in this coming century-long conflict. We tend to think of them as particularly successful -- after all, here is SOPA, trembling on the verge of passage, and breaking the internet on this fundamental level in the name of preserving Top 40 music, reality TV shows, and Ashton Kutcher movies! [laughs, scattered applause]

[[1270.2]] But the reality is, copyright legislation gets as far as it does precisely because it's not taken seriously, which is why on one hand, Canada has had Parliament after Parliament introduce one stupid copyright bill after another, but on the other hand, Parliament after Parliament has failed to actually vote on the bill. It's why we got SOPA, a bill composed of pure stupid, pieced together molecule-by-molecule, into a kind of "Stupidite 250", which is normally only found in the heart of newborn star, and it's why these rushed-through SOPA hearings had to be adjourned midway through the Christmas break, so that lawmakers could get into a real vicious nationally-infamous debate over an important issue, unemployment insurance. It's why the World Intellectual Property Organization is gulled time and again into enacting crazed, pig-ignorant copyright proposals because when the nations of the world send their U.N. missions to Geneva, they send water experts, not copyright experts; they send health experts, not copyright experts; they send agriculture experts, not copyright experts, because copyright is just not important to pretty much everyone! [applause]

[[1350.3]] Canada's Parliament didn't vote on its copyright bills because, of all the things that Canada needs to do, fixing copyright ranks well below health emergencies on First Nations reservations, exploiting the oil patch in Alberta, interceding in sectarian resentments among French- and English-speakers, solving resources crises in the nation's fisheries, and thousand other issues! The triviality of copyright tells you that when other sectors of the economy start to evince concerns about the Internet and the PC, that copyright will be revealed for a minor skirmish, and not a war. Why would other sectors nurse grudges against computers? Well, because the world we live in today is /made/ of computers. We don't have cars anymore, we have computers we ride in; we don't have airplanes anymore, we have flying Solaris boxes with a big bucketful of SCADA controllers [laughter]; a 3D printer is not a device, it's a peripheral, and it only works connected to a computer; a radio is no longer a crystal, it's a general-purpose computer with a fast ADC and a fast DAC and some software.

[[1418.9]] The grievances that arose from unauthorized copying are trivial, when compared to the calls for action that our new computer-embroidered reality will create. Think of radio for a minute. The entire basis for radio regulation up until today was based on the idea that the properties of a radio are fixed at the time of manufacture, and can't be easily altered. You can't just flip a switch on your baby monitor, and turn it into something that interferes with air traffic control signals. But powerful software-defined radios can change from baby monitor to emergency services dispatcher to air traffic controller just by loading and executing different software, which is why the first time the American telecoms regulator (the FCC) considered what would happen when we put SDRs in the field, they asked for comment on whether it should mandate that all software-defined radios should be embedded in trusted computing machines. Ultimately, whether every PC should be locked, so that the programs they run are strictly regulated by central authorities.

[[1477.9]] And even this is a shadow of what is to come. After all, this was the year in which we saw the debut of open sourced shape files for converting AR-15s to full automatic. This was the year of crowd-funded open-sourced hardware for gene sequencing. And while 3D printing will give rise to plenty of trivial complaints, there will be judges in the American South and Mullahs in Iran who will lose their minds over people in their jurisdiction printing out sex toys. [guffaw from audience] The trajectory of 3D printing will most certainly raise real grievances, from solid state meth labs, to ceramic knives.

[[1516.0]] And it doesn't take a science fiction writer to understand why regulators might be nervous about the user-modifiable firmware on self-driving cars, or limiting interoperability for aviation controllers, or the kind of thing you could do with bio-scale assemblers and sequencers. Imagine what will happen the day that Monsanto determines that it's really... really... important to make sure that computers can't execute programs that cause specialized peripherals to output organisms that eat their lunch... literally. Regardless of whether you think these are real problems or merely hysterical fears, they are nevertheless the province of lobbies and interest groups that are far more influential than Hollywood and big content are on their best days, and every one of them will arrive at the same place -- "can't you just make us a general purpose computer that runs all the programs, except the ones that scare and anger us? Can't you just make us an Internet that transmits any message over any protocol between any two points, unless it upsets us?"

