> By this logic, should we not be outraged by 19th and 20th century genocide?
Well, no. I don't think you will actually find a real person living today that matches a real definition of "outrage" for genocides in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Discarding performative theatrics, you will find people who all agree it was bad... but they won't be literally outraged. The passing of time, and generations, has that affect.
Pretty sure Holocaust survivors and their immediate families, not to mention the scarcer immediate family members of Holocaust non-survivors, are still outraged about the Holocaust. I don't think that's performative theatrics.
Not the impression I've got. People come to terms with it - I'm not saying they would be wrong to still be outraged, but the human mind isn't built to keep that up for decades.
Intel vPro and similar systems centralize power over communication and record-keeping in a way that has historically been both necessary and sufficient to cause atrocities like the Holocaust, the Great Leap Forward, GULAG, and so on.
But, because of newly pervasive computer mediation of day-to-day interactions, these spyware systems potentially provide a degree of centralized social control that Stalin or Mao could never have dreamed of. Recent infringements on human rights in XUAR provide a preview of the resulting future. Essentialist explanations that attribute them to some unique depravity of the Chinese race are utterly implausible; they are due to the lack of effective checks and balances on state power.
Consequently we can expect the atrocities resulting from systems like vPro to be far worse than the Holocaust or any other historical events.
I cannot tell if you are arguing in good faith or if this is some very clever wit.
Comparing vPro to Stalin, Mao, the Holocaust and more is really not serving to forward your argument... particularly while you have an iPhone or Android device in your pocket, watch curated TV content on your Smart TV, and drive your modern car into the office where you use your Windows or OSX computer and ISP provided DNS.
This would definitely count in the "performative theatrics" category of any normal book. Why is this age so sensationalized? Words are becoming meaningless due to overuse, abuse and re-definition to fit convenient arguments...
>particularly while you have an iPhone or Android device in your pocket
- I don't.
>watch curated TV content on your Smart TV
- I watch media from physical discs on a TV with no network interface.
>and drive your modern car into the office
- I drive a car made before 2005.
>where you use your Windows or OSX computer
- None of my personal machines run any software developed by Microsoft or Apple.
>and ISP provided DNS.
- I do not.
Also, I have privacy expectations from my personal devices that I do not have of my workplace devices - privacy expectations that are threatened by ME/PSP.
You are either the Gray Man or you live in a cabin in the woods... or you're not quite as clever at disconnecting as you might think. If you use technology in 2022, it's reporting on you. It is that simple. And everyone, despite their best efforts, uses some technology.
These were contrived examples to highlight all the different mundane items in our daily lives that track and report on our behavior, habits, data, etc. Most of these we do not even consider as hostile devices or services... yet they are. In your example you buy DVD's... where did you get them? How did you pay for them? You were tracked and reported despite trying to be clever.
It is truly hard, next to impossible to operate in our society with total privacy, unfortunately.
This sidebar was brought on by someone bizarrely trying to connect IME first to the Holocaust, and then to Stalin and Mao, which I will never understand. IME isn't the only privacy hill to die on... and frankly, that hill already has too many bodies on it.
>If you use technology in 2022, it's reporting on you.
Categorically impossible statement to apply universally. I have several machines that do not have the physical hardware necessary for any kind of networking. I also have multiple machines that do not have ME fully functional. My most upstream local router, running open source firmware, has whitelist rules for outbound traffic and blocks by default. I also have detailed traffic analysis running 24/7 on my other routers, running different open source firmware. I regularly review for any traffic that I cannot definitively associate to my own activity, and I regularly mix and match the network route my devices take outbound to look for anomalies.
>In your example you buy DVD's... where did you get them? How did you pay for them?
As opposed to copying a friend's discs, or receiving them as gifts, both of which apply to a nonzero number of my movies and shows? What if I did buy them and paid in cash? Not cash received from an ATM or bank teller, of course, but cash received as payment from a customer at a farmer's market?
>IME isn't the only privacy hill to die on... and frankly, that hill already has too many bodies on it.
Privacy is somewhat like security in that you're never truly "done" implementing it. That's not an excuse not to strive for it. While it remains unproven that ME/PSP actually is a functional backdoor, there's no good reason to trust these subsystems. I have personally observed Ryzen-based systems attempting to send outbound traffic while the system was hibernating (before you ask, I will not reveal any metadata about this traffic publicly for obvious reasons.) I know I personally would gladly pay 3x MSRP for Ryzen chips without the PSP. I know many other people who would pay well above MSRP for modern Intel/AMD chips that do not have these subsystems. Market demand is there. The fact that neither major chip producer even offers the option to purchase chips without these subsystems should absolutely continue to arouse suspicion.
You are correct that there are many other issues like writing style analysis, timing analysis (including netflow metadata being sold by your ISP to Team Cymru), many entire threads could be filled with software privacy threats, etc, but again - that's not good justification to just throw your hands up and stop caring altogether. Privacy is an uphill battle in a losing war in today's world, but I for one will not stop fighting. I have a natural human right to privacy, not granted by any man, nor a million men calling themselves a government, and I will stop at nothing to exercise that right.
To your point, that insistence does push me closer and closer to the "cabin in the woods" lifestyle than a vast majority would be comfortable with.
I am not comparing vPro to Mao, and no reasonable person could construe my comment as comparing vPro to Mao.
I am comparing vPro (and similar hardware backdoors) to the totalitarian central government control established by the PRC in the early 01950s, in compliance with widely accepted Communist doctrine, which resulted in inevitable atrocities several years later — in this case, the Great Leap Forward, which was the worst famine in human history. Mao was far from unique among heads of totalitarian states in carrying out mass atrocities. Like hardware backdoors today, totalitarianism was new enough at the time that reasonable people could disagree about its likely effects, but in retrospect the causality is obvious.
