Howard Dean's 'smart ID' plan; called for national ID card and ID's in PCs.

COMMENTARY--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?

Perhaps most importantly, does Dean still want to forcibly implant all of our computers with uniform ID readers?

Unfortunately, Dean's presidential campaign won't answer any of those questions. I've tried six times since Jan. 16 to get a response, and all the press office will say is they've "forwarded it on to our policy folks." And the policy shop isn't talking.

Then there are the privacy questions. To curry favor among the progressive types who form the backbone of his campaign, Dean has positioned himself as a left-of-center civil libertarian. He's guest-blogged for progressive doyen Larry Lessig, embraced the Brady Bill and affirmative action, told audiences on the campaign trail that the Bush administration has "compromised our freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism," and pledged to repeal parts of the USA Patriot Act.

It's difficult to reconcile Dean's current statements with his recent support--less than two years ago--for what amounts to a national ID card and a likely reduction in Americans' privacy. "Privacy is the new urban myth," Dean said in that March 2002 speech.

"I know of no other Democratic candidate who has this view on national ID," said Chris Hoofnagle, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "I hope that he'd reconsider his policy on national ID because it has significant affects on individuals' right to privacy and does not make the country more secure. If you think about it, the implication is that children would have to be issued cards as well. Are we talking about ID cards from birth?"

Dean's March 2002 speech to a workshop at Carnegie Mellon University--given just six months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks--was designed to throw his support behind a standard ID proposal backed by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA). At the time, Dean was chairman of the National Governors Association, a key ally for the AAMVA as it lobbied to transform the humble state driver's license into a uniform national ID card.

"I'm not surprised," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union and a former Vermont resident. "It's a backdoor national ID. It won't even work to protect against terrorism because we know that some of the 9-11 terrorists had phony driver's licenses that they were able to buy on the black market."

It's true that most American adults already carry around driver's licenses. But the AAMVA proposal would have mandated biometric identifiers such as digitized fingerprints or retinal scans. Depending on how the system was implemented, your license could be equipped with a smart card (which Dean suggested) that could store information about your movements whenever it was swiped in a reader. It could also be tied to a back-end database so all verifications would be logged with the time, date and location.

The idea never gained traction in Congress because of privacy concerns and opposition not only from conservative activists, but from Democratic-leaning groups including People for the American Way, National Consumers League, and National Council of La Raza.

One prominent group that did support a standardized ID at the time is the New Democrats' public policy wing, which has suggested that microchip-implanted smart cards could hold not only retinal scans or fingerprints but also "food stamps, voter registration, library cards, hunting and fishing licenses" and a wealth of corporate data like E-Z-Pass, gas station automatic billing, and banking information. In one of history's ironic flourishes, Dean lashed out at the New Democrats last month in Exeter, N.H., dubbing them "the Republican wing of the Democratic Party."

It's possible that Dean has a good explanation for his uniform ID card views, and can account for how his principles apparently changed so radically over the course of just two years. Perhaps he can't. But a refusal to answer difficult questions is not an attractive quality in a man who would be president.

biography Declan McCullagh is CNET News.com's Washington, D.C., correspondent. He chronicles the busy intersection between technology and politics. Before that, he worked for several years as Washington bureau chief for Wired News. He has also worked as a reporter for The Netly News, Time magazine and HotWired.

I thought the old USSR was dead....

Oh no, it's alive and kicking.

Don't be surprised to see this kind of thing become commonplace. Our country may not have the revolution that the socialists had, but the end result will be the same.

Tie it together with the DHS's database for airlines (initialy).

You could blame him, I suppose, but the argument isn't very strong.

I specifically wrote to the Department of Motor Vehicles in Florida not to share my SSN with third parties.

It was the Jeb Bush administration that one that sold this data in electronic form, and my written request for privacy was ignored, even though my request is recorded in the state electronic records.

I got my current driver's licence after Jeb Bush became governor; I had a driver's license from another state when I moved to Florida. So Jeb Bush is responsible for it.

Saturday, January 23, 1999 By ROBERT O'HARROW JR. The Washington Post
For the first time since authorities began snapping photographs of drivers for licenses, state officials have begun selling the images wholesale, another example of the growing availability of rich troves of personal information via modern technology.
In the last several months, South Carolina has released 3.5 million digital photographs, Florida has started the process of transferring 14 million images in its files and other states have expressed interest in doing the same.
The buyer is Image Data LLC, a small Nashua, N.H., company that wants to build a national database of photos and personal information to help retailers prevent identity theft - a fast-growing crime in which fraud artists use a victim's personal information to run up bills in their name or empty their bank accounts.
Image Data bought the photographs for about a penny each. Those images will be cross-referenced to personal information gleaned from public and private sources. In addition to a name and address, the company's databases will hold an individual's Social Security number, age, gender, race and other details from a driver's file, as well as limited information about each transaction.

My SSN was a requirement to get a Florida driver's license. The state of Florida allowed me to include a written statement asking for my SSN not to be shared with third parties.

The SSN is like a password. When a company is going to run your credit report or a bank is going to give you confidential information over the phone, the SSN becomes the password.

By linking my driver's license records (state records) with my SSN (federal records), my password was published against my will.

That's one of the reasons we have so much identity fraud floating around.

I can't sue Jeb Bush because the legislature went along with the deal.

My smakl point is this: Jeb Bush or any other governor can't be trusted with private information.

You claimed that Jeb Bush had nothing to do with it. I proved to you, that in my case, he was the chief of the executive branch who sold my records.

I proved to you, that in my case, he was the chief of the executive branch who sold my records.

I see that your photo was sold. That much, you proved pretty well.

Now, I hasten to say that I firmly believe it to be, at the least, in very poor taste, and perhaps a breach of public trust to allow the marketing of so much 'cross-referenceable' personal information simply because it is 'public record.'

I'd love to see some sharp and sane lawyer (assuming there is such a creature) come up with an argument that proves all that information is proprietary (when used in combination) and therefore the rightful owners of it (you and me, individually) are due royalties from any commercial gain realized by trading it.

It might be further useful to explore ways to hold the source of such 'public records' liable for damages incurred by identity theft, stalking, etc.

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