It's a technique that intelligence agencies have used for years: Park a van filled with monitoring gear near an embassy and listen for the faint radio signals that computers routinely emit when they are on. Analyze those signals for clues to the data on the computers.

Now researchers at the University of Cambridge, home of groundbreaking work in intelligence over the years, are trying to adapt this technology to the fight against software piracy. With special code written into software, they say, computers could be made to broadcast beacons that would carry several hundred yards and identify the software they were running, complete with serial numbers of each copy.

Vans run by anti-piracy groups could pull up outside a company's office and count the number of software signals emanating from it. If, say, 50 beacons for a particular title were detected but the company had licensed only two copies of the software, that could become evidence on which a court would issue a search warrant.

Ross Anderson, a University of Cambridge lecturer who is overseeing the project, said the idea originated last year when Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates visited the university after his private foundation announced a $20 million donation to the school. Gates told officials that, among other things, he would love the university to come up with new anti-piracy techniques.

So far, Microsoft isn't enthusiastic about the university's approach, Anderson said. "They have some reservations. Obviously there are Big Brother aspects," he said. A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company has no plans to adapt the technology.

Emilia Knight, a vice president at BSA Europe, a trade group that combats software piracy, said such an anti-piracy system might be technically feasible. But she mentioned many practical questions on the legal side, such as how the system would differentiate between companies pirating software and those legally using multiple copies of programs.

Knight said that concerns of privacy and consumer rights might make the system a no-go for industrialized countries. But in places like Eastern Europe, she suggested, where piracy is rampant and there is no tradition of such protections, the software signal detectors might be acceptable.

Richard Sobel, a political scientist who teaches at Harvard University and researches privacy issues, said, "It sounds like a horrible violation of privacy."

In Britain, however, authorities have long used similar techniques to ferret out people who fail to pay the annual license fee of about $150 required for each TV set in the country.

Cruising the streets are vans carrying equipment that can detect emissions from a TV set's "local oscillator," the part that turns a station's signal into a picture. If the gear senses a TV set inside a house from which there is no record of a license payment, this is used as evidence for fines.

Anderson's researchers have built a prototype that can detect the type of software running on a machine from short range _ the hallway outside the room where the computer is running. Anderson said they are ready to build prototype hardware with a longer range, at a cost of about $15,000 to 30,000 _ if a customer is found.

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