[[1576.3]] And personally, I can see that there will be programs that run on general purpose computers and peripherals that will even freak me out. So I can believe that people who advocate for limiting general purpose computers will find receptive audience for their positions. But just as we saw with the copyright wars, banning certain instructions, or protocols, or messages, will be wholly ineffective as a means of prevention and remedy; and as we saw in the copyright wars, all attempts at controlling PCs will converge on rootkits; all attempts at controlling the Internet will converge on surveillance and censorship, which is why all this stuff matters. Because we've spent the last 10+ years as a body sending our best players out to fight what we thought was the final boss at the end of the game, but it turns out it's just been the mini-boss at the end of the level, and the stakes are only going to get higher.

[[1627.8]] As a member of the Walkman generation, I have made peace with the fact that I will require a hearing aid long before I die, and of course, it won't be a hearing aid, it will be a computer I put in my body. So when I get into a car -- a computer I put my body into -- with my hearing aid -- a computer I put inside my body -- I want to know that these technologies are not designed to keep secrets from me, and to prevent me from terminating processes on them that work against my interests. [vigorous applause from audience] Thank you.

[[1669.4]] Thank you. So, last year, the Lower Merion School District, in a middle-class, affluent suburb of Philadelphia found itself in a great deal of trouble, because it was caught distributing PCs to its students, equipped with rootkits that allowed for remote covert surveillance through the computer's camera and network connection. It transpired that they had been photographing students thousands of times, at home and at school, awake and asleep, dressed and naked. Meanwhile, the latest generation of lawful intercept technology can covertly operate cameras, mics, and GPSes on PCs, tablets, and mobile devices.

[[1705.0]] Freedom in the future will require us to have the capacity to monitor our devices and set meaningful policy on them, to examine and terminate the processes that run on them, to maintain them as honest servants to our will, and not as traitors and spies working for criminals, thugs, and control freaks. And we haven't lost yet, but we have to win the copyright wars to keep the Internet and the PC free and open. Because these are the materiel in the wars that are to come, we won't be able to fight on without them. And I know this sounds like a counsel of despair, but as I said, these are early days. We have been fighting the mini-boss, and that means that great challenges are yet to come, but like all good level designers, fate has sent us a soft target to train ourselves on -- we have a organizations that fight for them -- EFF, Bits of Freedom, EDRi, CCC, Netzpolitik, La Quadrature du Net, and all the others, who are thankfully, too numerous to name here -- we may yet win the battle, and secure the ammunition we'll need for the war.

[[1778.9]] Thank you.

[sustained applause]


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Fuente del texto, Joshua Wise reproducido bajo licencia CC
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Comentarios

  • Marcosss     02/01/2012 - 11:58:17

    Wall of text...necesito un cafe mas grande.

  • arielin     02/01/2012 - 12:12:42

    "cabaYo de troya"

    omg, mis ojos! :D

  • Noah Nassir     02/01/2012 - 12:13:46

    Winter is comming.

    Posta, yo soy paranoico así que siempre espero estas cosas, pero una parte feliz de mi mente pensaba que capaz se lograba algo simpático y un cambio a un nuevo modelo de comercio con relación a los derechos de autor, distribución etc etc, capaz este capitalismo decadente moribundo de ahora, daba un giro.

    Pero parece que se pone peor antes que mejor, así que si se viene la gran corporaciones son tu amo y señor bien de las distopías cyberpunk.

    Ventanitasparapelotudos8 es una aberración, la constante y absoluta violación a los datos personales que las aplicaciones demandan en aparatos móviles sean android o samsungapps o applestore o sarasa, para dejarte instalar son deplorables, quieren saber todo sobre tus usos.

    Bueno ponele que no te importa que sepan si te gusta mirar porno 2 o 3 veces por día en cierto horario tomando coca cola con vainillas, ni que ellos después te metan publicidad de vainillas y coca cola a la hora y día que miras porno.

