Diligent members at Metafilter are uncovering interesting facts about Howard Dean and his position on technology, privacy and piracy. After being called “the technical candidate” by stirring up early interested in himself though the internet it turns out he’d also like to have more controls in it as well.
ZDNet is running a bit of a sensational piece about Dean’s wish to have ID card readers installed in all new computers. One would, apparently, have to use the ID card to access the internet. Then, once on the user could be tracked as well as monitored more closely. This mostly done under the auspices of protecting privacy and under-age internet users from harm.
Meanwhile, his campaign manager, Joe Trippi is a stockholder and supporter of a certain company called Wave Systems. Wave Systems is also the developer of this same technology. However, the company is more known for developing products that implement TCPA specifications and standards which are principally designed to enforce software license compliance.
So, under Dean, you’d take your drivers license (if you are fortunate enough to have one) swipe it in a card reader on your PC and it will happily report every damn thing you write, do or, create on your computer. Worse yet, if it didn’t like the things you were doing or, if it found that you had software or, tried to use a CD/DVD you have no right (in it’s mind) to use… it would simply lock you out of your computer and report you to the authorities.
Nice progress for technology, don’t you think? Yet another reason to avoid Dean…. at least that particular “Dean.” Finally, if this is part of his technology platform and plans to create jobs with it, let me be the first to volunteer to become a farmer and former technical worker.