You don’t have to be paranoid to buy a Pentium, but it helps, writes John Naughton
If you thought Microsoft was an aggressively competitive company, then you’ve never heard of Intel, the outfit which makes the processor chips inside most of the world’s computers.
Andy Grove, until recently Intel’s head honcho, was famous for his mantra that “only the paranoid survive” and he built a huge company round it.
So when Intel holds its hands up and says “OK – we give in, we were wrong”, it’s quite a moment. Yet it happened recently and some of us are still rubbing our eyes and wondering if we imagined it.
What happened is that Intel recently revealed that every one of its new Pentium III processor chips will have a unique serial number which can be read by software. The company claimed that the 96-digit identification code, which can be accessed not just by programs running on your computer, but across the Web by other computers, will make e-commerce transactions more secure.
Websites and other Net-based software can query your processor to make sure you are who you say you are before providing access to account data or other sensitive information.
In fact, said Intel, the identification code was such a good idea that each chip would come with identification switched on by default – though, of course, users could opt to switch it off.
The Net community was not in the least impressed by this great leap forward. The idea that a PC’s “fingerprint” will be left wherever it goes on the Internet lacks universal appeal. In fact, the only people it appeals to are hucksters, snoopers, banks and spooks.
Privacy campaigners replaced the slogan “Intel inside” with “Big Brother inside” and called for a boycott of the Pentium III. They pointed out the dangers of allowing your computer cheerfully to hand out your unique ID to any Web site that asks.
And to those who claimed the Intel wheeze was just a variant of today’s “cookie” files (which give websites a chance to track you in limited ways), they retorted that cookie files can be deleted whereas the new digital ID will be indelible.
Faced with a firestorm of protest, Intel backed off and said that the Pentium III will now come with ID switched off – users will have to use a special program to make the serial number active.
Three cheers for Intel then? Perish the thought. If it can be activated by software, then the Pentium ID can be cracked by unscrupulous programmers.
What this skirmish highlights is how the nature of the Net is shaped by technology.
The system was designed to be open and uncontrolled from the start. That’s the way it works. Its freedom is a consequence of its architecture. Change the architecture and you imperil the freedom.
One of the reasons people love the Net is because of its anonymity, the way it allows them to be whoever they want to be, to do what they like.
Nobody disputes that this has a dark side. But it also has the precious advantage of enabling the first totally free communication medium in history.
This is why both governments and big businesses hate the Net in its present form and why they are constantly trying to get the Net under (their) control.
The Intel ID plays right into their hands. In the old days, the price of liberty was eternal vigilance. Soon it could be the cost of a non-Intel processor.