bargain

I wrote last time about my experience with a bad iPad mini keyboard. I talked a big game about dumping it in the ewaste box but it didn't actually make it there until yesterday. It's not coming back out.

Unfortunately, the matching iOS app 'Prompt' can't actually be physically thrown out so easily. The combination of poor keyboard, poor app, and beautiful iPad left me in actual tears for a moment yesterday. That's when my position on Apple vs. FBI changed totally.

I had been vaguely pro-Apple in the San Bernardino dust up. I thought that Apple had been too slow to adopt a real secure element and that they would wind up helping the FBI. It would then fall to them to never got caught in that situation again.

My new position is simple. Manufacturers shouldn't be made responsible for the programs or data in computers. Manufacturers should not be compelled to speak -- through programs or through generating non-repudiable signatures for another's programs. A consumer or a court can easily tell if an electronic device is this kind of computer. A computer allows the owner or user to load any program or data they choose without qualification or restriction. Computers have manuals, specifications, or program source codes that describe their operation. Period. iPhones and iPads are not computers.

A compound electronic device may contain a computer available to a user. Examples include computing systems comprising a kernel and user environments where the manufacturer restricts the ability of a user or owner to load new kernel programs or certain user programs. Here, the user environment may be protected. If the vendor restricts the loading of new kernel programs or data through digital signatures, through other technical measures, or through failure to furnish a manual, spec, or source then let them comply with arbitrarily fanciful orders for those portions of the system which are not a protected computer.

An AVR-based Arduino? That's a computer. A Commodore 64? That's a computer. A Thinkpad? That's not a computer. The Libreboot x200 (itself a remanufactured Thinkpad)? A computer! Today's Tivos? Not a computer. Today's smart fridges? Not computers. Essentially everything in the IoT? Throw it all under the bus.

If a company wants to sell you a walled garden -- then let it be known that there will be snakes. A company that actually respects your privacy will sell you a real computer.

Phones and telegraphs have been monitored almost since their invention but the specter of typewriter registration in Ceausescu's Romaina remains morally repugnant almost without reservation. Smartphones with signed firmwares are no different than telegraph lines. Real computers represent the typewriter and freedom.

I dare Congress to pass legislation forcing manufacturers to help with electronic devices. Provide an exception for true computers. Protect the right to build and sell true computers. Allow manufacturers to 'upgrade' devices to true computer status by publishing specifications and keys instead of complying with orders. Then I dare Apple and everyone else to build and sell us those computers.

Richard Stallman has had this part right all along. Who knew that a terrorism investigation, not a DRM lawsuit, would be the best test case in a generation?