The Journal of History     Winter 2005    TABLE OF CONTENTS

The World's
Concerns

INTERNET PASSPORTS? For Internet 2?

INTERNET PASSPORTS?
TODAY'S ORWELLIAN SCARE: THE INTERNET AND YOUR COMPUTER GAVE YOU ANOTHER FORM OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND THOUGHT: TCPA* WOULD TAKE YOUR FREEDOM.

by Henk Ruyssenaars FPF-25 November 2004

Formerly the Soviet Union had similar 'permits' called 'Internal Passports,' with a residence permit stamp inside, the so called 'propiska',* to control the population and keep dissidents from the established policy at bay. [http://tinyurl.com/6lmje]

FEMA camps for people without IP's: http://tinyurl.com/6pt5h The following text was sent to me by a friend who happens to be a computer wizzard in the official world, and who was worried, too, about the development: "Here we will try to untangle the whole subject and concentrate on the core points. [Url. below]*

But, here is the technology: TCPA stands for 'Trusted Computing Platform Alliance.' For the technology we will speak from TCP (The trusted computing platform). This plans that every computer will have a TPM (Trusted Platform Module), also known as 'Fritz-Chip', built-in.

At later development stages, these functions will be directly included into CPUs, graphiccards, harddisks, soundcards, bios and so on.

This will secure that the computer is in a TCPA-conform state and that he checks that it's always in this state. This means: On the first level comes the hardware, on the second comes TCPA and then comes the user. The complete communication works with a 2048 bit strong encryption, so it's also secure enough to make it impossible to decrypt this in realtime for a longer time. This secures that the TCPA can prevent any unwanted software and hardware being implimented. The long term result will be that it will be impossible to use hardware and software that's not approved by the TCPA. Presumably there will be high costs to get this certification and that these would be too much for little and mid-range companies.

Therefore open-source and freeware would be condemned to die, because without such a certification the software will simply not work. In the long term only the big companies would survive and could control the market as they would like. Some could think that it should be possible to get around this security. But probably they would be proved wrong. Until now there are no such hardware-implemented security systems and actual security systems have to work offline. This would be changed with TCP.

The rights and licenses would be centrally managed by the TCPA (USA?). And as soon a violation is noticed, they will get notified. Read the chapter "The bills" to get an overview about the possible resulting consequences.

The companies: The TCPA was founded 1999 by Compaq, HP, IBM, Intel, and Microsoft. But in the meantime around 200 companies joined them. In the USA there's a plan. You will find Adobe, AMD, Fujitsu-Siemens, Gateway, Motorola, Samsung, Toshiba, and many other well known companies. IBM already sells first desktops and notebooks with integrated TPM. The bills: In the USA there's a planned bill, the so called CBDPTA (Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act). First it was called SSSCA (Security Systems Standards and Certification Act). The new name reads (implies something) much more harmless. Looks like the first name made it too easy to discover the purpose of this bill.

This bill plans to legally force secure (TCPA-conform) systems. So in the USA it would then not be allowed to buy or sell systems that are not TCPA-conform. Bypassing this law would be punished with up to 5 years of prision and up to a $500.000 fine. The same would apply for development of "open" software.

'Open' means that it would work on systems that are not TCPA-conform. Even if this bill would only be valid in the USA, it would have catastrophical effects worldwide. Because U.S. companies are not allowed to develop and sell "unsecure" software, others would have to jump onto the TCP-train, so they would give total control over themself to the TCPA (USA?), or they would have to live completely without software and harware from US-companies.

No Windows, Solaris, MacOS, Photoshop, Winamp or to say it short: The largest part of all software that's used on this planet would not be usable. The consequences: Thus you're able to determine the consequences for your own situation, we kept this section very general. But it should be easy to determine the resulting restrictions that would apply to you. [ANDEND]

* URL.: http://www.againsttcpa.com/what-is-tcpa.html
* The informational "self-determination isn't existing anymore," it's not possible to save, copy, create, program, ..., the data as you want. This applies for privates as for companies
* The free access to the IT/Software market is completely prevented for anyone except the big companies; the market as we know it today will get completely destroyed
* Restrictions in the usage of owned hardware would apply
* The liberty of opinion and the free speech on the internet would finally be eliminated
* The owner's rights while using IT-technologies is history.
* The national self-determination of the particular countries would be fully in the hands of the USA
* Probably the world would break into two digital parts (Countries that express against TCPA) If you now want to read some more in-depth about all this, you should take a look at Ross Anderson's detailed FAQ.
* URL.: http://www.againsttcpa.com/what-is-tcpa.html

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HR: It is thought - depending on the geopolitical development - that 'Internet 2' will be perfectioned, whereafter only people with an officially sanctioned 'IP' ('Internet permit/passport') will be allowed to use the new Web. All people who do not agree with 'Big Brother," and which for instance are not for the present global US military policy disaster - can forget about an 'IP'... Formerly Ronald Reagan's 'Evil Empire' the Soviet Union, had similar 'permits' called 'Internal Passports', with a residence permit stamp inside, the so called 'propiska',* to control the population and keep 'dissidents' at bay and in jail. Propiska-Url.: http://tinyurl.com/6lmje "Achtung! Your Passport Bitte" - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/3m29z FEMA camps for people without IP's: http://tinyurl.com/6pt5h
FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://tinyurl.com/6zwgu
Editor: Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/2ghoh
The Netherlands
FPF@Chello.nl
The Dutch author has this far worked abroad for 4 decades for international media, as a foreign correspondent, of which 10 years - also during Gulf War I - in the Arab World and the Middle East. Seeing worldwide that every bullet and every bomb breeds more terrorism!
(US Senator Hollings agrees: http://tinyurl.com/2ylmv)
"If you are not offending people who ought to be offended, you're doing something wrong."
http://www.journalism.sfsu.edu/www/pubs/gater/spring95/apr27/chom.htm
Help the troops come home ! We need them badly to fight our 'governments': http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/
HR

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