A nationwide firewall could always be bypassed (see: Russia, China, Iran), but what if they just went directly to the end user device and add a chip that constantly scans for anti-regime keywords? Especially when there is “AI” that could be embedded to just do basic OCR and close the browser when such “prohibited items” are detected.

Maybe for the aforementioned countries, its harder to create their own chips.

But I think an authoritarian USA definitely could.

Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, Apple Silicon, are all in the US; Couldn’t the US government just order those companies to add such “censorship chip” to devices sold in the US? Checks and balances seems to be not really a thing anymore…

This way, no amount of “VPN” is gonna work. The censorship chip is gonna block any negative mentions of trump. And with the US’s cooperation, Russia, China, Iran could also acheive the same in their jurisdictions.

Am I just worrying to much.

Is a “censorship chip” even possible?

  • barryamelton@lemmy.world
    8·
    2 days ago

    There’s a reason Digital Rights Management techonologies are loved by corpofascists; control over the full communication channel, from file source, to OS kernel (TPM modules, trusted computing, signed OS images via UEFI), to transmission protocol, to physical channel (hdmi) to screen de rendering in the final device.

    Once the tooling is laid out and people are forced into not owning their devices, nor being able to copy, nor consume media that hasn’t been cryptographically signed and approved, then it’s all fair game.

    There’s ways to ensure digital rights and reduce privacy that don’t need forcing people to not own any part of the communication channel whatsoever (privacy is a UX problem, give people an easy way to consume media and they will pay for it).

    It’s also why they are also scared of the “analog hole” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole) that they try for people to self-censor.

    Edit: I kept scrolling through Lemmy to find this thread, were Cory Doctorov explains how DMCA enables control from corporations: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1021871/ffeed46818908c91/