Harris-Walz / Dems

The issue is:
1) Embedded devices that run Windows run the same Windows as your regular PC, possibly without any services being turned off even. So if base Windows is modified, those will be too.
2) Airgapped devices can't go online to verify every time you log in, and if it's built into the -base operating system- then it doens't matter if anyone cares if its enforced.

Remember, this is aimed at the OS makers themselves! Not the hardware. And if they allow you to bypass it by those above methods, people will, and I fully expect that will be factored in whatever is built into these main OSes.

Secondly, as far as implementation, from what I was reading Congress is being very general and washing their hands of it. The bill is written so that it will go into force 1 year after assignment and requires the appropriate regulation agency to determine how to implement and enforce it - and I'm sure we all trust Trump's FTC will do this properly, right?

Really hoping this does die in committee, but with all the pushes lately on the state side too, I'm not counting on it.

So, uh, someone pointed out that since electronic voting machines have OSes, this could be even worse than it already sounds.

There's so many old computers out there that technically were made to be general purpose computers and theoretically can connect to the internet even if nothing works, so they would be caught in this bill's wording, but are still being used for actual work and can't just be replaced.

There is no way to implement this bill as worded without causing chaos. Wall Street will scream louder than Facebook and this will go away.

And that's without the enormous potential for malicious compliance on the part of the regulation writers.

FOSS devs will just move everything overseas where this regulation can't touch them. Contributing to a FOSS project isn't the same thing as distributing it. Good luck getting a foreign power to enforce the fines this bill would implement. It will just hurt software development in the US(and other countries that decide to implement similar stupid laws). The bad part is that the bios could, under their terms, be considered an OS....

Wouldn't this also make literally everything (including what the government uses) far less secure due to the additional checks with outside verification?
Especially if they require it for things that aren't supposed to be connected to the internet at all.

Though, considering that the ID verification system that the IRS and Social Security already use isn't actually run by the government itself, I guess we already know they don't care about that.

They might care. The IRS and Social Security probably don't run that system themselves because their computers can't do it.

And it's not even their fault that they don't upgrade. They have decades and decades and decades of records that are probably in some proprietary format that Microsoft Office can't read. A lot of companies are in that same boat, and this bill would ban their computers.

Hey remember when everyone got their panties in a twist because some Republican judge in Virginia said the referendum that passed to redistrict Virginia to put some more Dem seats in the house was null and void? Yeah turns out, not so null and void.


Ironbite-boom