Hello. Many of the older thinkpads were regarded as being peak for the ability to repair and easily see into them at both the hardware and software levels.
I was wondering, what PC, if any, is similar in this regard? Aside from building your own PC ofc. Any opinions are welcome. Thank you.
Then all you need is to network <insert worst computer EVER> through an OpenWRT router. No matter how bad the ring access is for Intel ME or AMD PSP or whatever else, all of it is stopped on your network router. No amount of spying paranoia or folklore bypasses that.
You can buy any computer in the world with this strategy/method, even something CIA or MI5 themselves manufactured.
If you are not a top secret journalist or activist talking to some high profile entity, or someone running a leaker or drug website on darknet, you are going to be just fine with Linux on a ThinkPad, with (Medium mode) uBO/Firefox, a good systemwide HOSTS ruleset, GUFW turned on and a decent DNS provider.
I should just add that even though I am one of the fiercest critics of USA and its entities, NSA does not get constant access to your keystrokes or other stuff. The amount of data transmission for it would be staggering and noticeable instantly, even if we assumed they hypothetically collected such text data, compressed it as TAR.GZIP and sent it. The main function of Intel ME is for enterprise management and remote control of computers by businesses.
So you just have to buy an openWRT router and it would stop it automatically or is this something you would have to be knowledgeable about how it looks in a system log to block it? Also, do you have to have some sort of custom modem as well or just the router being openwrt is enough?
You might either need to figure out the IP addresses from logs using whois, or there might already be some kind of list, or HOSTS ruleset made by someone to block Intel’s connections. But you need no hardware/software other than that.
My point was everyone keeps crying and moaning over Intel ME and AMD PSP minus ring capabilities every other day, and a solution as simple as this exists to defeat 3 letter spooks.