In fact the real motivation behind the deal is an initiative to embed more security in hardware. Intel confidently believes that McAfee’s security technology will help create "hardware-enhanced security."

Given that Intel already have their TXT technology and implement DRTM, I cannot see this one myself. However, thinking a bit more, Intel are trying to get into the mobile and embedded world, and there not just a hardware root of trust is needed, but also runtime protection – I wonder if that’s what Intel see, McAfee providing software and firmware to make jailbreaking difficult or impossible?

Finally, David Lacey makes this suggestion:

So hardware security is certainly coming our way, though it might not take the form initially suggested by an Intel/McAfee merger. In fact, a smarter and cheaper option for a chip manufacturer might be to buy Wave Systems, a security vendor specializing in hardware based trusted computing solutions.

I’d describe Wave as "specialising in software for managing hardware-based trusted computing", but it’s a good point that Wave Systems would make a sensible investment for a chip manufacturer.

He makes this point:

Trusted computing is a seductive idea. You protect the hardware so that nothing bad can run on it. But think about this. If you stop bad things, you have to allow good things. Problem is, it’s not you (the user) but them (the trusted computing supplier) that defines what is good and what is bad.

That is almost correct, covering an area I’ve been looking at recently about who trusts who, and what does trust in fact mean, but it is also rather wrong in that it is (usually) the TPM Owner that defines what is good or bad; in a typical home situation the owner will be you the user, although in a corporate environment it is probably the IT department, but since the company owns your hardware that’s to be expected.

Acquisition enables a combination of security software and hardware from one company to ultimately better protect consumers, corporations and governments as billions of devices – and the server and cloud networks that manage them – go online.

Cloud security is getting more and more important these days, so it will be interesting to see what the merger can bring to the Trusted Computing world.

Lifelong free software activist Richard Stallman

Richard Stallman believes in free software and freedom for source code, but he doesn’t believe in the freedom for developers to choose not to make their source code free.

The reason most companies restrict those freedoms is because, in their assessment, there is more money to be made if their own freedom and control over devices is maximised.

That’s capitalism for you.

Software developers routinely leave "back doors" in their products. A good example is RIM’s recent agreement with the Saudi government to make the encrypted communications of BlackBerry users accessible for surveillance.

No, RIM does not have a backdoor in their encryption – they are apparently relocating the encryption hub for Saudi Arabia to Saudi Arabia.

Microsoft, in co-operation with hardware manufacturers like Intel, has included a "trusted computing" system ("treacherous computing" to Stallman) in Windows 7, which gives them the power to interfere with users’ systems remotely.

Perhaps I should design a Free Software vocabulary for Buzzword Bingo – I think the paragraph above would win the game. Oh, and the implementation of a TPM can be Open Sourced, even under the GPL 2.0 license, I believe.

Opening up the source code of software like Windows, RIM’s BlackBerry OS, or Apple’s OS would enable the online community of programmers (real "hackers") to examine it and expose unfree elements.

What? I thought the argument for open source OSes was to find critical bugs, not to do a witch hunt for proprietary code.

This would not compromise a product’s profitability – most people wouldn’t have the knowledge or inclination to spend hours compiling source code into a usable program.

Hint – only one person needs to compile it, then everyone can just download it.

Making source codes available would not only be a safeguard for users, but hasten the end of software patents.

I don’t like software patents myself, but having source code available does not affect software patents, as a patent by definition is open for examination.

The best example of this is Apple’s ongoing lawsuit against competing smartphone manufacturer HTC based on its patents – including "unlocking a device by performing gestures on an unlock image" – something so obvious and fundamental that success in the suit would effectively give Apple a monopoly.

I’ve not examined the Apple patents in detail, but a workaround would be a software or hardware push-button instead of a gesture, hardly enough to give Apple a monopoly.

What needs to be done to get more people to adopt free software? People need to start evangelising

If there’s one thing I never see online, it’s a free software evangelist.

Thankfully, the majority of the commenters, including free software supporters, give the article the thumbs down.

I’d love one of them for my corporate network so when I go on business trips I don’t need to carry two notebook computers, instead I can just plug the memory stick into my personal netbook.

My initial thought is that this sounds pretty useless, but there’s many use cases. An obvious one is for thin clients, where after someone finishes a session all trace of the user needs to be wiped. A second use case is one I read about recently where used photocopiers from eBay were found to have documents left on the hard drive drive that is present inside many modern copying devices.

I’ve not read the reports myself yet as you need to register with Gartner to download them…

To whet your appetite, first there is the TCG’s press release describing how the NSA’s High Assurance Platform (HAP) uses TCG standards and what sorts of presentation TCG member companies will be making, and second there is a post on the official TCG blog describing in more detail who will be talking.

It sounds like an essential conference for anyone looking at providing Trusted Computing to the US Government.

It’s an interesting and detailed reference article, and I’ve added the blog to my reading list.