Zlatan Todoric is the Chief of Technology at Purism, a social purpose corporation that manufactures the freedom-respecting laptop Librem and has recently reached its crowdfunding goal in order to develop a freedom-respecting phone. During the first European Data Ethics Conference , Zlatan spoke about secure hardware, free software, transparency and showed how Purism lives up to these values.
Firstly, Purism’s CTO pointed at the fact that having a secure hardware is the basis of security. He then presented Librem’s kill switch that simply physically cuts circuit at hardware level for Wireless & Bluetooth as well as for Camera & Microphone.
Further, Zlatan spoke about the importance of free software, especially in cases in which citizen’s data is handled. Similarly, he points that free software does not interfere with companies’ competitive advantage either.
Zlatan Todoric’s advice was simple: Don’t do data! If, he points, you really have to gather it, one has to make sure metadata is stripped off. The reason? No one googles “How many people ordered pizza today?“. If you choose not to do so, its probably because you want to monetize on it, sell it, abuse it. The way to have customers/users of your product is to develop a great product, not to collect data. If users’ data is used in developing the product, users should be paid for the work they are doing for the company. Moreover, Zlatan suggested transparency in collecting and handling data is crucial.
Purism lives up to all the points Zlatan made during his advice session. The kill switches, user friendliness and sandbox isolation. The last feature refers to the fact that all apps are isolated from each other so that if one gets compromised, the others are kept safe.
Watch Zlatan Todoric’s full presentation here.
Watch the rest of European Data Ethics Forum talks here.
