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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 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...
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 ).
The cure is to destroy devices, which are trivially cheap, instead of selling them.
Or, since this is a blackberry, use the built-in, server-controlled guaranteed wipe function before selling them.
Or, use your blackberry server to encrypt the device content with AES, and force the user to have a strong password.
See how easy things are with blackberries? But you do have to click a few options.
Idiots.
Ha, more like...
Me: Is your toilet running?
Joe: Why, yes!
Me: Better hire an actual plumber to fix it.
I agree with you to a point. I think the moment he started seeking the lime light by going on the talk shows, and showing up at rallies, he invited it upon himself.
Mid-Eastern Pennsylvania Gaming Convention
It also didn't help that as they dug, they started to find connections to McCain and his campaign, almost as if he'd been planted there just to create an issue where McCain could routinely criticize Obama over what amounted to nothing.
Sorry, but when you become a campaign slogan and start doing interviews because you asked a presidential candidate a question that doesn't actually make sense (saying that you're looking at buying a business and suddenly having an annual salary WAY above average for people in that line of work, and then trying to argue you'd only be doing moderately well is, to say the least, stretching the bounds of believability), you forfeit your right to be just another anonymous face in the crowd. that's just how it works.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
You know,
If Joe actually WAS a plumber, as he said he was, he wouldn't have taken so much heat.
If Joe actually WAS in a position to take over his boss's business, he wouldn't have taken so much heat.
If Joe's boss's company actually MADE as much profit as he said id did each year, he wouldn't have taken so much heat.
All in all, he made up a bunch of stuff to pretend to be in the tiny portion of the population that Obama's plan might not be good for.
I think the one not so subtle message is: don't lie your ass off trying to 'nail' someone with a question when you have a ton of cameras pointed at you.
Simply for engaging the candidate in a discussion, he was investigated by the media. That they found some weirdnesses does not make it OK.
I could be wrong, but wasn't it the fact that John McCain brought him up over and over again in the debate, and attempted to use him as a model of the "average American" that caused him to be investigated so heavily? It was less that he asked the candidate a difficult question, and more that McCain's camp was so eager to use him for their own ends. --Jimmy