don't have time, chuck, to go into it more and don't really want to commit my comments to a public list at the moment, but here's what I had on file in addition to the FAQ.
The Big Secret
An exclusive first look at Microsoft¹s ambitious-and risky-plan to remake the personal computer to ensure security, privacy and intellectual property rights. Will you buy it?
By Steven Levy NEWSWEEK
July 1 issue ‹ In ancient Troy stood the Palladium, a statue of the goddess Athena. Legend has it that the safety of the city depended on that icon¹s preservation. Later the term came to mean a more generic safeguard.
HERE¹S SOMETHING THAT cries for a safeguard: the world of computer bits. An endless roster of security holes allows cyber-thieves to fill up their buffers with credit-card numbers and corporate secrets. It¹s easier to vandalize a Web site than to program a remote control.
Entertainment moguls boil in their hot tubs as movies and music are swapped, gratis, on the Internet. Consumers fret about the loss of privacy. And computer viruses proliferate and mutate faster than they can be named.
Computer security is enough of a worry that the software colossus Microsoft views it as a threat to its continued success: thus the apocalyptic Bill Gates memo in January calling for a ³Trustworthy Computing² jihad. What Gates did not specifically mention was Microsoft¹s hyperambitious long-range plan to literally change the architecture of PCs in order to address the concerns of security, privacy and intellectual property. The plan, revealed for the first time to NEWSWEEK, is... Palladium, and it¹s one of the riskiest ventures the company has ever attempted. Though Microsoft does not claim a panacea, the system is designed to dramatically improve our ability to control and protect personal and corporate information. Even more important, Palladium is intended to become a new platform for a host of yet-unimagined services to enable privacy, commerce and entertainment in the coming decades. ³This isn¹t just about solving problems, but expanding new realms of possibilities in the way people live and work with computers,² says product manager Mario Juarez.
Because its ultimate success depends on ubiquity, Palladium is either going to be a home run or a mortifying whiff. ³We have to ship 100 million of these before it really makes a difference,² says Microsoft vice president Will Poole. That¹s why the company can¹t do it without heavyweight partners. Chipmakers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices have signed on to produce special security chips that are integral to the system. ³It¹s a groundswell change,² says AMD¹s Geoffrey Strongin. ³A whole new class of processors not differentiated by speed, but security.² The next step is getting the likes of Dell, HP and IBM to remake their PCs to accommodate the system.
³It¹s one of the most technically complex things ever attempted on the PC,² says Gartner analyst Martin Reynolds. And the new additions will make your next computer a little more expensive. Will the added cost‹or a potential earlier-than-otherwise upgrade‹be worth it? Spend a day or two with the geeks implementing Palladium‹thrilled to be talking to a reporter about the project‹and you¹ll hear an enticing litany of potential uses.
* Tells you who you¹re dealing with‹and what they¹re doing.
Palladium is all about deciding what¹s trustworthy. It not only lets your computer know that you¹re you , but also can limit what arrives (and runs on) your computer, verifying where it comes from and who created it.
* Protects information. The system uses high-level encryption to ³seal² data so that snoops and thieves are thwarted. It also can protect the integrity of documents so that they can¹t be altered without your knowledge.
* Stops viruses and worms. Palladium won¹t run unauthorized programs, so viruses can¹t trash protected parts of your system.
* Cans spam. Eventually, commercial pitches for recycled printer cartridges and barnyard porn can be stopped before they hit your inbox‹while unsolicited mail that you might want to see can arrive if it has credentials that meet your standards.
* Safeguards privacy. With Palladium, it¹s possible not only to seal data on your own computer, but also to send it out to ³agents² who can distribute just the discreet pieces you want released to the proper people. Microsofties have nicknamed these services ³My Man.² If you apply for a loan, you¹d say to the lender, ³Get my details from My Man,² which, upon your authorization, would then provide your bank information, etc. Best part: Da Man can¹t read the information himself, and neither can a hacker who breaks into his system.
