[Battlemesh] Forced firmware lockdown in EU already passed

Mitar mitar at tnode.com
Mon Sep 7 17:55:45 UTC 2015


Hi!

This seems to make systems more expensive than everything on one chip
systems.

Also, the issue is that some people (HAM operators) do have rights to
transmit at higher power at some frequencies. By having locked hardware
you are preventing them from doing that.

You are also preventing that in the case of emergencies where everything
else fails and only your mesh network still operates you are unable to
increase power even if government gives you exception for that
exceptional situation.

Maybe controversial, but maybe easier way would be that WiFi APs could
transmit publicly information about scanning/surveying all WiFi APs
around them. From that information you could compute which APs are
transmitting over their allowed power. So instead of trying to regulate,
you could keep the current system where devices who are interfering
should be discovered and dealt with. But there are easy ways to find
those who are interfering once you have such data. So in some way APs
would keep each other in check.


Mitar

> Mitar:
>> Hi!
>>
>>> This is not that clear cut in EU: enforcement of Article 3 (3) list
>>> "essential requirements" is delegated to proposals of which equipment
>>> will affected by the EU Commission, and these proposals can be blocked
>>> either by the council or the parliament. Also in the preamble (19)
>>> states clearly that software verification should not be abused to
>>> prevent third party software. See below for quotes.
>>
>> But preamble is not a directive, no? And directive does not contain any
>> such language.
>>
>> Also, how do you see in practice that both Article 3 (3) and preamble
>> (19) would be possible? The only way I see it for a manufacturer to do
>> that is to accept firmware images signed by a key from EU Commission.
>> And then it leaves to EU Commission to decide which 3rd party software
>> is still compliant.
>>
>> The other options are just to prevent 3rd party firmware images. Or to
>> require binary blob drivers for WiFi. None of those we really want. So
>> how exactly do you see that the wording in current directive is not
>> problematic? How would you in an ideal world implement this in practice
>> for WiFi devices? If I understand you correctly, what you are saying is
>> that we should hope this applies only to SDRs and not WiFi?
>>
>>
>> Mitar
>>
> Hello,
> i want to cite an idea that somebody i know wrote to me:
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> Well, the idea of the RMSBOX that I discussed with RMS was to separate
> the (non-updateable) firmware of the WLAN from the main router logic / OS.
> Hence the design combination of a general-purpose embedded system plus
> (USB|pcie) WLAN stick / card.  The stick/card would have the non-free
> firmware, but only manage the WLAN chip with it, while the
> general-purpose system would be fully libre. So this is exactly also
> addressing the
> requirements of the EU directive.
> ----------------------------------------------
> 
> What do you think?
> Maybe now is somebody willing to help with the GNU recommendation?->
> https://wiki.c3d2.de/HardwareRecommendation
> 
> Cheers
> Demos
> 
> 
> 
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> 

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