Slashdot Mirror
Dirty Tricks? Look-Alike Websites Lure Congressional Donors
First time accepted submitter AdamnSelene writes "Forbes reports on a National Republican Congressional Committee sanctioned campaign worthy of the NSA: fake candidate websites that use identical or similar pictures and color schemes to solicit donations to defeat the Democratic candidate. The Tampa Bay Times reports that the NRCC initially refused to refund the contribution from a Tampa Bay doctor who caught onto the scam, and he had to contact his credit card company to challenge the charges. The National Journal reports that the NRCC-sponsored effort may run afoul of Federal Election Commission regulations, though it expects that the bipartisan FEC will be toothless when it comes to enforcement. However, I have to wonder whether this is finally a good enough reason to use the DMCA and file take-down notices against the faux websites. Perhaps the candidates could solve this themselves, and get a judgement for copyright infringement so absurdly large that it puts the NRCC out of business?" Some sites along these lines might be dirtier than the ones here illustrated, which seem to fit pretty well into the broad world of snarky and cutting political ads; Dr. Ray Bellamy, the Tampa Bay donor mentioned above, intended to give money to candidate Alex Sink, but evidently didn't notice this line in bold print, just above the "Donate" button: "Make a contribution today to help defeat Alex Sink and candidates like her." Note that, as the Tampa Bay Times' article mentions, this kind of site isn't limited to Republicans, either.
At least the Slashdot beta site fooled no-one.
Has anyone created a website like the classic version of Slashdot that people are migrating to? I keep getting forced into the beta version when I come here. Where will everyone be going once this beta goes live?
If it can be shown that was your intent, you are committing fraud too. Enjoy your stay in club-fed.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The "jollyforcongress.com" site: (a) doesn't ask for money, (b) immediately redirects to a page that has "floridadems" in the URL, and (c) looks nothing like Jolly's actual campaign site. So please stop pretending there's some kind of equivalence here. There isn't.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Another poster points out that there's a sucker born every minute. The ultimate object in politics is to WIN. Stop acting surprised if one party or another engages in devious activity to reach that goal. It's been happening for thousands of years. It's never going to stop. Wash away your political views and you'll see they all do it, to one degree or another. Our perceptions of who's doing it 'more' are a major part of how we see the world, politically.
1. Massively under-fund education 2. Take advantage of the under-educated masses 3. Profit
If it can be shown that was your intent, you are committing fraud too. Enjoy your stay in club-fed.
Except that the final decision on a charge back is made by the bank issuing the card. They have EVERY reason to keep their customer happy, and NO reason to give a crap about the merchant. The merchant has little recourse unless the card was either physically swiped and a signature provided, or they can show confirmation of delivery of goods at the customer's billing address. In this case, they have neither.
If you are going to whip out the credit card to spend a little money, take a little time to read all the text on the page. It was in large type that it was a donation to defeat the candidate. How many times in the past have we seen cute, cleaver and obscene assaults on congressional candidates on the Internet? Just google Santorum.
If you like your fake congressional candidate website, you can keep your fake congressional candidate website. Its political speech.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Forbes reports on a National Republican Congressional Committee sanctioned campaign worthy of the NSA
I get that we don't like the NSA around here, but why are we bringing it up when discussing an article that has nothing to do with anything the NSA does? What's the thinking process? "Hrm, this scam is slimy. Oh hey! The NSA is slimy too!"
Am I missing something?
There is a not so small difference between parody and impersonation. The illegal practice here is not to imitate what someone else did. What's illegal about it is the intent. It's not meant as a parody, to showcase some fallacies or shortcomings of the person or organization parodied, or to make fun of them. It's meant as impersonation to make people believe that they are who they are impersonating.
The "basic" intent may be the same in both, parody and impersonation. The intent may in both cases be to harm the reputation of a person or organization, or to impede their ability to gather supporters. The difference is that the parody tries to convince, the impersonation tries to trick.
