"Trust Me, I'm a Computer": Trusted Computing and the Law between Liability and Responsibility

This paper argues that commercial service providers and software vendors enjoy the biggest commercial benefits of the internet and therefore giving them the onus to create a secure internet seems an equitable suggestion, keenly taken on by some governments. Trusted Computing (TC) can be seen as a first response to this insight where software companies take on the responsibility for the internet infrastructure. The question remains whether the focus on cybercrime is potentially misleading, with some of the most serious legal issues for the new technology arising in the field of cyberterrorism and cyberwarfare where ‘too secure’ structures can hinder the efforts of the very same governments that otherwise promote online security. Anomalies and problems like these are expressions of a more fundamental paradigmatic shift of power and responsibility away from governments to the private sector, a shift that needs a much more fundamental adjustment of legal rules and regulations than commonly anticipated.