    Pero termina ahí, quieren decirte que quizás no te conviene tal día para mirar porno, que ellos prefieren que mires a otra hora y/o día, por lo tanto te prohíben acceder al porno mediante tal aplicación porque viola leyes de copyrights, ergo tenes que instalar X aplicación para ver porno sancto que: "Ho casualidad, trasmite tal día y horario" pero ojo, solo se puede con vainillas Arcor y Coca Cola, nada de vainillas La Nona y Paraguaya Cola.

    Se complica y va a ser una guerra, espero que las generaciones que nacieron en la era de la tecnología se den cuenta y se sumen.

    Porque los que nacimos cuando el pong era ciencia ficción, estamos adaptados a luchar para conseguir las cosas, piratear, sobrevivir (especialmente los tercermundistas nerds, geeks, roleros, sarasa, usen el nombre que quieran) en las situaciones mas bizarras y ahora que vivimos en "el futuro" (Viejo se acuerdan cuando para conseguir un video de robotech tenias que recorrer medio universo para rascar un vhs todo hecho pija doblado del malayo por un coreano en un sótano en Tailandia a un precio delirante?) no vamos a resignar los "logros".

    The cold winds are rising

  • Diego     02/01/2012 - 12:37:26

    Disculpame macho si no estoy de acuerdo con vos...
    No te quejes al pedo tratando de salvar al mundo, por que no sabes si el mundo quiere ser salvado. Es solo tu opinion...
    Si no te gustan las herramientas que estas empresas ofrecen, busca otras, o en todo caso crea las tuyas y ofrecelas como vos quisieras que fueran...

    Personalmente se a lo que me atengo cuando uso estos servicios.

    Estoy cansado de ver criticas... Para eso todos somos directores tecnicos...

    Este tipo de notas buscando controversias me ponen mal...

    O acaso no usas tu auto y nada decis de las companias que nos venden la misma mierda con distinta forma año tras año y marcan como tenes que manejar/sentarte/etc.?
    Hacete un post criticando que todavia hoy usas un cable de acero para acelerar...

    Algun palo a la industria farmaceutica? O no te tomas alguna pastillota sin siquiera preguntarte si podrias haberla modificado?

    Personalmente opino que todo software deberia ser pago. Punto.
    Te rompiste el orto y sudaste sangre rompiendote la cabeza para implementar ese codigo que hoy hace millonaria a otra empresa...
    Estoy seguro que muchos estan arrepentidos de haber abierto su codigo...

    Perdoname, pero me quedo con tus notas informativas/tecnicas... Estas no me gustan.

    Igual un muy buen 2012 para vos y tu equipo!

  • Sebas Buch     02/01/2012 - 12:50:07

    Noah Nassir dijo:

    Winter is comming.


    No, "Trolls are commming" XD

  • Diego     02/01/2012 - 12:52:33

    Noah Nassir dijo:



    Clasico... Cuando los demas no piensan como vos tenes el derecho a ofenderlos.
    Es mi opinion, no la impongo, solo la expongo, y trato de no ofender...

  • gaston     02/01/2012 - 13:27:35

    Por eso es que estoy en contra de Apple!!

  • Fabio     02/01/2012 - 14:09:36

    arielin dijo:

    "cabaYo de troya"

    omg, mis ojos! :D


    never write on mornings


    gaston dijo:
    Por eso es que estoy en contra de Apple!!


    pará que ahora viene ENTEL a decirte que Android es peor todavía :D



    Diego dijo:
    Disculpame macho si no estoy de acuerdo con vos...
    No te quejes al pedo tratando de salvar al mundo, por que no sabes si el mundo quiere ser salvado. Es solo tu opinion...
    Si no te gustan las herramientas que estas empresas ofrecen, busca otras, o en todo caso crea las tuyas y ofrecelas como vos quisieras que fueran...

    Personalmente se a lo que me atengo cuando uso estos servicios.

    Estoy cansado de ver criticas... Para eso todos somos directores tecnicos...

    Este tipo de notas buscando controversias me ponen mal...

    O acaso no usas tu auto y nada decis de las companias que nos venden la misma mierda con distinta forma año tras año y marcan como tenes que manejar/sentarte/etc.?
    Hacete un post criticando que todavia hoy usas un cable de acero para acelerar...

    Algun palo a la industria farmaceutica? O no te tomas alguna pastillota sin siquiera preguntarte si podrias haberla modificado?

