Weekly column: Howard Dean's worrisome views on privacy [priv]

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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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