Fear, uncertainty, and doubt have an advantage over reason in the short term. It is natural to treat change as dangerous. When encountering a new person, business, or technology that is seeking your trust, it is normal to withhold or deny that trust at first, looking for some indication that it is merited first. The above slickly-produced infomercial is an excellent example of this.

The purpose of trusted computing is to insulate computer hardware and software vendors from liability when end-user information is compromised in some way. Toward this end, the TCPA encourages certain practices regarding interaction between processes within a system or between systems. By implementing these practices it is theoretically easier to make tools that share information responsibly.

FUD dictates that should be viewed as a power grab by greedy corporations that want to sneak into your house and steal your Cheez-its. Clearly by implementing a chip on your computer that uses 2048-bit encryption, some diabolical cabal will be hijacking your World of Warcraft guild chat and putting your company’s trade secrets up on eBay.

The Against TCPA group may be well-intentioned but their claims are unsupported and their arguments are largely an appeal to anti-corporatism. Due to the nearly invisible way that Internet traffic is already routed past various parties, through unknown hardware to practically-unknown destinations, all based upon paper-thin chains of trust with ominous names like DNS and BGP, it seems to me that this is much ado about very little indeed. If you’re concerned about shadowy figures reading your email and poking through your top-secret communications, you would be well-advised to encrypt it yourself, establish VPN tunnels through various foreign connections, and wear a tinfoil yarmulke under your hat.

Love the mascot, though.