* Controls your information after you send it . Palladium is being offered to the studios and record labels as a way to distribute music and film with ³digital rights management² (DRM). This could allow users to exercise ³fair use² (like making personal copies of a CD) and publishers could at least start releasing works that cut a compromise between free and locked-down. But a more interesting possibility is that Palladium could help introduce DRM to business and just plain people. ³It¹s a funny thing,² says Bill Gates. ³We came at this thinking about music, but then we realized that e-mail and documents were far more interesting domains.² For instance, Palladium might allow you to send out e-mail so that no one (or only certain people) can copy it or forward it to others. Or you could create Word documents that could be read only in the next week. In all cases, it would be the user, not Microsoft, who sets these policies.
Some of these ideas aren¹t new‹they¹re part of the promise of public key cryptography, discovered 25 years back. Palladium is a dead-serious attempt to finally make it happen, with a secure basis and critical mass. But it didn¹t start that way. In 1997, Peter Biddle, a Microsoft manager who used to run a paintball arena, was the company¹s liason to the DVD-drive world. Naturally, he began to think of ways to address Hollywood¹s fear of digital copying. He hooked up with ¹ Softie researchers Paul England and John Manferdelli, and they set up a skunkworks operation, stealing time from their regular jobs to pursue a preposterously ambitious idea‹creating virtual vaults in Windows to protect information. They quickly understood that the problems of intellectual property were linked to problems of security and privacy.
They also realized that if they wanted to foil hackers and intruders, at least part of the system had to be embedded in silicon, not software. This made their task incredibly daunting. Not only would they have to build new secrecy functions into Windows (without messing up any programs that run on the current versions), but then they¹d have to convince the entire industry to, in effect, update the basic hardware setup of the PC.
Intel originally turned down the idea before eventually embracing it. AMD had already been thinking along similar lines, and eagerly signed on. Biddle¹s virtual team kept working, and in October 2001, it became a formal green-lighted project.
As now envisioned, Palladium will ship ³in a future version of Windows.² (Perhaps in the next big revision, due around 2004.) By then the special security chips will be rolling out of the fabs, and the computer makers‹salivating at an opportunity to sell more boxes‹will have motherboards to accommodate them. There will also be components that encrypt information as it moves from keyboard to computer (to prevent someone from wiretapping or altering what you type) and from computer to screen (to prevent someone from generating a phony output to your monitor that can trick you into OKing something you hadn¹t intended to). Only certain applications will access the part of Windows (nicknamed ³the nub²) that performs Palladium¹s functions with the help of the security chip‹everything else will work exactly the same.
The first adopters will probably be in financial services, health care and government‹places where security and privacy are mandated. Then will come big corporations, where information-technology managers will find it easier to control and protect their networks. (Some employees may bridle at the system¹s ability to ineluctably log their e-mail, Web browsing and even instant messages.) ³I have a hard time imagining that businesses wouldn¹t want this,² says Windows czar Jim Allchin.
Finally, when tens of millions of the units are in circulation, Microsoft expects a flood of Palladium-savvy applications and services to spring up‹that¹s when consumers will join the game.
None of this is a cinch. One hurdle is getting people to trust Microsoft . To diffuse the inevitable skepticism, the Redmondites have begun educational briefings of industry groups, security experts, government agencies and civil-liberties watchdogs. Early opinion makers are giving them the benefit of the doubt. ³I¹m willing to take a chance that the benefits are more than the potential downside,² says Dave Farber, a renowned Internet guru. ³But if they screw up, I¹ll squeal like a bloody pig.² Microsoft is also publishing the system¹s source code. ³We are trying to be transparent in all this,² says Allchin.
Others will note that the Windows-only Palladium will, at least in the short run, further bolster the Windows monopoly. In time, says Microsoft, Palladium will spread out. ³We don¹t blink at the thought of putting Palladium on your Palm... on the telephone, on your wristwatch,² says software architect Brian Willman.
And what if some government thinks that Palladium protects information too much? So far, the United States doesn¹t seem to have a problem, but less tolerant nations might insist on a ³back door² that would allow it to wiretap and search people¹s data. There would be problems in implementing this, um, feature.
