EU Privacy Authorities Seek Changes in Microsoft 'Passport'

[R. A. Hettinga]

http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB1043436716535021744,00.html

The New York Times

January 27, 2003 


EU Privacy Authorities Seek 
Changes in Microsoft
'Passport' 

By BRANDON MITCHENER 
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET
JOURNAL 

BRUSSELS -- European privacy authorities this week will outline
changes it wants Microsoft Corp. to make to its Passport online
authentication system to settle a yearlong investigation of its privacy
policies, according to people familiar with the situation. 

The
recommendations, some of which Microsoft is said to have advanced itself in
the course of discussions with European authorities, would also target
Microsoft's rivals in the so-called Liberty Alliance, which includes Sun
Microsystems Inc. and several other multinational companies. The proposed
changes would go beyond those to which Microsoft consented last year
following a complaint by a nonprofit group to the U.S. Federal Trade
Commission that the company was making improper use of people's data.


Passport allows users who have registered with the service to enter data
such as an e-mail address and a password just once and use that digital
"passport" to enter other Web sites without re-entering the same data or
creating a new password. 

Microsoft has insisted that Passport complies
with European data-protection rules, but European privacy authorities last
year said the system raised "legal issues," including the "value and
quality of the consent given" by users and the "security risks associated"
with the transfer of their data to Passport's partners. 

European
data-protection commissioners are expected to discuss the recommendations
Wednesday. A spokesman for the chairman of the working group declined to
comment on its deliberations, as did a spokeswoman for Microsoft. 

People
familiar with the privacy authorities' thinking say the changes they plan
to request give users more information about the system and more control
over how their data are used. 

"Microsoft has accepted to make major
changes," said one person familiar with the group's thinking. 

The group
is scheduled to meet the day before Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates addresses
a conference on Microsoft's Internet strategy in Brussels. 

The EU privacy
probe is unrelated to an antitrust investigation by the European
Commission, which has accused Microsoft of abusing its dominant position in
the market for operating systems for desktop computers to muscle its way
into related product markets. 


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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