Software Pioneer Quits Board of Groove
Mitchell D. Kapor, a personal computer industry software pioneer and a civil liberties activist, has resigned from the board of Groove Networks after learning that the company's software was being used by the Pentagon as part of its development of a domestic surveillance system.

Mr. Kapor would say publicly only that it was a "delicate subject" and that he had resigned to pursue his interests in open source software.

The company acknowledged the resignation last week when it announced that it had received $38 million in additional financing.

"Mr. Kapor resigned from the board to focus 100 percent of his time on nonprofit activities," said a spokesman for Groove Networks, whose software has been used to permit intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials to share data in tests of the surveillance system, Total Information Awareness.

However, a person close to Mr. Kapor said that he was uncomfortable with the fact that Groove Networks' desktop collaboration software was a crucial component of the antiterrorist surveillance software being tested at the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's Information Awareness Office, an office directed by Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter.

The project has generated controversy since it was started early last year by Admiral Poindexter, the former national security adviser for President Ronald Reagan, whose felony conviction as part of the Iran-contra scandal was reversed because of a Congressional grant of immunity.

The project has been trying to build a prototype computer system that would permit the scanning of hundreds or thousands of databases to look for information patterns that might alert the authorities to the activities of potential terrorists.

Civil liberties activists have argued that such a system, if deployed, could easily be misused in ways that would undercut traditional American privacy values.

"Mitch cares very much about the social impact of technology," said Shari Steele, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group that was co-founded by Mr. Kapor in 1990.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/11/business/11PRIV.html