Who knew that this Pentium III thing would open up such a can of worms? For those just joining us, Intel recently announced that their upcoming Pentium III processor would include a "serial number" that could be read by the computer and sent to web sites for identity verification purposes. While such a scheme might cause big cartoony dollar signs to pop up in the eyes of companies running e-commerce web sites, it has privacy watchdog groups seeing red. They say this serial number scheme could herald the death of anonymity on the Internet, since remote sites could track who you are and where you've been based on the ID number of your computer's processor. After they organized a boycott, Intel agreed to ship the chips with the numbering scheme turned off, to be enabled by the end-users if they wanted to benefit from the expanded e-commerce capabilities. For some people, though, that's just not enough. We now join our regularly scheduled broadcast, already in progress...

The latest chapter in this saga shows Arizona State Representative Steve May drafting a bill that attempts to ban the Pentium III's ID numbering mechanism entirely. According to a CNET article, the proposed bill would ban serial numbered chips altogether, and computers using such processors would also be verboten. If the bill passes, it would even be illegal to manufacture chips like the Pentium III in Arizona-- which could make things really tough for Intel, who has two manufacturing plants in that state.

Unfortunately, the bill as worded would also make several high-end workstations illegal, such as those made by Sun, which contain serial-numbered chips to prevent software piracy. And beyond that, the proposed law could very possibly be found unconstitutional for violating the commerce clause. However those concerns are probably irrelevant anyway, as we doubt the bill will ever be passed into law. We see the bill as more of a message to Intel than a serious attempt to stop the Pentium III by legal means; if people are upset enough about the privacy issues that lawmakers are drafting bills about them, then perhaps Intel will take notice and rethink their plans.