Trusted computing is a logical impossibility unless the user doesn't control the hardware, which is why all attempts at it involve sneakily stealing hardware control away from him, be that in the form of cloud computing (other people's hardware) or sabotage (mandatory mystery chip that doesn't do what the user wants, making the computer no longer a general purpose computer; your scheme is this).
A "third party" that can be mindcontrolled into doing anything another party wants should obviously not be trusted. What part of "serves everyone" do you not understand? No shit it's not a general purpose computer, did you miss the part where I pointed out that putting this in consumer hardware was the worst possible application?
Your "only" requirement is a perfect tampering detector, and also a way of observing the construction of computers that is perfectly deception-proof
When you have the luxury of failing closed instead of open, this becomes far more feasible. You don't need to have perfect accuracy - deleting the key material on false positives is always an option. Likewise, you don't need a way to observe the construction of arbitrary computers, you need a way to observe specially-prepared construction processes for certain computers designed from the ground up to be transparent. These, too, can be conservative approximations (e.g. "Brad's elbow was covering it for a second, start over").
These design choices are possible precisely because it's not a general-purpose consumer computer. It's fine to throw away the keys if the temperature gets above a certain threshold, or an impact of a certain intensity is detected, or internal sonar senses a change, or the air pressure changes, or the internal atmosphere of the device changes, or electromagnetic radiation beyond a certain intensity is detected, or backup power is about to be lost, etc - the user just has to know to not trigger these conditions.
and a way to get the initial key on the device without someone covertly weakening or copying the one thing that'd instantly subvert the new trusted computing world order in favor of whoever pulls this feat off
The obvious solution is to use hardware-based RNG so that the key can be generated after the device is assembled, and the public key is sent outside after that. Also, compromising the key for one device compromises only that device: this is the entire point of having a
web of trust instead of a linked list.
This is complete science fiction, so enter the cop-out of "reasonably secure" protection. But then it suffices to silently compromise a few devices, which is easy.
The point of mentioning "can be reasonably assumed to be secure" is that any security mechanism that nobody has tried breaking can't be reasonably assumed to be secure. This is why I specifically wrote "reasonably assumed to be secure", not "assumed to be reasonably secure". AES256 is not "reasonably secure", it is
very secure, and this can be reasonably assumed after extensive effort has been given to breaking it.
And again, creating a falsified creation record requires that
every device upstream of it is compromised. If
a single person with an independent, uncompromised device shows up to record the creation of this device - which should be a public event - it can't be compromised without it being made known.
Enjoy the Microsoft™ SafeComputing™ chip, child.
To recap: in my previous post, I said that "Trusted Computing" being associated with proprietary black boxes shoved in consumer hardware to exert control over the user would cause people to recoil at the mention of the phrase.
You proceeded to go on about how akshyually trusted computing is always bad because if you put a
proprietary black box "mandatory mystery chip" in
consumer hardware a "general purpose computer" it
can be used to exert control over the user makes it so the user "doesn't control it anymore". To cap it all off, you conclude by directly comparing trusted computing to Microsoft.
Should I be exasperated by you immediately proving me correct, or reassured?
Open, transparent, and secure crafting of devices is Hard. Most people, even in the free software world, don't bother worrying about software bootstrapping, and that's
software. It also doesn't give special control to any particular party, which is one reason those with the financial and technical resources to create such devices aren't very interested in them, preferring instead to take the low-hanging fruit of doing as you say: sabotaging general-purpose computers with proprietary black boxes for the interests of third parties.
But I do believe it's possible. Disagree all you want, but don't toss the idea aside with the most shallow "it's exactly like what is already widespread" assumptions. Your pessimism bores me. Be pessimistic in creative, intelligent ways.