    Personalmente opino que todo software deberia ser pago. Punto.
    Te rompiste el orto y sudaste sangre rompiendote la cabeza para implementar ese codigo que hoy hace millonaria a otra empresa...
    Estoy seguro que muchos estan arrepentidos de haber abierto su codigo...

    Perdoname, pero me quedo con tus notas informativas/tecnicas... Estas no me gustan.

    Igual un muy buen 2012 para vos y tu equipo!



    ignorante 200%

    al día de hoy todas las notas de este blog las podés usar (Creative Commons) y el código fuente que hace que las puedas ver lo podés descargar, usar y modificar libremente (GPL)

    utilizo un auto que no sólo se como funciona o en tal caso puedo aprender, sin o que una empresa alternativa puede fabricar repuestos sin tener que pagar una licencia especial. Pero es un punto válido ¿acaso no querés saber por qué ahora tenés que pagar diez veces más por arreglar un auto vía computadora cuando debería ser diez veces más barato?

    el precio de la ignorancia impuesta, una cosa que debería beneficiarte aprovechada por los que pudieron pagar la máquina intermediaria.

    ¿industria farmacéutica?, hace años que intentan hacer que vos tengas tomarte una pastilla que costó 0.00001$ a no menos de $100

    ¿industria agrícola? Monsanto haciendo Lobby para impedir que los agricultores puedan resembrar sus propias cosechas así les compran obligatoriamente las de ellos que ni sabés como se hacen y una larga lista.

    justamente, el problema son pelotudos como vos que ni les importa y por eso te recomiendo la lectura o ver el video. para que seas un milímetro menos pelotudo mañana o en tal caso te recibas y lleves el título con orgullo :D



    Diego dijo:
    Noah Nassir dijo:


    Clasico... Cuando los demas no piensan como vos tenes el derecho a ofenderlos.
    Es mi opinion, no la impongo, solo la expongo, y trato de no ofender...


    vos empezaste mal, si un tema te molesta o no querés leer del mismo, simplemente podés abstenerte en vez de tratar a todos aquellos que se preocupan por el mismo de tontos Guiño

  • fisadev     02/01/2012 - 15:06:29

    buen punto y buena nota, coincido en mucho. Te paso algo que en algún momento escribí para el blog de Filly sobre el tema

    http://www.missfilly.com.ar/2011/12/historias-de-computadoras-privacidad-y.html

    saludos!

  • ENTel     02/01/2012 - 15:09:55

    Android es peor todavía, y lo sabés, pero eso no es el tema.

    Tanto critican a Apple y a Microsoft cuándo la que verdaderamente está transando con todas estas empresas y cagandose en la gente es Google.

    Agradezcanle a Apple que la industria haya dejado de usar DRM, por ejemplo, ya que fueron la primer empresa en abandonarlo por completo en la música.

    No jodamos, gente, siempre demonizan al equivocado. Hay empresas que se cagan en tu libertado como Google, empresas a las que les chupa un huevo, más o menos, como Apple o Microsoft, y organizaciones (no empresas) que las defienden. Ese es el tema. Apple no es buena, pero no es la peor, ni de cerca. Y ni hablemos de la Microsoft de ahora, que en un esfuerzo por diferenciarse intenta acercarse al usuario por estos frentes, justamente.

    Yo creo que está en la gente el no permitir que las corporaciones nos coarten nuestras libertades. Hay que lucharla en cada frente de batalla que ellos abran, con toda, y no dejarnos pisotear. Las herramientas están.

  • pitufo     02/01/2012 - 15:11:51

    tienen que salir a la venta mini pcs que las enchufas y tenes todo: tu red social tus fotos tus mails. y listo. software , hardware y datos en tu casa.

  • pitufo     02/01/2012 - 15:15:09

    agrego: las empresas te venden un upgrade de tu conexion de internet para que tus fotos suban mas rapido. para que? para que se las quede faceook o flirck? porque no hacer al reves: tenes todo local y la fotos las subis a 1Gbps a tu mini equipo con servidor.

