The Trusted Computing Platform Alliance has released a list of reasons to put their cop-chips in mobile phones. The list consists of ways that mobile carriers can used these chips to restrict their customers, or ways that the chips can be used to accomplish the same thing that exsiting phone-security technology does. My cow-orker Seth Schoen took them apart in this VNUnet article:
"This enables the carriers to further control their end users," Seth Schoen, staff technologist with the organisation, told vnunet.com. "Cellphones are already a disappointment to users."
He insisted that it is the business models used by mobile operators that determine what users can do with their devices, rather than technology. Schoen predicted that the security technology will only worsen these limitations.
Many of the user cases that the TCG presented can be looked at from two different angles, according to Schoen.
A secure Sim-lock, for instance, is designed to render the device useless to a thief after the operator has disabled the account. But it will also prevent the user from switching to a competing operator.
(via /.)
