________________________________________________________________________________ Wired News Intel Nixes Chip-Tracking ID by Declan McCullagh 3:00 a.m. Apr. 27, 2000 PDT Hoping to avoid another campaign by privacy activists, Intel has decided not to include a controversial user identification feature in its forthcoming 1.5 GHz Willamette chip. Absent from Willamette's design are a unique ID number and other security measures that could be used to limit piracy by tracking users, an Intel source said Wednesday. "The decision has been made and the engineers have already been told," said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "The gains that it could give us for the proposed line of security features were not sufficient to overcome the bad rep it would give us." In January 1999, Intel said it would wire a unique ID into each Pentium III chip, but then disabled it after privacy activists began a boycott and a prominent House Democrat denounced the plan. An Intel management committee, after hearing from marketing, privacy, and engineering representatives who were opposed to the idea, reportedly made the decision not to include similar features in the much-anticipated Willamette chip, the source said. Besides the serial number, the other missing features include support for hardware digital certificates -- something banking and finance firms would have preferred, the source said. David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, cheered the move. "We've always said that certain institutional users might want it," Sobel said. "But it's always been a question of user choice. And the vast majority of individual users did not want their machines to be branded with an identifier." At the RSA Data Security conference in January 1999, an Intel executive said the ID number could be used to boost security in e-commerce. "You think about this maybe as a chat room, where unless you're able to deliver the processor serial number, you're not able to enter that protected chat room and providing a level of access control," said Patrick Gelsinger, an Intel vice president. But privacy activists saw it differently, and mounted a campaign against the ID number. EPIC even fired off Freedom of Information Act requests to find out if the feds pressured Intel to include the ID. "No agency has yet acknowledged any involvement. But they have not all responded yet," Sobel said. The Chinese government, according to one news report, was so spooked by the ID number that it cautioned against using computers with Pentium IIIs. Intel released a software program -- albeit a buggy one -- to disable the serial number, and then a BIOS modification. Jason Catlett of Junkbusters says he's glad to see that Intel decided to avoid a repeat of the controversy when Willamette is released in fall 2000. "I'm not surprised, but I'm still delighted. It's a chapter that I and all privacy advocates are very glad to close," Catlett said. "We can finally call off the boycott," he said. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,35950,00.html ________________________________________________________________________________ no copyright 2000 rolux.org - no commercial use without permission. is a moderated mailing list for the advancement of minor criticism. more information: mail to: majordomo@rolux.org, subject line: , message body: info. further questions: mail to: rolux-owner@rolux.org. archive: http://www.rolux.org