Howard Dean wants national IDs, internet drivers licenses.
Trei, Peter
ptrei at rsasecurity.com
Mon Jan 26 07:09:31 PST 2004
I realize that there isn't a major party presidential
candidate alive who gets approval from most of the people
on this list, but it's worthwhile to note which ones are
proposing explicitly poor internet and privacy policy.
Peter
-----Original Message-----
From: Declan McCullagh [mailto:declan at well.com]
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2004 8:18 AM
To: politech at politechbot.com
Subject: [Politech] Weekly column: Howard Dean's worrisome views on
privacy [priv]
http://news.com.com/2010-1028-5146863.html
Dean should come clean on privacy
January 26, 2004, 4:00 AM PT
By Declan McCullagh
After Howard Dean's unexpected defeat last week in Iowa, public attention
has focused on his temper, his character, and that guttural Tyrannosaurus
bellow of his not-quite-a-concession speech. But Dean's views on Americans'
privacy rights may be a superior test of his fitness to be president.
Dean's current stand on privacy appears to leave little wiggle room: His
campaign platform pledges unwavering support for "the constitutional
principles of equality, liberty and privacy."
Fifteen months before Dean said he would seek the presidency, however, the
former Vermont governor spoke at a conference in Pittsburgh co-sponsored by
smart-card firm Wave Systems where he called for state drivers' licenses to
be transformed into a kind of standardized national ID card for Americans.
Embedding smart cards into uniform IDs was necessary to thwart
"cyberterrorism" and identity theft, Dean claimed. "We must move to smarter
license cards that carry secure digital information that can be universally
read at vital checkpoints," Dean said in March 2002, according to a copy of
his prepared remarks. "Issuing such a card would have little effect on the
privacy of Americans."
Dean also suggested that computer makers such as Apple Computer, Dell,
Gateway and Sony should be required to include an ID card reader in
PCs--and Americans would have to insert their uniform IDs into the reader
before they could log on. "One state's smart-card driver's license must be
identifiable by another state's card reader," Dean said. "It must also be
easily commercialized by the private sector and included in all PCs over
time--making the Internet safer and more secure."
The presidential hopeful offered few details about his radical proposal.
"On the Internet, this card will confirm all the information required to
gain access to a state (government) network--while also barring anyone who
isn't legal age from entering an adult chat room, making the Internet safer
for our children, or prevent adults from entering a children's chat room
and preying on our kids...Many new computer systems are being created with
card reader technology. Older computers can add this feature for very
little money," Dean said.
There's probably a good reason why Dean spoke so vaguely: It's unclear how
such a system would work in practice. Must Internet cafes include uniform
ID card readers on public computers? Would existing computers have to be
retrofitted? Would tourists be prohibited from bringing laptops unless they
sported uniform ID readers? What about Unix shell accounts? How did a
politician who is said to be Internet-savvy concoct this scheme?
[...remainder snipped...]
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