[OLPC Security] Anti-theft and Anti-Sale ideas for Nepal

[Ivan Krstić]

Bryan Berry wrote:
> There are a lot of malnourished kids in Nepal's countryside.  If we give
> them XO's they will sell them immediately for food or as soon as food
> becomes short.  However hungry kids w/ out schooling, provided they
> don't starve, will grow up to be unskilled adults, perpetuating Nepal's
> cycle of poverty.  Is this an intractable problem?  Perhaps not.

Right, we're quite aware of this difficult social problem. Being a
social issue ipso facto renders it unsolvable by technical means alone;
I'm counting on social pressures here (by the teachers and to some
degree peers) to help make this an unpopular outcome.

> 1) If Nepali child's laptop is stolen, they report it as stolen and an
> oversight body adds the serial # to the online anti-theft registry. 
> When someone does use the stolen laptop to connect to the Internet, the
> laptop checks its own serial # against the online anti-theft registry. 
> Note: this is a only a slight modification to the P_THEFT protection

This is exactly how P_THEFT is already specified; normally we _also_
provide a lease expiry system.

> 2) We could hard code a national identifier into the laptop's MAC
> address.  The laptop could periodically check it's national identifier
> against it's Internet gateway.  If it is no longer in Nepal, say Bangkok
> or Delhi, it disables itself.

This is technically trivial, should a country request it, but has a
bunch of social implications. What if the kids go on a field trip, for
example?

> Perhaps community groups should be put
> in charge of reporting stolen laptops instead of teachers.

Another decision for the countries/regional authorities to make. From a
technical point of view, we can support almost any reporting structure.

Cheers,

-- 
Ivan Krstić <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D