The difference now is that Microsoft are saying they will only support machines which have these TPMs, and therefore they can credibly argue in a few years that the only secure PCs (and thus the only PCs that ISPs should allow online) are ones which can produce a remote attestation to prove they are running the latest OS updates (from an OS vendor that is approved by the government).
> If Microsoft wanted to prevent users from being able to run arbitrary applications, they could just ship an update to Windows that enforced signing requirements.
The trap hasn't been sprung yet, but those are the teeth, yes. Then say goodbye to Tor, E2E encrypted messengers, unapproved VPN apps, and bittorrent clients that don't check a Content ID database.
That's a reason to worry about Windows 11 requiring a TPM, rather than a reason to worry about Pluton specifically. But even so, I don't think it's an especially realistic one - outside extremely constrained setups, it's very hard to make remote attestation work in a way that gives you any meaningful guarantees (eg, simply forward the challenge on to a machine that is running the "approved" OS).
> The trap hasn't been sprung yet, but those are the teeth, yes.
Again, something they could just do today while zero people have Pluton.
If Microsoft want to lock-down the entire x86 market, they can do that now. They don't need to wait years for everyone to shift to new hardware that has Pluton in it.
I was imagining something like that would be possible (for people with enough tech knowledge), but it's good to have it confirmed, thank you. There would presumably be a cat-and-mouse game of the "approved" OS trying to detect if it was being co-opted into such a scheme.
> They don't need to wait years for everyone to shift to new hardware that has Pluton in it.
As you say, I'm more worried about Windows 11 than Pluton, but presumably the "importance" of Pluton is part of Microsoft's excuse for not supporting non-TPM hardware any more. Once Windows 10 is out of security support (for home users at least), it will be easier for Microsoft to claim that non-TPM Windows devices are de facto insecure.
Which only means that programs can choose to not service devices without TPM - things like Netflix/Streaming Services and online competitive games, although it might take 10 years with the amount of people that will be unable to upgrade to 11 or upgrade their computer to one with a tpm at all. With computers become more and more about browsing the web, and especially with the chip shortage, people aren't upgrading their hardware as often.
But those "programs" could include "an online check made by your ISP, mandated by your government". If your computer doesn't pass the check, it won't be allowed online. What good is a phone call if you're unable to speak?
> it might take 10 years
I think more like 5, although the government might start slowly, like only preventing non-TPM devices from accessing "sensitive" online services, e.g. banks or anything that requires a payment.
The next step would be connecting the "online check" with a biometric ID, enforced by the device. Every time you unlock your device, it would request from the government a random ID that is included in every packet sent, and those IDs would be tied to your legal identity in a government database.
Letting someone else use your device would be similar to letting someone else use your car, in that you are responsible for whatever is done while you are logged in, unless you report it stolen.
Please drop the hyperbole, there is already enough of an impedance mismatch here. We're talking about slow moving ecosystems, and social normalizing of new technological restrictions. The current locked boot mess has taken oven twenty years to develop since the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance was founded. The pace of change accelerates, but five years won't even make remote attestation available in browsers. I'd say it's at least 15 years until a significant number of websites would require it. Using it for network access control would take further technological development (probably on the corporate side), and then some kind of crisis to drive ISPs/governments to demand consumer implementation. It's worrying because it's a step on the slow monotonic authoritarian march, not because the sky is falling right now.
What if I had told you 5 years ago that in 2020, people in Western countries would be forbidden from leaving their homes without permission, and would have to show a digital pass on their phone to be allowed to go into shops?
The technology for remote attestation already exists, and it would take less than a year to roll out checks for it across all ISPs in a country. As you say, it would need some sort of crisis for a government to demand it, but an ill-intentioned government with an offensive cyber-war capability could manufacture that crisis tomorrow if it wanted.
We already have authoritarian Western nations like Poland allegedly using cyber-weapons against opposition politicians[0]. I don't think that claiming existing technology could be used in 5 years is a claim that "the sky is falling right now". The main thing holding back such a scheme is that it would force a lot of legitimate users offline, which is why I think 5 years should be enough time to make those affected users a small enough minority that a government could ignore them.
[0] https://www.euronews.com/2022/01/05/polish-watergate-tension...
Well I'm coming from a USian perspective, so that prediction wouldn't have come true. But really, trying to contain contagious disease is a societal response with longstanding precedent, and implementing a digital ID like that is technologically easy (at minimum, it's just showing fields from a database). If you had predicted these actions because of a pandemic, it would have been plausible.
Meanwhile if you had predicted similar digital passes in 2000 it would not have been immediately plausible because very few people were carrying around a computer in their pocket. That had to be developed first by private industry, wanted by the consumer market, and the idea of having "apps" for various facets of your life socially normalized, before it could come to pass.
> The technology for remote attestation already exists
What do you mean by technology ? Yes the concept exists, and yes some implementations exist, and yes some are in the hands of consumers. But I wouldn't say the "technology exists" for general web browsing, in that it's available for a single actor, even controlling both ends, to decide to start using remote attestation.
> The main thing holding back such a scheme is that it would force a lot of legitimate users offline
Yes that is one aspect. Another aspect is the lack of implementations for companies to use to start demanding its use. Another aspect is that there has been no application of it to network access control. Yet another aspect is that the government does not understand they have this lever to pull until the trail is blazed by industry. In Y2K authoritarian government went "find a way to stop bad communications on the Internet" and their underlings went "uhh pull the plug?". In Y2020 there are many companies selling carrier-scale TLS MITM and other DPI gear.
All of these things take time. As I said, it has been over 20 years since the TCPA was founded, and you can see where we are. You can directly translate your arguments here to arguments about secure boot in 2000, and yet governments in 2005 were not trying to prohibit computers without secure boot. We had to take a long roundabout trip through a new device type of phones/tablets (for RA this could be security keys) for it to become palatable.
Only now that the market has gotten there on its own would it be plausible for a government to prohibit any device that isn't locked down with secure boot. Even so, it wouldn't be currently advantageous for the more totalitarian countries to mandate this, since they do not fully control the device's manufacturers. That is another progression that will take time before it's ready to click into place.