[6954] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Intel nixes ID tracking numbers in future 1.5 GHz Willamette
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Declan McCullagh)
Thu Apr 27 14:50:00 2000
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Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 12:33:00 -0400
To: cryptography@c2.net
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
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http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,35950,00.html
Intel Nixes Chip-Tracking ID
by Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com)
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
[...]