I do not have an iPhone or Android device in my pocket (although I do carry one on special occasions), watch "curated" TV content on a "Smart TV", drive a modern car, or use [Microsoft] Windows or OSX. Furthermore, there is no basis for you to suspect that I do these things; you are attempting to drag HN down into the slime of Twitter-style "gotchas" instead of attempting to rise to the level of collaborative exploration of the truth.
Moreover, even if I did suffer these afflictions, it wouldn't make my argument invalid — even if it were not so wide of the mark, your inept attempt at a rebuttal is at best an argumentum ad hominem of the same sort as those who dismiss Noam Chomsky's criticism of US foreign policy on the basis that he pays US income tax.
I am disappointed in your total failure to engage in rational argument. You're arguing at the animal layer of vague emotional associations rather than reasoning about causes and effects. Please, try to do better.
(I do use ISP-provided DNS, which is a problem but not in the same category.)
Undoubtedly when Mao drove the Kuomintang out of the Mainland, there were people who "really fail[ed] to see how one could believe it rational" to fear that within a decade Mao would starve to death ten times as many innocent people as the Kuomintang had ever murdered, particularly since such a large democide had never happened before in history. Then, it happened.
I'm in no way conflating the impact of the two, I'm pointing out that the implication of the original comment "It's just too old for people to be outraged about still", is that people shouldn't be outraged at evil things solely because those evil things happened a long time ago.
The implication itself is ridiculous. Time does not make evil things less evil.
To suggest that I'm contrasting the impact of ME (not the same as vPro) with the holocaust is either blatantly missing the point or a deliberate, bad faith strawman.
The word "outrage" is problematic. It implies, by it's very definition, that the mere mention of these things brings people into a furry of uncontrollable anger.
I would wager people are abusing the word and changing it's meaning to sensationally signal displeasure or disappointment with historical events. Those are not the same.
Outrage has an emotional immediacy to it. It's really hard to be actually outraged by events that transpired 40 years ago, 100 year ago, centuries ago or more.
I assert there is no human alive today that is actually, really outraged by the Holocaust or any of the other atrocities mankind has perpetuated over it's history. Who would they be outraged with? Hitler - who has been dead for 77 years?
It would be quite emotionally immature to be literally outraged with any of this in a modern context...
This is a fair criticism. That said, I have a hard time believing that anyone was literally brought into an uncontrollable rage over ME even when we first found out about it. Additionally, nobody in the comment section appears to be in such a state.
Accordingly, I assumed that the top level comment was using "outrage" defined closer to the most scathing comments posted, perhaps as "unwilling to forget about, or accept".
We have no duty or obligation to forget about or accept the risks of unauditable, embedded microprocessors with full, undetectable access to onboard GbE, memory, main CPU registers, PCI devices etc. This subsystem poses extreme risk to privacy. The fact that is impossible to purchase new consumer-grade (not $1,000+ Power9) chips without this subsystem is consistent with what we would expect from an on-chip backdoor should one be proposed (or imposed) by US intelligence agencies, which have a lengthy history of rampant human rights abuses, a mission focused on violating privacy, a history of attempting to impose similar subsystems (clipper chip, MS Palladium), and who have a clear economic incentive to develop access that doesn't require them to keep playing the continual cat-and-mouse game of software exploit development and management.
I'm extremely skeptical of the intentions of anyone telling me that I should not be angry about the fact that there is an unauditable subsystem that heuristically matches almost everything needed for the MVP of a hypothetical hardware backdoor, that I cannot freely decide not to have bundled with new hardware, solely for the reason "it's existence has been known for close to a decade".
This top-level comment reeks of COINTELPRO-esque efforts to convince individuals to risk-accept a subsystem they have zero incentive to keep, but that intelligence agencies have massive incentive to retain, should it actually be a backdoor.
While it's a flawed philosophical/psychological model for reality, the seven stages of grief is quite applicable here. Why do people "get over" grief? Time...
Grief never actually goes away, but it lessens to the point where it no longer is emotionally painful to think about. Grief lessens after every thought has been thought, every word has been said, every emotion has been felt, over and over to the point where there's nothing left. Time heals all wounds, as it has been said.
The reason people are not feverously debating IME anymore is time. All of the arguments have been made... over and over. At this point, people are tired of the same things being said ad nauseam.
This is the same reason we see systemd-related comments downvoted and flagged into oblivion. People are tired of it...
So, while most of us agree IME is probably not something the average home user wants or needs, and IME is probably something that should be resisted... people are just not going to get worked up about it at the mere mention of IME anymore. That time passed... and therefore the word "outrage" is wildly inappropriate when applied here.
> Your implicit claim to possess superior emotional maturity
I do possess superior emotional maturity over those who wield the Holocaust as a tool in arguments about computer processors for internet points... yes.
> Holocaust survivors who remain outraged
I think your interpretation of "outrage" needs updating.
Those two things have disproportionate direct impact and can’t really be compared on the same level. But apples for apples, school educates students about genocide and not about the privacy considerations of backdoor chips.
I'm in no way conflating the impact of the two, I'm pointing out that the implication of the original comment "It's just too old for people to be outraged about still", is that people shouldn't be outraged at evil things solely because those evil things happened a long time ago.
The implication itself is ridiculous. Time does not make evil things less evil.
To suggest that I'm contrasting the impact of ME (not the same as vPro) with the holocaust is either blatantly missing my point (that the implication of the original comment is obviously completely false) or a deliberate, bad faith strawman.
