In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Arno Wagner wrote in part:
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc wrote:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/06/2132247
The chip is in fact designed to lock the computer against the
owner. Yes, locks that are designed to protect the computer
against it's owner will also prevent outside attackers from
doing things that the owner himself is forbidden to do. However
that is incidental. A hostile Trusted Computing system trying to
lock computers against their owners is fundamentally different
than a system designed to secure computers for the owner.


This is very old news and well known in the academic IT security
community. It is also the main counterargument to this hardware.

From the refusal to give the user control at need, I deduce that
this chip is indeed primarily targetted at taking control away from
the user, and that protecting against external threats is only a
secondary goal, or maybe just somethign invented by marketing.

Still important to explain this to people until this
technological atrocity goes away.


While I don't encourage complacency, it will --
just like the Intel CPU Serial Number was a flop.

A few content providers have always tried to increase their
control over their customers. Starting with trying to
licence paper books. Rapacious. While some have accepted
the restrictions, enough have always rejected them to make it
an economically losing proposition for the content providers.

However, there is no guarantee this will always be the case.
TiVo is a counter-example.


-- Robert