Just let them meet with Engel, that should cinch it!!!
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Intel Corp. met here Thursday with privacy groups but failed to convince them to drop their boycott over new technology in its new Pentium III computer chips that helps identify consumers as they move across the Internet.
Instead, the groups promised to expand their boycott to include any computer makers that sell machines using the Pentium III, expected on the market within weeks.
''The distributors of a privacy toxin are as liable as the manufacturers of a privacy toxin,'' said Jason Catlett, president of Junkbusters Corp. of Green Brook, N.J., which helped organize the boycott with the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Spokesmen for Compaq Computer Corp. and Dell Computer Corp., among the nation's largest computer makers, couldn't be reached late Thursday to respond.
Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy rejected the groups' call for his company to recall Pentium III chips already sent to computer manufacturers.
''We have no comment on their demands other than to say we've briefed them,'' Mulloy said. The chips are ''in the hands of the (computer makers), and systems are being built.''
The groups also said they will consider asking the Federal Trade Commission to file a complaint against Intel, and they disclosed that attorneys general in some states, including New
York and Massachusetts, contacted them this week about the privacy issue.
Intel, the world's largest computer chip-maker, unveiled new technology last week in its newest Pentium chip that can transmit its unique serial number internally and to Web sites
that request it to help verify users. The company said the technology will help online merchants eliminate fraud by verifying a consumer's identity.
Responding to privacy concerns, Intel promised Monday to offer free software to let consumers permanently turn off the feature. It also pledged to use the software to turn off the
technology by default in future copies of the chips.
The privacy groups criticized those steps as inadequate, saying they want Intel to require computer makers to turn the tracing technology off by default. They also complained that
tracer can be reactivated without warning.
They said they want Intel to change its manufacturing process -- an immensely expensive proposition -- to change all future chips to transmit ''0'' as their serial number, effectively rendering the technology useless.
''I think at the end of the meeting they were a little taken back,'' said Marc Rotenberg, director of the privacy information center. ''They thought we were going to work together to teach people how to use their software. ... We basically said that approach won't work.''
The effects of any boycott on Intel would be negligible. The company supplies roughly 85 percent of the world's computer processors with $26.2 billion in sales last year.
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