Comment by gclawes
1 month ago
Worse, surveillance appliances. Highly likely we'll see mandatory client-side scanning apps in EU soon, and possibly Digital ID stuff in the UK.
Great opportunity for mandatory remote attestation and mandatory software.
That's definitely where things are heading I think. All of Google's changes point to getting ready for this.
The big tech companies are boiling the frog, trying to get us used to Linux just being an "app" we run on our licensed, not managed by us devices.
Google will point to the linux terminal app on Android and go "see, it's OK that we're making these sideloading changes - you can just run Linux (in a VM, on a device you don't have root on). WSL also gets us used to the idea that Linux is just an app.
Get ready for people to not see between the lines, adopt it, and then the rug will get pulled. We'll see hardware OEMs that lock boot loaders, no more alternative OS for you, or if you do manage to install another OS, you won't get to access any internet services because you won't pass the device attestation checks.
Yes. There is a potential future a year or two from now where your system will be required to prove firmware-upward that it is unmodified, and that you're licensed (and perhaps over-18 too), to access a huge percentage of websites.
All it will take is Cloudflare et al. offering it as a free option for every CDN customer and who wouldn't turn it on? Especially if the alternative is having to handle ID verification yourself, right?
Brazil already has a law on the books requiring online services and "terminal operating systems" to do age verification in a government approved manner.