I just need to put this tattoo on your arm. Don't worry, it's for your privacy.

Stop worrying, you stupid privacy freaks. The commerce department isn't even part of the government.

Seriously.

STANFORD, Calif.--President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today.

It's "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said.

That news, first reported by CNET, effectively pushes the department to the forefront of the issue, beating out other potential candidates, including the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. The move also is likely to please privacy and civil-liberties groups that have raised concerns in the past over the dual roles of police and intelligence agencies.

Really? You think that's going to reassure anybody?

Oh, it gets better.

The Obama administration is currently drafting what it's calling the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, which Locke said will be released by the president in the next few months. (An early version was publicly released last summer.)

"We are not talking about a national ID card," Locke said at the Stanford event. "We are not talking about a government-controlled system.

Mr. Locke, either you fell on your head as a child or you think everybody else did. The government is "centralizing efforts" to enhance our privacy by ending it, to create an ID system which is "not a national ID card" because cards won't be involved, and "we are not talking about a government-controlled system" because, um ...

And of course...

Schmidt stressed today that anonymity and pseudonymity will remain possible on the Internet. "I don't have to get a credential, if I don't want to," he said. There's no chance that "a centralized database will emerge," and "we need the private sector to lead the implementation of this," he said.

File that with all the promises our grandparents heard about the income tax.

"There's no chance that 'a centralized database will emerge,'..." Fixed it for you, there, Schmidt. You're right about one thing, though: "...anonymity and pseudonymity will remain possible on the Internet." You bet your ass it will. That ship has sailed. Nobody trusts you, or the horse you rode in on.

H/T to KurtP.