[cap-talk] Correlating Bitfrost with Threats

[James A. Donald]

     --
Stiegler, Marc D wrote:
 > -- And I am also confident (though I cannot prove,
 > except with historical anecdotes) that this system
 > will work less well than a localized system for
 > preventing theft. If a child loses his laptop, if the
 > shutdown authority is hundreds of miles away, how many
 > layers of administrative bureaucracy will the
 > villagers have to breached (or worse, how many will
 > they have to bribe) before the lease shutdown system
 > is activated? How many villagers will just throw up
 > their hands and say, good luck to the new user --
 > after all, the incentive to fight a bureaucracy to
 > shut down the missing computer is almost nonexistent.
 > Whether it is shut down or not, the villagers are
 > never going to see it again anyway, the only benefit
 > goes to other people in other villages who might not
 > see their own laptops stolen. The system creates such
 > a large gulf between victim and correctional
 > mechanism, it is hard to imagine it working well.

The villagers have no incentive to report a missing
computer, and it is unlikely they will do so.

The intent is that if the central authority discovers
computers are missing, it will shut them down, or if the
villagers are just not playing footsie with the local
government, it will shut them down.  This is not to
prevent computers from being stolen from students and
teachers, but to prevent them from being sold by
students and teachers, or used for unauthorized purposes
by students and teachers. The central authority will
audit the local school from time to time, and if the
computers are missing, will threaten to shut them down.

Again, if someone wants a computer to do with what they
will, rather than what someone else wills, they should
@#$%^&* buy their own computer.  Government never gives
anything away.  There are always strings attached.


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          James A. Donald
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