CIVIL liberties campaigners in the US want microchip maker Intel to
abandon its plan to incorporate an electronic serial number in all its future
microprocessors. The buried code would verify the identity of any computer
in an online transaction鈥� a move activists complain will compromise
personal privacy. They say totalitarian states could use it to track down
dissidents, and that corporations will quietly build consumer profiles鈥攁nd
this will lead to more spam.
Intel鈥檚 Pentium III鈥攐ut in March鈥攚ill be the first with a
Processor Serial Number (PSN) hardwired into the chip. Intel originally wanted
the number broadcast the moment you connected to the Internet, instantly
confirming the identity of your computer. Spokesman Howard High says the idea
was to make home shopping, online banking and other e-commerce transactions more
secure.
But Intel changed its mind after protests and calls for a boycott from the
American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center
last week.
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Now Intel will make the ID facility optional鈥攊t will be permanently
鈥渙ff鈥濃�攗nless you decide otherwise, says High. But the serial number will
still be buried deep in the chip鈥檚 silicon.
Caspar Bowden, director of the Foundation for Information Policy Research in
London, a think-tank that analyses IT issues, says: 鈥淓ven if they provide a
mechanism in software to disable the serial number, it still might be possible
for websites and software managers only to grant access to sites if this ID
feature is switched on.鈥� And there are worries that hackers might be able to
ferret out the ID code and use it for their own ends. 鈥淭here is a degree of
paranoia that the feature could be remotely enabled鈥攐r extracted,鈥� Bowden
says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 very hard to see how one can be sure the feature couldn鈥檛 be
switched on remotely.鈥