Letter sent to managers of socially responsible mutual funds 1999/2/28

We write to alert you to the socially irresponsible actions of Intel Corporation, and to seek your assistance in averting the severe damage to privacy that Intel is willfully attempting to inflict on the public.
You may have read some of many media reports in the past month that Intel's Pentium III chip, which went on sale Friday 2/26, contains a unique identifier called the Processor Serial Number (PSN). Intel intends to make the PSN a de facto ID number for the Internet: they anticipated that it would be disclosed during visits to Web sites for example. The dangers to privacy are similar to those of the Social Security Number, but on an even larger scale due to the speed, richness and pervasiveness of the Internet in our society.
Four days after Intel announced the PSN feature our groups called a consumer boycott of the company, and Intel responded within hours claiming that it would change the chip's identifier from "normally on" to "normally off." In fact they did not change the chip at all; they merely changed their recommendations to PC manufacturers on how the chip is configured by software.
Following the public outcry as news of the feature spread through the mainstream media, most PC manufacturers have chosen a method of turning off the number more strongly than Intel recommended. But technical reports suggest that the PSN can still be turned on against the user's wishes by attacks such as viruses, and some manufacturers may not maintain or even start with a configuration where the PSN is off. In countries with repressive governments, the PSN could be used as a powerful tool of surveillance against their citizens. We and other privacy groups have consistently asked Intel to permanently remove this feature in the chip, but they have refused to do this.
Intel assert that the PSN feature is useful to improve the security of electronic commerce transactions, but technical experts have rebutted this claim. There remains no credible benefit of the PSN feature to consumers, only severe and obvious harms. The main reason for Intel's intransigence is plainly the expense and embarrassment of removing the feature now that it has shipped some chips. A similar situation occurred a few years ago with a bug in the original Pentium chip, and Intel was very slow to correct and address consumer concerns.
We have asked PC manufacturers not to ship systems containing the chip, but they all began selling systems on Friday. We and other privacy groups have asked the Federal Trade Commission to compel Intel to change the feature, but the Commissioner has indicated that he believes the FTC may lack the legal authority to do so. Other remedies might eventually be arrived at by the FTC, but time is of the essence here.