EU to legislate on trusted computing?
Posted by Ken Y-N on July 15th, 2008 at 02:13pm
On the Pan European eParticipation Net blog I read an interesting post from Bengt Feil that cites a PDF document from Laquadrature.net saying thus:
… it may be that the law would allow the Commission to “impose technical standards on content filtering and monitoring computing so called ‘trusted computing’. The Commission would be able to give the concerned by these regulation recommendations following a quick and undemocratic procedure, at the request of any national regulation authority (ARCEP, CSA, HADOPI in France, OFCOM in the UK, PTS in Sweden).”
I’m quite puzzled by this statement. Trusted computing is not directly related to filtering and monitoring, which implies a service provider function. You could, of course, achieve filtering by identifying a client through a Trusted Network Connect-based protocol, but that’s just acting as an enabling technology.
However, it is a well-written argument (not that I agree with it, of course!) and it does help me understand the other side better. Read the full story on Pep-Net, Pan European eParticipation Net, here.
1 Comment for EU to legislate on trusted computing?
1. Bengt Feil | July 16th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Hi Ken,
I totally agree with you that trusted computing can be used for many possitive purposes. But personal privacy is a delicate good which has to be protected. The suggested law opens up the possiblity to use monitoring technics at the ISP level which could be a serious thread. On the other hand privacy and trust can be combined as we can see with for example PGP.
Bengt
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