whoah

[xatalantax]

from egofood, in dean and (invasion of) privacy:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-5147158.html

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."

Comments

[evilmagnus]

...and *that* is why I no longer like Dean. The Good Doctor has shown himself to have a thoroughly bad brief on technology issues, and displays a woeful lack of intelligence in thinking these things through.

[bostonista.livejournal.com]

Dean = Dork.

He lost my vote a while back.

[lepidosiren.livejournal.com]

CRAPTACCA!

You hand your interviewer your license. They scan it, and say "Congratulations." You say "What about the interview?" They say "That was it."

interviewee counters w/technology as well...

[julishka.livejournal.com]

you hand your interviewer their friendster profile, nerve ad, archive.org printout of their long lost (thought buried) naughty websites, and usenet posting history. touche!

[sulla.livejournal.com]

disturbing.
and moderate republican that i am, i'll confess my mccainiac-new-england pride-side had a soft spot for dean early on. but this is bloody creepy.

[julishka.livejournal.com]

while i'm all for privacy and against any sort of national id card i accidently ran across this (via tbray.org/ongoing -> http://doc.weblogs.com/ ->lessig.org - old school websurfing through to synchronicity!) shortly after reading the link you posted.

http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/001696.shtml

that does contain a link to the original transcript of what dean said, has the article you linked to, as well as a criticism of that article (and of dean) from the register.co.uk. (as well as some interesting debate in the comments section.)

while dean's comments in 2002 weren't great, it's also not quite as awful as declan makes it out to be.

anyway...just thought you might like to see the original transcript if you haven't already.

[egofood.livejournal.com]

Thing #1 to remember: it's politics, they are all hacks spinning and counterspinning. Lessig and The Register, while general good reporters, do report from the left. (And Lessig doesn't note links to PDFs, the bahstahd.) So what does The Reg present as exculpatory evidence?

"We will not, and should not, tolerate a call to erode privacy even further - far from it," said Dean. "Americans can only be assured that their personal identity and information are safe and protected when they are able to gain more control over this information and its use."

Boilerplate and bullshit. "...when they are able to gain more control" Just who is "they"? You're supposed to think the public at large, but who will actually control what data is stored on these national ID cards? So the campaign manager is taking the fall for this (being replaced by someone savvy enough to predict the RIAA's DMCA lawsuit abuse against ISPs (http://www.house.gov/judiciary/4006.htm) though Trippi was probably already on the way out (http://blog.deanforamerica.com/archives/003000.html)), but only because Dean was either too technologically illiterate to see or too progressive to care about the potential for expansion of government control. The Register article just ignores the rest of Dean's speech (like the section about how empowering the individual is scary, how nation-states are becoming irrelevant and the bizarre line "We are attacked by individuals --- united not by a national cause --- but by cell phones, computer networks, exploding shoes and box cutters." as if the 9/11 skyjackers had no agenda but just were joyriding--sounds just like the gun nuts who can't bring themselves to blame criminals but truly believe it is the guns that are evil. Bad gun! Bad! No cookie!) Gah, every line in that speech is just begging for a fisking, but Dean's growing irrelevance probably makes the whole thing moot--except that he's a more open progressive wacko than most.

It does retain relevance though because too many people--particularly politicians beside Howard Dean--have forgotten that the Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights are all about the privacy and protection of the governed and not the convenience of the government.

Update

[evilmagnus]

Looks like the guy responsible for Dean's speech and tech brief just got canned.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/35192.html

Turns out this Trippi guy had a major conflict of interest thing going for him with Wave Systems. He also botched the TV ad spots. Anyway, Dean's given him the kick.

Interesting stuff.