  • ENTel     02/01/2012 - 15:16:37

    Yo no se hasta que punto la nube es buena y hasta que punto es mala. En mi caso, me facilitó la vida, pero nunca dependo de la nube para nada, todo lo que está subido también está resguardado en mi máquina.

    Yo lo veo como una herramienta práctica, pero para depender de ella, no va, por los motivos nombrados por Fabio.

  • ICeman     02/01/2012 - 15:52:59

    Noah Nassir dijo:

    Se complica y va a ser una guerra, espero que las generaciones que nacieron en la era de la tecnología se den cuenta y se sumen.

    Porque los que nacimos cuando el pong era ciencia ficción, estamos adaptados a luchar para conseguir las cosas, piratear, sobrevivir (especialmente los tercermundistas nerds, geeks, roleros, sarasa, usen el nombre que quieran) en las situaciones mas bizarras y ahora que vivimos en "el futuro" (Viejo se acuerdan cuando para conseguir un video de robotech tenias que recorrer medio universo para rascar un vhs todo hecho pija doblado del malayo por un coreano en un sótano en Tailandia a un precio delirante?) no vamos a resignar los "logros".

    Lamentablemente las nuevas generaciones viven en un nivel de pajerismo tan extremo que ni a palos se van a calentar por estas cosas. Son generaciones que pagaban 10 dólares al mes para que Fotolog les deje subir más de una foto por día cuando Picasa les dejaba subir infinitas.
    Yo estoy en el medio de ese rango, tengo casi 29 años, pasé del cassette grabado por un amigo a bajar cosas pirateadas con FTP privados, AudioGalaxy, DC++, WinMX, SoulSeek y otros tantos sistemas con un módem telefónico. Pude ver cómo nació el MP3 para las masas ya que antes nos bajábamos archivos MIDI que sonaban como el orto porque era para lo único que había ancho de banda. Daría mi vida por defender el derecho que tengo a usar una computadora como se me canta el ojete con el software que se me canta el ojete, pero los pendejos de 14 años con un tereso atravesado en el cráneo que creen que la computadora es "la cosa esa para usar MSN" no entienden que lo que tienen en frente es un aparato capaz de ejecutar cualquier función posible en base a cualquier programa posible escrito por cualquier persona del planeta. Me pasa que cuando hablo de libertad e informática, la "gente grande" no entiende de lo que hablo y los pibes de menos de 20 simplemente no les importa de lo que hablo porque están acostumbrados a tener todo tan servido en bandeja, y se creen que siempre fue así. Seguro que creen que hace 15 años la gente ponía el nombre de una canción en Grooveshark y la escuchaba, y en ningún momento de su vida se plantearon qué pasaría si les cierran Grooveshark.

  • Fabio     02/01/2012 - 16:08:37

    ENTel dijo:

    Yo no se hasta que punto la nube es buena y hasta que punto es mala. En mi caso, me facilitó la vida, pero nunca dependo de la nube para nada, todo lo que está subido también está resguardado en mi máquina.

    Yo lo veo como una herramienta práctica, pero para depender de ella, no va, por los motivos nombrados por Fabio.


    claro, como herramienta es genial, como dependencia horrible ,imaginate que mañana cierra Facebook (no importa la improbabilidad actual) y todas tus fotos, tus recuerdos, todo está ahí, ni los contactos de la gente tenés, ¿para uqe guardar una agenda si ya lo tenía ahí? listo, perdiste todo.


    pitufo dijo:
    tienen que salir a la venta mini pcs que las enchufas y tenes todo: tu red social tus fotos tus mails. y listo. software , hardware y datos en tu casa.


    no es difícil crear tu propia nube en tu casa :D el tema es que tu mujer no te eche por dejar CPUs haciendo de servidor por toda la casa gastando una fortuna en electricidad :|

  • pitufo     02/01/2012 - 17:00:25

    si, tendría que ser un aparato que consuma poco, que se pueda bakupear facil. y que se actualice solo. facil de usar para q sea masivo.

