Good God

[noahgibbs]

Senator/Songwriter Orrin Hatch proposes remotely destroying the computers of illegal music downloaders.

Comments

[queen-elvis.livejournal.com]

I picture Hatch gleefully pressing a big red button, and then some PC in Schenectady just explodes, leaving a red-faced, highly confused geek.
I suppose it's possible to do what he wants, but
a) it would break several federal laws
b) it would be evil
c) he's have a hell of a hard time recruiting a hacker who would want to do that.

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

C is easier than you'd think. He doesn't need somebody that's all that good. What he wants, other than keeping up with the latest security holes, isn't any harder than writing a virus. It also requires just about the same sensibilities.

One reason that the security community looks down on virus writers so much is that viruses, so far, have been written without any significant skill. Like, *all* viruses so far, at least the ones we've caught and examined.

So it appears that good programmers don't write viruses. Bad programmers do, and utterly Godlike programmers might, but we've never caught the results in the wild.

And Then Some...

[misternihil.livejournal.com]

I was about to send you a link to this story.
The thing that gets me is that the lawmakers are talking like sending any form of music over the internet is illegal. There are, indeed, provisions in the law for "making mix tapes," (limited personal, non-commercial use)if you purchased the music legally in the first place. The current climate seems to favor finding anybody who uses .mp3 files and "blowing up their computers."
Yay technophobia.

So....

[tigman.livejournal.com]

So would that mean the next step would be a chip in your car that if you started speeding you'd get a couple of warnings (like, say, a light on your dash that instead of saying "check engine" it would say "slow down") then the third time you go over the speed limit for more than 3 seconds your car would blow up! Can you imagine how that would affect commute times?

"Sorry honey, I'm going to be late. Traffic was light for a couple of miles and 3 cars exploded."

Re: So....

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

Yeah. The idea that you can randomly destroy the property of people who commit crimes...

Hm, wait. Nope, never mind, that's pretty much like existing drug legislation. For instance, your home can (technically) be seized and sold if you're accused of selling drugs out of it, without due process and without them having to prove anything. You wouldn't even be among the first people it had happened to.

Presumably if it went to court and you proved that you *weren't* selling drugs out of it, they'd at least have to pay you what they got for it at auction, but I'm not even sure of that.

Re: So....

[r-transpose-p.livejournal.com]

Actually I thought California already had several proposals to automatically shut down your car when it violated emissions standards. Some of these even involved GPS tracking.

Sadly I can't find the link through all the other chaffe of strange California vehicular legislation.

Re: So....

[r-transpose-p.livejournal.com]

oh yes

SENATE TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE         Bill No:  SB 2004
          Senator BETTY KARNETTE, Chair          Author:   speier
                                                 VERSION:  5/4/2000
          Analysis by: Randall Henry                          
          Fiscal:yes




          SUBJECT:

          Pursuit intervention termination management system.

not quite related, but
quite interesting anyway

Re: So....

[r-transpose-p.livejournal.com]

google cache of senate stuff

Re: So....

[r-transpose-p.livejournal.com]

The second link is actually really cool.

When air ionizes it becomes a conductor of electricity.

Normally this requires some large number of volts per inch for this to happen, and the ionization channel is somewhat random (this is the mechanism for lightning strikes, and those little sparks you get by scuffing your feet on the carpet)

but the proposed anti-vehicular weapon ionizes a channel in the air using a laser beam, so the ridiculous voltages of lightning strikes aren't required for sending voltages across long distances, and so the path of the current is relatively controllable.

Cool!

[dangerpudding.livejournal.com]

*sigh*

That could get ugly fast. How to they intend to remotely destroy the computers to begin with? Suspect I should read it, and will, eventually :)

Re:

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

Destroying hardware is relatively difficult. Making people reinstall windows (and last I checked they don't ship CDs any more with most new PCs), though... That's got potential, at least in a breaks-federal-law kinda way.

That would require exploiting security holes, but most PCs are going to have at least some of those...

But no, the article gives no real specifics. Senator Hatch was told by a couple of people that what he wanted was impossible, which (in the fully melodramatic sense) is true.

Strictly speaking

[jd5p.livejournal.com]

Senator Hatch was told by a couple of people that what he wanted was impossible, which (in the fully melodramatic sense) is true.

Not, strictly speaking, true.
If there is a BIOS level control for the fan speed on your processor or Video Card, it would be moderately trivial considering the amount of heat those suckers are pumping out now a days. P4's have a thermistor on the processor which throttles back the system when thermal death approaches but AMD systems don't, and while some motherboards implement a emergency shutdown in the event of a fan failure, that could be bypassed if they really wanted to.
Destroying hardware is difficult and there are numerous safeguards in place to prevent it.
I think the great safeguard to this happening is going to be that it is violently illegal, and technically unconstitutional. They would have to make this a special case to somehow bypass the due process clause of the constitution and write in several exceptions to existing federal anti-hacking statutes. While the government might try to do all of this I think the courts will tell them in no uncertain terms that they are crazy. The government also has a track record of passing patently unenforceable laws.

Wow that got long, wonder if I am trying to convince myself . . .

Re: Strictly speaking

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

Dunno, I know at least the Alphas had excellent safeguards against fan failure. Well, if shutting down the whole machine is an "excellent safeguard".

But that one wasn't even software-controlled. And of course it's entirely possible that modern AMDs and Intels are totally different.

[erasbernsteib.livejournal.com]

the part about this that pisses me off the most is it goes away from the whole "innocent until proven guilty" concept and it would the duties of the policy and the judicial system into a copyright holders hands. which is a horrible horrible thing.

Re:

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

The RIAA, naturally enough, was in favor of declaring illegal music downloaders to be terrorists. I wish I was making that up.

And as we've seen, that would certainly take away legal representation, several amendments ("speedy and public trial", "unreasonable search and seizure", right not to give evidence against oneself) and any other rights to due process they might otherwise have.

Presumably we're not planning on taking random music downloaders offshore and imprisoning them anonymously for months, though.

Even if the RIAA would be all for it.

[blk]

In further, slightly more appropriate development, there this story. Specifically, read the second to last paragraph.