Critics may demand Pentium III recall

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, Privacy International, and anti-spam group Junkbusters on Thursday asked the Federal Trade Commission to induce Intel to recall the chips, and are renewing their call for a boycott of Intel and any PC maker shipping systems that include them.

"After meeting with Intel officials for two hours on January 28, the organizers of the boycott determined that the software patch announced by Intel Monday was not sufficient to eliminate the privacy problems of the (chip)," the groups said in a statement. They also called on Intel to disable the ID mechanism in future Pentium III chips.

The controversy erupted last week after Intel (Nasdaq:INTC) debuted the new chip and announced plans to include the ID mechanism, which company officials called a security measure for e-commerce. Intel said it had no plans to link the data from the chips to customers' names and addresses, but this did little to calm critics' fears about the technology they have dubbed "Big Brother Inside."

On Monday, in response to the initial calls for a boycott, Intel reversed course and said the chips will ship in an inactive mode, leaving it up to customers to activate it if they wish. Initially the company had planned to ship the microprocessors with the ID function turned on.

The privacy groups also said Intel's dominance of the chip market should trigger consumer fears about the ID plan.

"We conclude that it is contrary to the public interest in privacy for chips with an (ID) to proliferate widely into the consumer computer market," the groups said in a statement. "Given Intel's dominance of the processor market, this would happen within a few months unless sufficient pressure were applied to Intel to disable the feature in the Pentium III."

Junkbusters President Jason Catlett said the FTC presented several options to the privacy groups during the Thursday meeting, including eventually asking for the chips to be recalled if the privacy problem is deemed dire enough.

(While some Pentium III chips have shipped to PC makers, none are set to be included in PCs sold directly to consumers until late February or early March.)

Intel 'forthright'
The FTC meeting came after the groups' talks with officials from Intel's security division, Catlett said. While he characterized the Intel executives as "forthright" in explaining the technical problems involved in disabling the ID feature, he maintained the company's proposed software solution is inadequate.

"What they told us is that the decision (to turn off the ID feature) is not in their hands, but would be in the hands of the browser makers and the PC manufacturers," Catlett said. "And if you look at their history of setting defaults, they have collected as much data as possible."

The software fix would enable Intel to ship the chips with the feature turned off, but the company can't force OEMs or browser makers to keep it that way, Catlett said.

"Intel's proposed solution won't work because they are not in control of it," he said. "The commercial motivation is to go exactly the opposite way."

On or off?
While acknowledging it will be some time before consumers get access to the chips, he said the privacy groups' main concern is that end users "won't know whether the ID is on or off" when they buy a new PC.

Catlett said the boycott will continue until Intel either redesigns the chips to remove the feature or recalls those already in circulation.

Vicky Streitfeld, a spokeswoman for the FTC, said Friday that while she could confirm that agency officials did meet with the privacy groups, she could not divulge details of the meeting.

"I can say that this situation does underscore the need for the tech industry to take consumer privacy very seriously," Streitfeld said.