  • pitufo     02/01/2012 - 17:23:35

    algo parecido a la fonera de Martin Varsasyk

  • Sycophant     02/01/2012 - 17:57:41

    \"no hay peor ciego que el que no quiere ver\"
    La conferencia de Cory Doctorow es alarmante y es bueno pensar en cosas que pueden llegar a pasar. Nadie regula el contenido de tu PC y eso es cierto, hay que tener cuidado con el malware o con los rootkits o todo aquel software que posee información sobre las cosas que tenemos en nuestras PC.

    Docotorow mencionó a Monsanto lo cual me recuerda que hay un documental que tengo colgado hace tiempo para ver que se llama \"El mundo según Monsanto\" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vunSiXG54zo

  • Alex Angelico     02/01/2012 - 19:30:32

    Diego dijo:

    Disculpame macho si no estoy de acuerdo con vos...
    No te quejes al pedo tratando de salvar al mundo, por que no sabes si el mundo quiere ser salvado. Es solo tu opinion...


    Diego, entiendo lo que decis y en algun punto estoy de acuerdo con tu opinion, pero creo que hay un problema de fondo que es real. Fijate un poco de que habla SOPA. Hay muchas propuestas similares. En Mexico (donde vivo) hay un senador que presiona con una ley donde, si desde tu ip se bajaron archivos pirateados, te pueden llamar a declarar. Y tene en cuenta que esto es SIN ORDEN JUDICIAL NI NADA PARECIDO. De hecho es un organismo publico el que puede hacerlo, ni siquiera la policia.
    Ahora, porque es tan facil para las corporaciones disqueras hacer que estas leyes salgan, y es tan dificil detener a un pedofilo, a un extorsionador, a un asesino si no hay mil pruebas, ordenes judiciales, etc??
    Obviamente existe una presion de los capitales en los politicos para conseguir lo que quieren .
    En otras palabras, Apple, Google, las cadenas Fox, Columbia Pictures, etc, hacen lo que quieren y los consumidores, QUE PAGAN SUS SERVICIOS, no tenemos derecho a queja.
    Creo que a esto se refiere Fabio. Es como eso de "ayer buscaban a los ... y no me preocupe porque yo no soy ..., pero ahora golpean a mi puerta"

  • pablodc     02/01/2012 - 19:51:21

    creo que se están confundiendo términos como nube de pedos aka \"la nube\" y software como servicio.
    Mencionas el tema de que Google cerró o esta cerrando Google Health, el problema ahí no es \"la nube\" sino que el servicio que almacenaba los datos en la nube es el que te esta jodiendo la vida.
    Si yo programo una aplicación web para haga uso de la nube como medio de almacenamiento pero a la vez publico el código fuente de dicha aplicación no veo que el modelo sea distinto del que graba, lee y modifica dato en un servidor cerrado.
    Particularmente el caso de Google Health los datos se pueden bajar en varios formatos, incluso en el de la competencia directa (Microsoft HealthVault o algo así), además de CSV, PDF, etc.
    Obviamente sería de gran ayuda que además publicaran la base de datos de medicamentos que usaban para cruzar la información y con eso tendríamos el 70% de lo que se necesita para armar un servicio similar.

    En fin, para mí la nube no es el peligro, el peligro es el código fuente cerrado.

  • Danbat     02/01/2012 - 23:06:59

    Diego dijo:

    Creanme... no son mas que DTs desde la tribuna...

    Y vos sos el idiota que se queja de la mala transmisión del partido. ¿Qué papel desempeñás en esta obra? Fabio, yo y muchos de los que acá opinamos vivimos de esto, trabajamos en este ambiente. No somos DTs en la tribuna, somos preparadores físicos, entrenadores, banderilleros, cortamos el pasto, arreglamos las butacas, mantenemos funcionando las luces y las cámaras. SABEMOS cómo funcionan las cosas, SABEMOS dónde el hilo es más fino y por eso nos sentamos a discutir esto, porque SABEMOS que tenemos que hacer algo antes que algún HdP se le ocurra cambiar las reglas del juego sin avisar o de pronto quiera desarmar la cancha porque ya no le gustó el negocio.

  • Danbat     02/01/2012 - 23:10:19

    pitufo dijo:

    tienen que salir a la venta mini pcs que las enchufas y tenes todo: tu red social tus fotos tus mails. y listo. software , hardware y datos en tu casa.

