[liberationtech] Chromebooks for Risky Situations?

[Nadim Kobeissi]

On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 5:16 PM, Jacob Appelbaum <jacob at appelbaum.net> wrote:

>
>
> This is hilarious.
>
> I would *never* use a laptop that lacks a way to protect all your
> traffic (eg: VPN/Tor/SSH tunnel/etc) in a place with serious
> surveillance as an at risk person. Not only because the remote systems
> will have your exact geographic location and because a lack of anonymity
> allows for targeted attacks, but also because the local network is well
> known to be seriously hostile!
>
>
Thankfully, while Chrome does not support better solutions (such as Tor),
it does in fact support VPN connections:
http://support.google.com/chromeos/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1282338


>
>

> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 12:15 PM, Nadim Kobeissi <nadim at nadim.cc> wrote:
> >
> >> The biggest (and very important) difference between Linux and
> Chromebooks
> >> is the hugely smaller attack surface.
> >>
> >>
> >> NK
> >>
> >>
> >> On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 2:36 PM, Brian Conley <brianc at smallworldnews.tv
> >wrote:
> >>
> >>> Andreas,
> >>>
> >>> Plenty of Syrians do have internet access, and use it on a regular
> basis.
> >>>
> >>> Also, lack of appropriateness for one use-case doesn't necessitate lack
> >>> of appropriateness across the board.
> >>>
> >>> Linux is a great solution for many use cases, but as has been
> elaborated,
> >>> quite a terrible one for many others.
> >>>
> >>> Brian
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 7:44 AM, Andreas Bader <noergelpizza at hotmail.de
> >wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> On 02/06/2013 04:24 PM, Tom Ritter wrote:
> >>>>> Nadim, I'm with you.  I'm not sure it's the perfect solution for
> >>>>> everyone, but like Nathan said, if you already trust Google, I think
> >>>>> it's a good option.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On 6 February 2013 07:12, Andreas Bader <noergelpizza at hotmail.de>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>>> Why don't you use an old thinkpad or something with Linux, you have
> >>>> the
> >>>>>> same price like a Chromebook but more control over the system. And
> you
> >>>>>> don't depend on the 3G and Wifi net.
> >>>>> We started with the notion of Linux, and we were attracted to
> >>>>> Chromebooks for a bunch of reasons.  Going back to Linux loses all
> the
> >>>>> things we were attracted to.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> - ChromeOS's attack surface is infinitely smaller than with Linux
> >>>>> - The architecture of ChromeOS is different from Linux - process
> >>>>> separation through SOP, as opposed to no process separation at all
> >>>>> - ChromeOS was *designed* to have you logout, and hand the device
> over
> >>>>> to someone else to login, and get no access to your stuff.  Extreme
> >>>>> Hardware attacks aside, it works pretty well.
> >>>>> - ChromeOS's update mechanism is automatic, transparent, and
> basically
> >>>>> foolproof.  Having bricked Ubuntu and Gentoo systems, the same is not
> >>>>> true of Linux.
> >>>>> - Verified Boot, automatic FDE, tamper-resistant hardware
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Something I'm curious about is, if any less-popular device became
> >>>>> popular amoung the activist community - would the government view is
> >>>>> as an indicator of interest?  Just like they block Tor, would they
> >>>>> block Chromebooks?  It'd have to get pretty darn popular first
> though.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> -tom
> >>>>> --
> >>>>>
> >>>> But you can't use it for political activists e.g. in Syria because of
> >>>> its dependence on the internet connection. This fact is authoritative.
> >>>> For Europe and USA and so on it might be a good solution.
> >>>> --
> >>>> Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at:
> >>>> https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Brian Conley
> >>>
> >>> Director, Small World News
> >>>
> >>> http://smallworldnews.tv
> >>>
> >>> m: 646.285.2046
> >>>
> >>> Skype: brianjoelconley
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at:
> >>> https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
> >>>
> >>
> >>
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> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
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>
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