Re: Some legal trouble with TOR in France

[Dave Page <grimoire@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, May 14, 2006 at 01:34:51PM +0100, Tony wrote:

> So if for instance they take your disks away as per the French TOR node,
> then you could destroy your hardware key (wipe TPM module, destroy
> motherboard chipset or USB dongle) and they are not going to be reading
> anything, ever. Even if they do take the whole system away then they
> wont be able to login to access your data even if they can boot unless
> they have your password (and biometrics or USB token, etc.) 

Under the British "Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act", they would
simply confiscate the entire machine, demand any authentication tokens
required to access it, and lock you up if you refused to surrender them.
I believe similar laws exist in most EU jurisdictions now.

> Another advantage of this is that they can't easily trojan or root kit
> your OS at a low level - it would fail the signed code integrity checks
> and would not boot.

You're assuming that the police are not colluding with the DRM
manufacturers. If they have access to a signing key which the TPM
module will trust, they can put any trojan or rootkit they want on your
machine, assuming that Microsoft haven't done so already ;)

Remember, the point of restrictions management systems like TPM is that
Intel, Microsoft and other members of the TPM Alliance get to control
who has access to your computer, not you.

More reading: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/05/bitlocker.html

Dave
-- 
Dave Page <grimoire@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Jabber: grimoire@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx