High-Tech Sleuth Joins Center Looking at New Privacy Issues
By MATT RICHTEL
ichard M. Smith, a
software engineer turned
high-tech sleuth who tracks
how personal data is gathered
via the Internet, said yesterday
that he would join forces with
researchers at the Privacy
Center, a new group based at
the University of Denver that
investigates privacy concerns in
the information age.
Organizers of the center, which
is to be formally announced
today, said they would gather
data on whether and how
personal information was
captured by software makers,
operators of communications
systems and Internet services.
Mr. Smith said the center
would focus initially on whether
personal privacy was
jeopardized by the use of
wireless phones with Web
access, digital television set-top
boxes, software that can send
user information back to its
maker over the Internet and
other such new technologies.
"We'll look at anything to do
with a computer, and stuff that
is networked together," said
Mr. Smith, who helped track
the possible origins of the malicious "Melissa" and "I Love You"
computer programs. "We'll focus on how we're being monitored in our
daily lives."
He added that he was looking forward to helping other people use some
of the techniques he had developed. "We're trying to train other people
to do the work I do," said Mr. Smith, a co-founder of Phar Lap
Software, Cambridge, Mass.
Mr. Smith technically is not affiliated with the University of Denver, but
has signed on as the chief technology officer of the Privacy Foundation.
The foundation is a Denver-based nonprofit agency -- also scheduled to
be announced today -- that is financing the privacy center. The Privacy
Foundation was started and is largely underwritten by Peter Barton, a
Denver entrepreneur and former chief executive of the Liberty Media
Corporation.
The financing will help support research at the university by David
Martin, an assistant professor of math and computer science, and three
associates. They will work with Mr. Smith, who will work largely from
his Brookline, Mass., home.
"Rather than Richard being the lone ranger, he's going to have a posse to
help him," said Stephen Keating, executive director of the Privacy
Foundation. Mr. Keating said the foundation's first-year budget would be
around $1 million.
Among Mr. Smith's efforts in recent years, he discovered that the
Microsoft Word program embedded in users computers a unique
identifier sent back to Microsoft when the software was registered.
Microsoft subsequently stopped putting the identifier in the software.
Mr. Smith's efforts have also led him to explore the data-collection
practices of Amazon.com and RealNetworks. He filed a complaint last
year with the Federal Trade Commission asserting that Alexa software, a
subsidiary of Amazon, could gather far more personal data about
consumers than Amazon told customers it was collecting. |
