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Bombshell
Paul Somerson
April, 1999
A shocking revelation in a little-known Minnesota legal case is about
to throw the entire PC industry into turmoil. And unless privacy
advocates are successful in a court challenge, everyday users may be
in serious danger of being sued or fired. The trouble started when
Lydia Profaslo, a 24-year-old sales associate at Polar Foil, a
manufacturer of thermal insulating material, posted a photograph on
her firm's Web site taken at a company picnic. In the photo, Profaslo
is wearing shorts and a bathing suit top.
A coworker of hers, Eve Wolensky, testified that she was walking past
the office of a sales manager, Roger Jeffries, and happened to notice
Jeffries looking at the photo and making an inappropriate remark.
Wolensky informed Profaslo, who left the office in tears, and later
brought a sexual harassment suit against Jeffries and Polar.
In the ensuing trial, her attorneys asked Polar executives a routine
question about the existence of any recordings that could shed light
on the case. To their surprise, company officials reluctantly revealed
a secret that may shake the PC industry to its roots.
It turns out that virtually every computer system purchased after
March 1996 contains a microphone, and that the IT departments at Polar
and other companies had routinely been using special sound-activated
software to record and collect conversations.
Microphones, which cost manufacturers less than a quarter, had been
mandated in the 1996 IEEE RFC 0401 PC/Telephony spec, but few users
have taken advantage of them. However, Polar's attorneys admitted that
most IT departments, and even major Internet providers, have been
running special SCP (Speech Collection Port) software that uses the
microphones to bug conversations as a "protective measure."
The software can harvest all speech within a five-foot radius of an
average PC, compress and store it, and send it over LANs or Internet
connections to a central collection server.
Witnesses who have listened to the recording say Jeffries was
allegedly heard to whistle and say to himself "Nice bazongas."
Jeffries, who was subsequently fired, directed all inquiries to his
lawyer.
Profaslo's legal team has argued the episode has caused her "serious
depression, anorexia, and sleeplessness." She has filed for
disability, and is suing Polar for $30 million in damages.
So how do you know if you're at risk for something you might have said
innocently over the past three years? Here's the sure-fire trick: If
you've ever noticed that your hard disk "in-use" indicator light
periodically goes on for a few seconds even when you're not typing, or
saving files, it is almost certain that SCP software has been
surreptitiously collecting and sending your conversations either over
your network or via the Internet.
It's possible to safeguard yourself against such big-brother corporate
snooping by disabling the microphones, according to Jim Sumner, a top
electrical engineer at Compaq. Some microphones are easy to spot--they
usually sit behind nail-sized recessed grilles. Other more sensitive
ones are hidden on motherboards.
Privacy advocates are predictably upset at this, and have brought suit
to end the practice. Developers at one such organization, the Computer
Freedom Foundation, have created a pair of useful freeware programs.
The first detects whether snooping has occurred, and deactivates the
microphone. (It also lets you play back any temporary speech files
still hidden on your hard disk.) The other replaces any untransmitted
conversations with a .WAV file of actor E.G. Marshall reading the text
of the First Amendment.
Have you said anything while at your PC that could haunt you? For
instructions on disabling your microphones, copies of the two freeware
programs, and a patch that adds a blinking light to your taskbar
whenever your microphone is active, go to http:www.pccomputing.com/snoopfix.
Hurry.
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Don't panic. However, try the above link to download the software. This is sent
with the best intentions 8-).
Brian Davidson
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