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McCain Campaign Sells Info-Loaded Blackberry PDAs
An anonymous reader writes "A news station in Washington D.C. has reported that the McCain Campaign has allegedly sold to reporters Blackberry handhelds with campaign-related information such as e-mail messages and phone numbers: 'We traced the Blackberry back to a staffer who worked for "Citizens for McCain" ... The emails contain an insider's look at how grassroots operations work, full of scheduling questions and rallying cries for support ... But most of the numbers were private cell phones for campaign leaders, politicians, lobbyists and journalists. "Somebody made a mistake," one owner told us. "People's numbers and addresses were supposed to be erased."'"
I wish my incompetence could land me a job whereby I have full access to politicians and such and I can just hand out their information freely :D
...every so often there is a story about some person or organization that sold a device without wiping the data. According to TFA, there was nothing compromising on the device (information showing wrongdoing by members of the campaign, sensitive personal info, etc) so not a major flub. I would consider it a story if something compromising was found on the device, but extra care is usually taken to dispose of that.
I said "thanks but no thanks" to those naked pictures of Sarah Palin that I found on my Blackberry.
Now I can learn all the secrets of a highly successful political campaign!
Oh wait...
Yes this is another fine example of why septuagenarians should not be allowed anywhere near tech.
It's a deliberate publicity stunt. Stuff like this might seem bizarrely incompetent or a deliberate attempt to sabotage themselves, but you've got to remember this will play really well with the grassroots.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
This happens all the time and most of the time we never hear about it.
You would not believe how many times government computers containing critical information have been sold without having their drives wiped or have been lost or stolen.
The private sector is no better.
The vast majority of organizations do not encrypt their data or their communications. In fact data which is supposed to be encrypted such as credit card information or social security numbers is often mishandled internally ( i.e. emailed half-way around the world unencrypted or stored in the clear ).
Fresh set of GOP numbers? What to do...
Joe: Hello?
New BB Owner: Is your refrigerator running?
So many possibilities!
Don't military educations include the study of famous historical campaigns ... not just to discover the secrets of why one side won, but also to analyze why the other side lost?
"A fool learns from his own mistakes, a wise man learns from the mistakes of others."
But giving your enemy access to your strategy and tactics in a lost campaign is just plain dumb-ass, for your future conflicts.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The problem is they really don't understand or don't care. I got a computer from a government agency and it had not been wiped. They contacted me a week later and told me I had to return it so it could be erased and reformatted. I let them do that, but, I still don't understand what could make somebody think that erasing information that has been out of their control serves any purpose whatsoever. These are people who -could- think that chain of custody is flexible.
I just noticed the message at the bottom of my web page and it say that the Earth was destroyed by a solar flare. This post is pointless then I guess.
What are campaign supports, with private information such as this, doing using a blackberry without a security password? 10 incorrect password attempts and the blackberry is wiped clean of all emails, contacts, and phone logs.
>homo
thanks but no thanks for that pair of eyeglasses
And nothing of value was lost
Only an idiot sells a computer/phone/pda without making some effort to erase their personal information from it. Even if they're not sure how, they know they should find someone to tell them. Even my retired non-techie parents know that if they get rid of their desktop computer they need to worry about information that could be use for identity theft or accessing bank accounts. Someone working for the government (or trying to be) should be acutely aware of the importance. I don't mean this to be partisan, but if this is the level of sense to be found in the McCain organization, I think we just dodged a bullet. Hiring people to be responsible for your smartphones who don't know you need to erase them is like picking a running mate who doesn't know there are 50 countries in Africa. (OK, so that was partisan. :) )
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Someone made a mistake. As soon as this was noticed, the item should have been returned or erased. I sure wouldn't mess with it. You could end up very mysteriously vanished!
He was, ultimately, in charge. The contract for the people who administered those phones should have clearly stated they were to be cleaned. The buck has to stop with the person whose name is on the check. He didn't have to use any tech to be in charge.
You make it pretty clear you hate John McCain and possibly all Republicans in general, but this is borderline obsessive.
"He was, ultimately, in charge... The buck has to stop with the person whose name is on the check."
Really? So if Jiffy Lube or whoever does your oil change on a contractual basis screws up your oil change, it's your fault? You, after all, are in charge of your own car. That's great logic there. If you ever need back surgery, and the surgeon you choose leaves you paralyzed, I suppose your response will be, Well, gee, it's my fault, I should have hired a better surgeon!
I get the whole "captain is responsible for his ship" mentality, but ultimately, you have to stop blaming people for minor details going wrong that aren't remotely in their sphere of responsibility.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Astroturfing is fraud. Fake grassroots campaignsm like all advertising campaigns, are deliberately designed to be misleading, to implicitly give false impressions. Unlike most advertising campaigns, they rely on lies to get behind our defences. They poison our well of information with their lies. How can we be sure of who we're talking to? Must we always be forced to automatically mistrust any voice on the internet? Astroturfing is damaging our communications, perhaps permanently.
Compare this with regular, legally acknowledged fraud. Why is it illegal? It's illegal because it a) misleads people, and b) removes an element of trustworthiness for public information. Exactly the same thing is happening on the internet, but it isn't happening to multi-billion dollar corporations, so the government doesn't care.
Maybe if it were possible to set a password on the thing, making the entire handheld unusable without entering it, and if it could wipe its memory after ten failed password attempts. That would be nice.
And perhaps there should be some kind of "Enterprise Server" that could manage the things remotely, with the ability to set security policies and disable them entirely when they were no longer needed. That would be nice too.
But, sadly, those options don't seem to be there. Otherwise, why wouldn't they have been used?
MSNBC had blurb during their regular news cycle that the campaign was going to sell items on eBay including blackberrys and laptops.
I said to myself.. "surely someone will purge the data off the devices..."
guess not. Well score one for "Open Politics" apparently the McCain campaign had nothing to hide.
open source sub sim. I might start coding again for this. http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/contribute/
Just the numbers and addresses - not the emails!
As a reporter, which are you more interested in, anyway - phone numbers and addresses, or campaign emails? As a user, which would you prefer were erased - your name and address, or your emails?
If they can't even get that right, it's a good thing they lost.
So it wasn't the McCain Campaign, but a staffer. And it wasn't important data, as shown by TFA (which we don't read, of course!).
Darn you McCain!
thought mccain said he was against lobbyists? lol
Like Cindy McCains connection, Umm I need it for a friend!
this type of thing isnt exactly 'rare'
Why does reading /. always give me The Register deja vu?
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
...is what triggered my bullshit detector. This long-time (1972) Republican voted for the Big 'O'.
...Lorenzo / I'm into kinky crustaceans. I just discovered internet praWn.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's what makes it so weird! :)
The emails contain an insider's look at how grassroots operations work, full of scheduling questions and rallying cries for support
No, it showed how an astroturfing operation works.
The difference:
grassroots - A small community organization gets together and starts making signs without any direction from the campaign, just folks doing what they want to do.
astroturf - A campaign sets up what they call a "community organization", except that all that the organization does is what the campaign tells them to do. They make signs designed to look like they're made by normal people but are really designed by pros.
I am officially gone from
That would require sacrificing short-term gain for long-term gain. While that makes it universally implausible, suggesting that the Republican party did this is just silly.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
McCain invented the BlackBerry after all. He should have some sort of uber-secret way to wipe them off.