When I first read George Orwell’s 1984 in the 1960s, it scared the dumplings out of me. His depiction of a society engaged in purposely unending wars, manipulated through fear and debased language, was, to my young mind, a surprisingly accurate reflection of the Vietnam years. Nixon’s press secretary, Ron Ziegler, an able practitioner of “newspeak,” explained daily how criminal acts were actually “executive privilege” and lies uncovered today were yesterday’s “inoperative” truths. Illegal wiretaps, government- sanctioned breaking and entering—like Big Brother, our leaders kept careful track of real and imagined enemies. If you just squinted a little, 1984 didn’t seem so far away.

To the surprise of no one who survived those years, the dawning of the Information Age, loudly predicted to be the decisive vehicle of democratic emancipation, has not fully dispelled Orwell’s vision of a large, mindless proletarian class, docile and subservient to the blaring dictates of a television screen. We have more channels than they did in Oceania, but the message is not much more varied for that.

What has changed is that with today’s technology, dominant institutions can consolidate power and erode personal liberty in more subtle and less malevolent-appearing ways than through the menacing eyes of Big Brother. Today’s sophisticated electronics can make Big Brother’s eyes very small and very remote, and the face behind them beams with all the Toxic-Sludge-Is-Good-For-You conviction that PR firms devise to cleanse the image of the biggest sociopaths of our time.

Earlier this year, Intel threatened (perhaps inadvertently) the anonymity of personal computing and the Internet—our most recent promise of technologically enhanced liberty. From the reaction the chip-manufacturing giant received, it was the sort of mistake Titanic’s designers made when they built bulkheads that did not reach the ceiling.

As Intel was no doubt aware, the government had periodically threatened to track and limit activity on the Internet, concerned, apparently, that the freedoms found therein were too heady for a society in which risk was minimized by regulation. But the mere suggestion has been loudly parried by a cynical public. After all, for common folk, the Internet has become an anonymous diversion that is nontaxable and nonfattening, if slightly addictive, and the public does not want anyone peeing in its virtual pool.

But what the state was unable to accomplish (at least publicly) Intel proposed to achieve with its Pentium III processor. The company announced in late January that embedded within its new Pentium III chips would be a unique processor serial number

(PSN). This number could be used to identify individual computers and to track a user’s online activities and transactions.

The PSN is a 96-bit number programmed into the processor during manufacturing. Intel saw it as a security feature, an electronic Social Security number of sorts that would allow for the recovery of stolen chips and computers and ensure the integrity of e- commerce transactions by attaching a PSN to a person’s real-world identity. According to Intel vice president Patrick Gelsinger, the PSN will be used to identify users who access Web sites or wish to enter protected chat rooms. More than 30 companies have already committed to using the PSN, he announced. The feature automatically activates each time a computer reboots, although users can disable it for individual sessions if they choose.

Privacy groups went berserk. Big Brother Inside, they called it, alluding to Intel’s well-known logo. Because there is little legal protection for online privacy, concerned groups envisioned PSNs as being collected by a wide variety of commercial interests unhampered by legal restraints on how the information would be used. They reasoned, correctly, that the economic incentives to collect and sell information tracking users’ online activities would be so great that corporations would quickly abandon any pretense of self- policing.

A boycott was threatened, and, as Ananda Gupta observed writing for the Competitive Enterprise Institute drolly, “...Intel backed down faster than a Republican with a call from Larry Flynt.” OK, OK, backpeddled Intel less than a week after the original announcement. This is what we’ll do. We’ll provide a software patch that will turn off PSNs, and the default setting will be turned to “off” in all future chips. How’s that?

Not nearly good enough, responded groups such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Junkbusters, and Privacy International. Not only would the boycott be extended, but the defenders of privacy took their case to the Federal Trade Commission, demanding a recall of Intel’s Pentium III chips.

