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Machine ID
Machine ID
Posted Jul 5, 2006 1:19 UTC (Wed) by ccyoung (subscriber, #16340)Parent article: Interview: Jim Gettys (Part II)
While I am 200% behind the OLPC, what has bothered me the most is how the machines will preserve the anonymity of the user on one hand while being part of an ongoing, upgradable mesh on the other.
If, for example, censorial countries could trace comments back to the author, these kids (and their families) could be thrown into the teeth of the dragon. I remember how much we fought the idea of CPU ID and every Internet message stamped identifying the computer. This is much more frightening because of the innocence involved.
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Machine ID
Posted Jul 5, 2006 4:35 UTC (Wed) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]
It's good to be thinking about this issue, but the likely scenario isthat the same draconian government that might be interested in tracing
communications is also going to be the first purchaser of the hardware
and have complete control over the software installed on each device, as
well as over all intermediate networks.
If the Chinese government (as a purely hypothetical example) wants to be
able to monitor and trace the communications of machines it buys for
children in its schools, there will be little or nothing the project
designers can do to prevent it.