Dean endorses electronic national ID cards?

[wyldwolf]

Honestly, not trying to start a Dean flame war. And the source this is from, to me, is a leftwing Drudge or Newsmax.

on edit: I'd be against this no matter who endorsed it.

But here is what Counterpunch is running:

Privacy Piracy?
What Howard Dean May Bring to the DNC
By JOSHUA FRANK

A year before Howard Dean announced his bid for the presidency; he spoke at a Pittsburg event sponsored by a "smart-card" firm, Wave Systems, which was a sure sign Dean was fast running away from his grassroots support, and right into the arms of the corporate elite. At the conference Dean announced that he hoped to one day implement a national identification card that would discourage online terrorism and identity theft, which would ultimately make Wave Systems a very rich corporation.

"We must move to smarter license cards that carry secure digital information that can be universally read at vital checkpoints," Dean explained during his speech in March 2002. "Issuing such a card would have little effect on the privacy of Americans." Dean's Star Trek like fantasy went as far as to state that the Federal government should mandate the implementation of ID card readers in all personal computers. The computer could then only be accessed once the system user inserted his or her national ID number into the security login.

http://www.counterpunch.org/frank12282004.html