Privacy advocates argue that the mere presence of a PSN makes it a threat and that if corporations have already committed to using it, it will soon not be optional. Besides, hackers could easily forge PSNs, and unscrupulous collectors of personal data could override Intel’s software patch. What one software program can do, another can undo. Cryptographer Bruce Schneier wrote in his ZDNet column, “The software that queries the processor is not to be trusted.” Kim Schmitz, CEO of Data Protect GmbH, concluded, “It looks like Intel’s latest innovation is little more than a marketing gimmick. The only real- world value that it might possibly have is a hardware-based, OS-independent way of creating profiles of and tracking unsuspecting users.”

Besides, Intel’s solution isn’t very elegant. As The Washington Post pointed out, users who had already purchased a Pentium III system would have to download the patch from Intel’s Web page and install it themselves. And it would work only for Windows users.

Intel’s protestations that it had fixed the privacy problem went unheeded. Overnight, it seems, the virtual you-know-what had hit the processor fan, and the company found itself the target of growing discontent. At least five major newspapers, including USA TODAY, the San Jose Mercury News, and The Seattle Times, editorialized against the PSN. Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) wrote a letter to Intel CEO Craig Barrett saying, “In my opinion, Intel’s new product improves technology for online commerce in a way that compromises personal privacy.” He urged Intel to “examine the privacy implications of the Pentium III...”

Not to be outdone, Arizona State Representative Steve May (R-Phoenix) decided to do more than voice his concern. He announced plans to introduce legislation that would ban the sale and manufacture of computer chips and components “containing individualized identification systems.” That was certain to get Intel’s attention since the company operates two fabrication plants in Arizona. The bill would also bar the state and its cities and counties from buying equipment containing such systems, May said. “Who likes being watched while they shop?”

Even Vice President Al Gore, probably glad to be asked his opinion about anything these days, declared, “We need to do more to protect privacy. When you have individuals filing a prescription at the drugstore and the information is immediately downloaded into a computer network and then sold to the marketers of other medicines, that patient’s privacy has been ravaged. And it’s not fair, and it’s not right.”

It may not be right, but on the other hand, what’s the big deal? After all, many sites use cookies; every Internet user has an Internet Protocol (IP) address; and Sun Microsystems already uses a version of the PSN in its advanced workstations. Well, cookies only retain information the user supplies and are different for each Web site. IP addresses tend not to be static. Most Internet service providers assign a different IP number for each session. Likewise, proxy servers mask the identity of users. As for Sun, so few people own those workstations that a unique identifier is of no commercial value.

But, so what? We already accept the unquestioned use of multiple personal identifiers, including Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, driver’s license numbers, and fingerprints. Our names already appear in thousands of databases. Our telephone records, medical history, credit card purchases, travel destinations, education level, work history, bank records, charitable contributions, and who knows what else are stored on computers. None of this information is absolutely safe, and much of it is sold without our knowledge or approval.

The danger is that the steps from having a PSN to being forced to use it to abusing it are tiny ones. Today, we might be obliged to use this technology in the name of commerce, but maybe tomorrow, the government will find it to be a convenient way to track the correspondence and whereabouts of militia members or abortion clinic protestors or fringe environmentalists or a thousand other status-quo nuisances. At the time Social Security numbers were first issued, it was believed these numbers would be held in strict confidence, known only to the government and the holder. Things change. Actions that were once considered intrusive become common and, eventually, normal.

The ubiquitous and subtle nosiness of modern technology unremittingly erodes the boundaries of personal privacy. Freedom dies a slow death from a thousand cuts—not as a great tree to be felled but as a sapling bent and pruned until its protective, egalitarian branches are subtly altered to shade only the select few.

The question is whether or not we wish to continue allowing ourselves to be filleted for the profit and amusement of whoever wants to peer inside our lives. Certainly, Intel’s stockholders don’t seem to care much. Shortly after the announcement of the continued boycott, Intel declared it would split its stock two for one, and the price per share rose sharply. In the individual rush to gain, something of collective value was lost.

Anonymity is one of the Internet’s great virtues. In Orwell’s Oceania, there is no privacy. The monitors are always on, and no one knows when Big Brother is watching. At the end of Orwell’s novel, Winston Smith is a broken man. As he ponders the nature of betrayal, he hears a voice singing:

“Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me...”

Ain’t it the truth.

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