Cameron Camp
Images of jackbooted, militarized cops descending into dimly-lit basements where appliance techs slap grimy, roughshod parts of doubtful lineage together come to mind in the still-simmering fight – yes, it’s a fight – to allow people to work on the tech they already bought and own. You’d think this wouldn’t be a thing: If you buy a device, it’s yours, hopefully you won’t need to repair it or can have it easily repaired and the manufacturer can get on with making more new technology for when you’re ready for their next gizmo or gadget. Not so.
Step away from that screwdriver, back away from the
digital gizmo, you may be breaking the law. Want to fix a security issue because
the manufacturer won’t? That just might be criminal.
Aside from the pseudo-obvious dark imagery of
hardened criminals hastily etching out makeshift tattoos in a somewhat
non-sterile fashion in the prisons of the world being joined by a fresh batch of
fix-it smartphone techs from our malls, the tech industry, in some parts, is
arguing that if you lift a screwdriver or 3D print a replacement gear for the
drive on your printer that you risk doing time.
It’s part of a weird dystopian view of what the future
might look like, where you really only rent-with-license some new e-doodad and
then when it fails you buy new stuff and don’t ask questions.
Well, really, you re-rent the objects you already
“bought” via smarmy licensing from the manufacturer. And once they fail, you
merely rinse-and-repeat. It’s as if Phillip K. Dick met Wall Street, trying to
find the bleakest way to increase shareholder value.
But this fills the world with hordes e-junk in a
cycle that shows no promise of slowing. Except the world is fighting back.
Two years ago you bought a dishwasher; now there
are no parts to be had for simple, typical appliance repair items like water
pumps, drives, or gears. Sometimes they’re glued together so you have to chisel
them apart and hope for the best. Open a shop to help others and you’re doomed
– watch for the coppers to come lock up your ratchet sets if you step too far
into the seedy world of black-market repairs.
But the planet is fighting back; sometimes winning,
sometimes not so much.
· In Norway, a one-man repair shop lost
a multi-year legal battle against Apple. His
crime? Importing recycled iPhone screens to repair phones, which Apple claimed
were “counterfeits.”
· Farmers are learning how
to reverse engineer their own tractors so they
can perform repairs in the field, ranging from trading information in private
Ukrainian forums to downloading debugging
tools from a CalPoly student project.
· In New York City, independent Apple repairman Louis Rossman has testified
before government multiple times about the right to repair.
EU legislators think high-tech goods should have a 10-year service life with widely
available parts, tools and perhaps even repair documentation and are
spearheading laws to enforce this. Oh, the sacrilege, if you ask some
manufacturers; they say the EU shouldn’t meddle.
Pitting repairability
against security
While the right to repair seems like a classic
black-and-white situation pitting consumers against manufacturers, it is
actually a more nuanced discussion, particularly if the device in question is
meant to be attached to a network of some kind.
If so, there are several additional issues that
come into play: Any device that utilizes a network connection in some fashion
is, by definition, going to be exploitable over that connection.
As technology improves, flaws may be found in
cryptographic protocols (or in their implementations), digital signatures may
expire, and vulnerabilities may be found in operating systems or the
applications that run on top of them. It may be possible to engineer a device
with enough processing power, storage and other resources to last for ten
years’ worth of updates to fix these types of issues, but there is a larger
question of whether the device will still work well after a decade of updates
and security patches. And that’s ignoring any additional code required to
integrate with new standards, which still may cripple performance.
For IoT devices, these problems are manifest. These
types of devices are typically manufactured with the bare amount of computing
power to get the job done today, and rely heavily on the device manufacturer’s
cloud for management. Control of the device may be performed by an app on a
smart phone. All of these must not just continue to be maintained, but secured
as well. And with all of that comes an increasing drain on processing and
storage resources.
For devices powered by them, battery technology
becomes an issue as well: Rechargeable batteries have finite charge cycles and
as they degrade, so does their ability to store energy. This occurs even when
they are sitting on a shelf and not being used. Having to keep manufacturing
replacement batteries (and storing them in inventory) for a decade may cause an
increase in the amount of electronic waste of these types of devices, which can
be more difficult and hazardous to recycle than other types of components.
There’s still hope
So, how do we balance the right to repair with the
requirement to remain secure? The answer might not be to just allow for devices
to be repaired, but to be modular enough that they can be easily upgraded or
have various parts reused. This has been common with desktop and server
computers since they were introduced. Memory, expansion cards, storage and even
processors could be replaced over time as usage demands and requirements
change. This used to be true of laptops as well, although the gimmick of making
them thinner every year like smartphones and using glue and other
repair-unfriendly assembly methods is cause for concern. There are some hopeful
signs, though.
For example, in 2016, Google, which owned Motorola
at the time, announced Project Ara, a plan to make modular smartphones that could be upgraded in various
ways. No products ever shipped, but Motorola eventually released their Moto Z family, which could be expanded by snapping on various backplates
called Moto Mods. FairPhone is selling a modular platform, including smartphones you can
assemble yourself, and PINE64 has released a smartphone capable of running different versions of
Linux. A company called Framework has announced a modular laptop that can be upgraded and repaired,
although it is unclear at this time if they will release the technical
schematics needed to perform detailed troubleshooting.
While none of these products have achieved
mainstream fame, and represent less well-known vendors (with the exception of
Motorola), they do show that there is demand for electronic devices that are
repairable, recyclable and upgradeable.
Will it eventually become mainstream? That will be
driven by a combination of consumer sentiment and thresholds of infuriation.
Stuck in the middle of a field with your e-tractor? You might just find
yourself going rogue and reaching for the toolbox. And while we hope you don’t
wind up doing time, we also hope manufacturers will focus on the future of
innovation, not rearguard actions designed to thwart innovation,
experimentation and progress, all while making the devices less secure and
speeding their trajectory to the ever-bulging landfills in the name of bogus
progress.
