On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 5:17 AM, Alexander <[email protected]> wrote:
> My question henceforth is that if I made the purchase of a Thinkpad X200 > (which > for some bad luck can only be bought second hand, and makes trust even less > as the previous owner can have tampared with the system), can I "clean the > system of some of its evil spying and manipulation and criminalization > technology?" > On the bright side buying second hand means you won't be explicitly and directly supporting freedom-denying OEM's and chip makers. The same reasoning applies to Windows licenses. It is one thing to buy new hardware from an entity that is committed to free software and free hardware design, and a completely different matter to pay Lenovo and Intel for a laptop that wasn't meant to run with free software but achieved that very thing by a mix of luck and third-party work. You don't want your money to fund NSA partners, do you? Realistically speaking, the probability that a reseller is both knowledgeable and malicious is too low. Surveillance agencies have an easier time tampering systems from factory.
