Any code I didn’t write myself, from the ground up using no third party components, in a language I developed, ‘could’ possibly be abused in this way. Even then, do I have to also write the microcode in the chip as well, and supervise the fab? This extreme absolutist stance is completely non viable. I certainly don’t see how I could live life taking that level of extreme paranoid seriously, or how anyone could in an advanced technological society.
The whole point of laws and government is to outsource such concerns. That’s why free speech, the rule of law and democracy matter so much. Those are the essential freedoms he was talking about. Everything else is based on those, because with those you don’t need to trust the vendor, because your legal rights will be protected.
So sure, essential freedoms are exactly that, essential, but extending that to absurd lengths is fuzzy thinking that obscures what’s actually important by confusing it with things that aren’t practically attainable generally anyway.
Any code I didn’t write myself, from the ground up using no third party components, in a language I developed, ‘could’ possibly be abused in this way. Even then, do I have to also write the microcode in the chip as well, and supervise the fab? This extreme absolutist stance is completely non viable. I certainly don’t see how I could live life taking that level of extreme paranoid seriously, or how anyone could in an advanced technological society.
The whole point of laws and government is to outsource such concerns. That’s why free speech, the rule of law and democracy matter so much. Those are the essential freedoms he was talking about. Everything else is based on those, because with those you don’t need to trust the vendor, because your legal rights will be protected.
So sure, essential freedoms are exactly that, essential, but extending that to absurd lengths is fuzzy thinking that obscures what’s actually important by confusing it with things that aren’t practically attainable generally anyway.