    Arduino www.arduino.cc

    pitufo dijo:
    si, tendría que ser un aparato que consuma poco, que se pueda bakupear facil. y que se actualice solo. facil de usar para q sea masivo.

    NAS http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage

  • Chulitita     03/01/2012 - 02:29:33

    Si bien trate de entender lo mas que pude, entiendo la situacion de emergencia a la que estariamos expuestos. Siempre me intereso este tema (el hechos de que unos pocos manejen lo que podes/debes hacer o no), pero solo desde el lado alimenticio. Mi enemigo: Monsanto (alguien creo que lo nombro). Desde hace unos años vengo informandome sobre lo que ocurre con esta empresa. Ahora: yo de esto no se nada. Ustedes que si saben... que se podria hacer al respecto?? :|

  • cipres     03/01/2012 - 08:39:31

    Gracias por la info.
    En parte estoy de acuerdo. De darse esto que dice el articulo y la opinión de varios, creo que habría otra revolución informática en puerta.

    Sycophant dijo:

    ...Docotorow mencionó a Monsanto lo cual me recuerda que hay un documental que tengo colgado hace tiempo para ver que se llama \"El mundo según Monsanto\" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vunSiXG54zo


    Tenkius... no lo conocia

    ABRAZO

  • dieguitofernandez     03/01/2012 - 14:12:58

    Fabio dijo:


    no es difícil crear tu propia nube en tu casa :D el tema es que tu mujer no te eche por dejar CPUs haciendo de servidor por toda la casa gastando una fortuna en electricidad :|


    Decile que estas esperando que cargue la ultima peli romantica en cuevana, y listo!

    No conozco nada realmente integrado y comodo de usar que permita armar una nube en casa, con servicios minimos de fotos, streaming de video, audio, backup... hay que resolverlo con muchas herramientas por separado no?
    Saludos!

  • bardiel84     03/01/2012 - 17:12:01

    El poder esta en la gente evitar estas cosas, pero muchas veces uno no hace diferencia, ej: hacerle un boycott a facebook, iplan, las cinematográficas, disqueras o el malo de turno.
    Tenes 20, 100 o miles de personas que no van a cine, no usan facebook, no consumen cultura que se desprenda de industrias o cambian de proveedor y después tenes el resto (millones) de la gente que le da paja quejarse, no puede vivir sin face, sin cine o para que si es imposible pelear contra el sistema.

    Y ahí esta el foco de toda la movida libre, donde la libertad no es bajarse el ultimo capitulo de fringe en HD, el día después de emitido, si no donde nosotros tenemos el control de nuestras cosas, que nuestros escritos, nuestras composiciones o toda produccion que hagamos pueda llegar a miles de personas y no es necesario que alguien te apalanque (previo paso por el tamiz del lo económicamente viable).
    También es una cuestión de ignorancia, es mas fácil ser manejado si no se entiende cual es problema.
    No digo que todos tengamos que saber programar o leer código, como para entender los millones de lineas que lleva un SO, pero que por lo menos podamos defendernos de las cosas que no nos convienen.
    Así como puteamos al mecánico, al vendedor, cuando nos quieren cagar o vender humo, lo mismo hacen las empresas y nosotros lo aceptamos sin chistar.
    Y ahí esta el problema, la comodidad, esos grilletes invisibles que nos regalan las empresas y nosotros nos ponemos sin darnos cuenta o aceptando el precio a pagar.

    Igual esto no pasa por usar o no facebook, twitter, identi.ca, la nube o lo que sea, pasa por tratar de defender nuestros derechos, no solo el mio, si no el del otro también, aunque no me guste lo que diga, piense o haga. Porque es una versión mas de las cosas, enriquece y da mas variedad a la red, las empresas quieren que su versión sea la única, la posta y nada mas lejos de la realidad, tuvieron su momento de gloria, ahora los usuarios nos toca pelear todo lo que nos quitaron y no quieren seguir quitando, para poder subsistir.

  • Cattel     04/01/2012 - 14:08:33

    Che, me diste miedo, me pueden pinchar el BIOS? Siempre hay que guardarse una Commodore 64 para poder chatear tranquilo con Morfeo.

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