Dean... questions

[pecunium]

I confess, this past year has been a bit vague for me (what with going to Iraq, acquiring an auto-immune disorder, spending two-months as an out-patient at Walter Reed; and two-weeks flat on my back in the hospital, discovering that I'm not merely allergic to Sulfa drugs, but deathly so, and now living in Limbo at Ft. Lewis) and in some ways feels as though it never happened.

Which means I've not paid as much attention to the Democratic race as I usually would.

Which means I'm less than attached to any candidate (though there are some, e.g. Sharpton, whom I dismissed out of hand).

Then I found this snippet on Dean, "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."

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-5147158.html


This is not what I think of as a good thing. I'd be less worried if his campaign had been willing to elaborate, but so far it seems they are deciding to keep mum on the topic.

Mind, the group which supports this sort of thing the most (in the Democratic Party) is the New Democrats, and Dean has said less than flattering things about them, so he may be a bit confused on the issue (in part because when he first started talking about it he was Governor of Vt. and Governors were big on the general idea, right after That Tuesday... part of the action, any action, to show that something, anything was being done. Never mind that such action is usually ill-thought and little worth, with painful consequences unseen).

I have to say that, should he get the nod, we need to see to it that this plan is strangled at birth.

Comments

[angelovernh.livejournal.com]

Since I posted that yesterday and was freaking out about it - RIGHT before I had to vote (I'm in NH), please note that there is more information you should be aware of on this issue. Unfortunately I didn't find out until after voting. First, please see this article from the Register which explains that it was his campaign manager, Trippi, who told Dean to say that.. And as of today, Dean fired Trippi. And then please see this article on Discourse.net that tells more accurately what Dean said in that speech, which was misrepresented in the first article you linked from zdnet. I still do not agree with the anti-privacy statements, but it's a more balanced view of the platform on this.