> I have become convinced that this “principle of least privilege” is fundamentally wrong. Minimizing privilege might reduce the damage done by some security holes but almost never fixes the holes. Minimizing privilege is not the same as minimizing the amount of trusted code, does not have the same benefits as minimizing the amount of trusted code, and does not move us any closer to a secure computer system.
By "does not move us any closer" I don't believe he wants us to do it at all.
Then take a look at § 5.1 of the paper which gives a clearer example with which to draw the distinction.
Eliminating trusted code is what you're doing by decorating uncompress with pledge() with any capability to acquire resources; anything beyond stdio (or seccomp)
Minimizing privilege means focusing on finding some other argument for pledge().
DJB isn't advocating against using seccomp or a pledge-equivalent.
DJB is advocating against stopping there.