As always people see the happy path down the middle of the forest, not the creatures waiting to leap out and eat them two steps down the line.
Once upon a time, I was a homeless teenager running from a cult. If not for software I wouldn't have gotten out of that.
WEI (and other such things) are mainly about regulating who is allowed to write software, and so the way I think about it is this: If WEI existed when I was a homeless teenager, I might be dead.
I do not think I would like your girlfriend very much if she said keeping "her" stuff working was more important than my life, although I could understand her not understanding how big of a deal it is when you talk abstractly about the "open nature of the web" without putting it into human terms;
The "open" part is really important to get across because it means anyone who has the ability to can contribute: Does such a high level academic with a strong mathematical and logical background understand what can be lost not just to industry, but to science itself when a church wants to name itself the arbiter of who can work?
No, it's about being able to prove that your device is secure. Attestation doesn't stop you from writing software for your device.
>if she said keeping "her" stuff working was more important than my life
Arguing that you would be dead if your viewpoint isn't correct is a bad argument.
>what can be lost not just to industry, but to science itself when a church wants to name itself the arbiter of who can work?
It would be a better analogy to say that "employers can run background checks on people who want to work for them." Because it is up to each website to choose which attestors they trust and the websites have the choice of doing whatever they want with information or not requiring attestation at all.
It’s about proving your device meets an unspecified standard. Today that standard would probably involve a signed browser binary and kernel verified by a hardware root of trust.
Tomorrow it could be “Please drink verification can.” or “Your social credit score is too low for you to use this feature.” or any other arbitrary criteria that gets cooked-up.
> Attestation doesn't stop you from writing software for your device.
Attestation means the metes and bounds of your computing experience are defined by a third party.
What you use your computer for today might not be permitted tomorrow. Look at the invasive software mechanisms that games use for “anti-cheat” if you want to see one possible eventuality.
This is “Right to Read” territory we’re walking into. We’re already there with phones because we ceded freedom for “security”. (“Phones aren’t computers.”, “I just want my phone to work.”, “I don’t want to remove malware from the phones of the oldsters in my life.” Blah. Blah. Blah.)
Now we’re going to do that with personal computers.
We’re getting what we deserve, so guess.
Neither of those require attestation.
>Look at the invasive software mechanisms that games use for “anti-cheat” if you want to see one possible eventuality.
A future where people can't cheat when playing with me is a positive direction to take computing.
>This is “Right to Read” territory we’re walking into.
I assume you are talking about "The Right to Read" by RMS. It is already illegal to redistribute ebooks if you don't have the rights to do so. We already live in that world. Unlike the essay as an industry we have chosen to focus on hardware based security instead of making debuggers illegal.