Re: https://firmwaresecurity.com/2017/11/07/tanenbaum-responds-to-intel-about-minix-based-me/
Andrew adds two more footnotes to his reply to Intel:
[…]Many people (including me) don’t like the idea of an all-powerful management engine in there at all (since it is a possible security hole and a dangerous idea in the first place), but that is Intel’s business decision and a separate issue from the code it runs.[…] I certainly hope Intel did thorough security hardening and testing before deploying the chip, since apparently an older version of MINIX was used.[…]
[…]If I had suspected they might be building a spy engine, I certainly wouldn’t have cooperated, even though all they wanted was reducing the memory footprint (= chip area for them). I think creating George Orwell’s 1984 is an extremely bad idea, even if Orwell was off by about 30 years. People should have complete control over their own computers, not Intel and not the government. In the U.S. the Fourth Amendment makes it very clear that the government is forbidden from searching anyone’s property without a search warrant. Many other countries have privacy laws that are in the same spirit. Putting a possible spy in every computer is a terrible development.[…]
Firmware Security 