I have come across a advertising campaign of the LibreM computer recently and there looks to be a lot of support. I ignored the advertising campaign for a very long time until giving in after seeing it after every other Reddit post. The advertising that these guys are putting out has been exceptional and they have been the talk of the town for a couple of years on security related subreddits. However I have not seen any discussion here on a Bitcoin forum which I thought would be interested in discussing this "new" technology that has been brought to us.

However after reading about the project I am not convinced. "Purism" who are behind the LibreM computer are a company which develops computer software and hardware which they sell with their bold statements of respecting users privacy unlike other operating systems and hardware. These guys know how to campaign and have had multiple successful advertising campaigns which people are falling for.

I would like to share my input on the company and the statements that they are releasing and why you should not get a computer from Purism. For those that have not seen the computer its a computer which is claimed to have free open source software from top to bottom and at the same time respecting the customers privacy. This sounds good right? Finally someone is developing a product with privacy in mind. However Purism's statements are outright wrong and they are false advertising to their consumers.

First Purism claims that they are using coreboot which is a open source software which is one of the more secure booting softwares available on the market. Coreboot is a project that I support and think its a good project however Purism knows that this is a well respected software within the security and privacy market and claim that they use the software. However this is complete lies and deceitful claims as they are using a proprietary BIOS which requires INTEL addons to function which goes against their claims . This means they are already using one of the companies which are known to have a monopoly on the hardware industry of computers and are already falling into the hands of a massive honeypot. 

Intel ME is an example of the lack of privacy that Intel includes in all of its CPU's. Intel ME stands for  Intel’s Management Engine and is a threat to everyones privacy that uses their hardware. Intel's ME cannot be verified or read because it is an encrypted file on a hardware level that you can't access. This allows Intel ME to execute code on your machine that you can't verify.

A computer which is using INTEL software as a base should be discredited for being security and privacy concious completely. The only thing they have achieved is charging overpriced features for things which are gimmicky and provide no real security or privacy protection because the software could be compromised at its very core.

They do however provide a OS system which is open source called OpenOS however upon inspection this does not look to have the features of a Ubuntu system like Ubuntu or Debian. Its a more limited approach and does not provide any more security or privacy than either of these options. Whonix being the better option for privacy and its main competitor. In my opinion OpenOS does not have anything on Whonix and if you are at all concerned about privacy then you should be using Whonix.

If you look at the specs of the Librem15 they provide some very good hardware under the hood. Intel i7 processors, upto 32GB DDR4 ram, Intel HD Graphics 620, and a optional killswitch for a extra fee. I have already critised their approach of using INTEL so I shall move onto the killswitch which they offer for a optional amount added onto the core cost. Giving the idea that to get privacy you need to pay extra where as a computer which slogan is all about privacy then should the killswitch come with the base computer? They have another feature called the "Purism key" which I'm highly skepitical of. By their definition its a key that you can insert into the computer and instantly search your computer and applications. This sounds like a security flaw in itself. By their definition any attacker can access your computer via inserting this key into the computer.

My concerns with this is they are offering high end computers branding them as privacy based computers while still using some of the hardware which are known to execute unverifiable code on a machine level.

Are we ever going to have a company that provides 100% verifable hardware and code on a machine level? Is this something we can use in combination with the Blockchain? What are your thoughts?