Dean called for national IDs?
Declan McCullagh says that about two years ago, democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean (still just a governor at the time) outlined a plan in broad strokes for a national ID system that would -- among other things -- be required for anyone to use a personal computer for Internet use.
Now, March 2002 was still on the crest of post 9/11 hysteria and general jackbooted idiocy of all orders, so I'll forgive Dean if this was something said in the heat of paranoia that he has no intention of actually following through on. But it's enough to scare the shit out of me if he's serious, and what's particularly disturbing is that McCullagh hasn't been able to get a straight answer out of Dean's campaign folks despite trying six times.
It's something that the Dean campaign should get its shit together on right quick, in my opinion, since this is the sort of thing that will raise the hackles of plenty of civil liberties and privacy/freedom groups.
The idea of a national ID has died in Congress, so maybe Dean realized how much of a bloated, stinking dead pig the concept was and just wants it to go away.