SHE, the perverse and incredible daughter of DRM

Sarcasm ON

Given:

• The dedication of a small amount of bandwidth for regulatory use
• The dedication of a small amount of semiconductor real estate for regulatory use

We can enjoy the virtues of the Secure Hardware Environment:

• Far fewer security hassles in our everyday lives
  • Gone, the waiting at checkpoints!
  • Gone, the cameras visible everywhere!
• Less crime of all sorts, and far fewer false convictions
• Intellectual property seamlessly protected and ubiquitously profitable.
• Less paperwork and less visible bureaucracy!
• Transparent taxation: Income Tax and VAT largely replaced by BiT.
• Real-time downloadability of new regulatory regimes!
• Individually customized regulatory regimes.

Furthermore:

• Incremental deployment is feasible (no flag day necessary)
  • Ubiquity not needed to begin with
  • Deployment as the "progressive implementation of standards"
  • Deployment enforced through obsolescence

SHE fits the trajectory that economics and technical progress are following.
In one way or another almost every faction of society will demand the protection of SHE.
The infrastructure for such control will probably arrive in any case.

Sarcasm OFF (mostly)

• SHE could soak up about whatever power Moore's Law can provide.
• SHE would be evaded, subverted, corrupted, and exploited in a million different ways.
  • Imagine the Drug Wars, only much more "interesting".
  • Moonshine fabs (cf Rainbows End)
  • The golden age of trapdoors: "Who owns the trapdoors, owns the world."
• Sane planners will prevent SHE or mitigate its worst effects.
  • Problem for such planners: What to do when a natural right is no longer inherent in nature? (Example: privacy; example radical response: symmetric non-privacy as in David Brin's The Transparent Society.)
  • Problem for such planners: How to cope with the shortsighted self-interests of the myriad players (from Homeland Security to intellectual property owners), each more powerful at their focus than any general planners.