Other potential snags: will Microsoft make it easy enough for people to use? Will someone make a well-publicized crack and destroy confidence off the bat? ³I firmly believe we will be shipping with bugs,² says Paul England. Don¹t expect wonders until version 2.0. Or 3.0. Ultimately, Palladium¹s future defies prediction. Boosting privacy, increasing control of one¹s own information and making computers more secure are obviously a plus. But there could be unintended consequences. What might be lost if billions of pieces of personal information were forever hidden? Would our ability to communicate or engage in free commerce be restrained if we have to prove our identity first? When Microsoft manages to get Palladium in our computers, the effects could indeed be profound. Let¹s hope that in setting the policies for its use, we keep in mind the key attribute of the woman embodied in the first Palladium. Athena was the goddess of wisdom.
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From: Vin McLellan <vin at shore.net> Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 15:51:21 -0400 To: Dave Farber <dave at farber.net> Subject: HP Engineer Speaks to TCPA Fears and Conspiracy Concerns
G'day Dave,
For IP, I attach two messages from the Perry Metzger's Cryptography mailing list.
The first is HP engineer Stefek Zaba's (unauthorized) reply to the firestorm of fear and concern that has arisen in online discussions about the emerging TCPA development efforts, including Palladium.
Zaba's comments specifically address Ross Anderson's concern that development work at HP on Trusted Linux implies (or illustrates) how the TCPA structure could be used to undercut GPL and open source Linux development and distribution. (For context, I also append the post in which Dr. Anderson raised his concern about HP, TCPA, and GPL.)
Guys like Stefek Zaba are a treasure in this sort of blinding windstorm.
I wish more companies would realize how potentially destructive these debates can be when only the cynics hold the stage. The cynics might be right, of course. (The decades-long betrayal of non-US customers who were supplied with weak crypto and insecure tech, so the US spooks could eavesdrop and crash systems at will, comes to mind. Ross Anderson's work on the protocol GCHQ offered for EC health records also pops up;-)
Nevertheless, Dave, the public debate needs need more people like Zaba and you, who can warn that while many technologies _can be_ perverted and made anti-social, anti-competitive, and unduly intrusive, they may also provide positive and necessary functions.
This TCPA debate could be important for our children's computing experience. It would be a far healthier discussion if more vendors would charter agents or employees to speak up in these debates -- ideally, those able to speak from their experience and values (and for themselves at least) -- without waiting three days for some committee in marketing to decide what "the company" should say.
Consider, by contrast, the credibility inherent in Zaba's message from the trenches. Like all organizations, corporations must be judged on what they do or try to do, rather than what their minions say -- but a little human perspective from the development team can minimize the hysteria and permit a reasonable discussion of check and balances, pros and cons.
Ross Anderson's disturbing paper on TCPA is at: http://www.ftp.cl.cam.ac.uk/ftp/users/rja14/toulouse.pdf
[From Anderson's website: "Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA), which claims to be making the next generation PC more secure, is actually making it more secure for the PC and software vendors rather than for the users. TCPA also poses a direct threat to the free and open source software community, for reasons that have to do with economics at least as much as technology."]
The website for the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA) is at: http://www.trustedpc.org/home/home.htm
Surete,
_Vin ----------
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20020627.html
JUNE 27, 2002 I Told You So Alas, a Couple of Bob's Dire Predictions Have Come True
By Robert X. Cringely
Just over three years ago I wrote a column titled "Cooking the Books: How Clever Accounting Techniques are Used to Make Internet Millionaires." It explained how telecom companies were using accounting tricks to create revenue where there really was none. Take another look at the column (it's among the links on the "I Like It" page), and think of Worldcom with its recently revealed $3.7 billion in hidden expenses. Then last August, I wrote a column titled "The Death of TCP/IP: Why the Age of Internet Innocence is Over." Take a look at that column, too, and think about Microsoft's just-revealed project called Palladium.
The end is near.
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