Convincing people with arguments, i.e. a parody, that someone is a "bad person" is a good thing, because it leaves the decision whether they want to believe the parodist to the person being addressed. Impersonating does the same by tricking people who want to support someone into doing the opposite. I guess it ain't hard to see why this is not a "morally ok" (and hopefully not legally ok, either) practice.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
From the summary: 'Dr. Ray Bellamy, the Tampa Bay donor mentioned above, intended to give money to candidate Alex Sink, but evidently didn't notice this line in bold print, just above the "Donate" button: "Make a contribution today to help defeat Alex Sink and candidates like her."'
Is this how you want your doctor reading the physicians desk reference?
If you look at the web site or the photos in the article it's pretty hard to miss that one is contributing to "help defeat Alex Sink."
Yep, let's start protecting ourselves from more than just the fine print. Let's protect ourselves from the bolded headlines also. A little reading comprehension may have helped the good doctor realize just what he was doing.
I speaking from a purely legal standpoint, not the likely outcome. you intended to commit fraud, just as the people managing the webpage are. This is 2014. Is the '2 wrongs make a right' mandate now in effect and i missed the memo that somehow justifiable wrong is ok now?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
For the record i do think what they were doing wrong and should be slapped down for it. I am just disagreeing with using the 'copyright angle' to deal with it, as its a bad direction to take, with long term bad consequences for the concept of free-speech.
Also i didn't mean to say they were engaging in parody, just that political parody will be one of the casualties if we go down this road. My fault if i didn't make that clear enough.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Don't you freedom-loving libertarians love this kind of shit?
No, fraud is typically near the top of the list of the things libertarians don't like. I would wager in fact that a lot of spittle has been hurled on the subject of fraud and how to prevent it in a libertarian society.
What I think is particularly interesting about this example is not that it is outright fraud, but that the people perpetrating it think they can do so because they are Republicans and the victims are Democrats. If they had instead been "parodying" a big non-profit like Red Cross or World Wildlife Fund, I don't think there would be any doubt that it was intentional fraud.
Oh, you poor, poor Christians. Whatever will you do when we win the war on Christmas, and conifers are entirely outlawed, and you can't decorate your pagan trees anymore?
How about phishing victims?
Let's look at the original site in the screenshot because they have changed it since this story broke.
http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/...
1) It uses the exact same color scheme as the real site
2) There is really just one word that reveals the true intention: "defeat" in large type that is under the main headline. Skim-reading could easily miss this word.
3) If you miss that word, most all the other text on the site is written to be confusing and ambiguous. It doesn't say "Stop Alex Sink" it says "Alex Sink, Congress". Why do you think they did that?
4)TFS is wrong, that word "defeat" is in a subtitle below the header and off to the right, nowhere near any button.
Sure this guy was dumb, or maybe going to fast and not paying attention to who he was donating to. But the NRCC clearly intended it to be confused with the real site. This is no different than posting an Ebay phishing site. Dont be quick to judge when your mom or grandpa or some other person could have made the same mistake.
Was this guy an idiot? Yes.
Is the NRCC committing fraud? Yes.
Democrats have used fake websites, and their functionality depended on the purpose. Of course they have done more than that too, including running fake candidates.
Dems who created fake Tea Party candidates arraigned in Michigan
Reid Campaign Targets Angle Supporters With Phishing Website
Harry Reid’s campaign, however, took the code from the prior Angle website and launched a website called “TheRealSharronAngle.com.” The fake website was what, in internet terminology, is called spoofing, where a seemingly real website is created, usually to obtain information under false pretenses (frequently referred to as “phishing”). ...
But the reality is that by creating a spoofed website with the contact and volunteer functions operable, the Reid campaign sought to obtain personally identifiable information about Angle supporters. At a minimum, such information about Angle supporters would have been gathered under false pretenses.
The phishing function also would have been disruptive to the Angle campaign because people who thought they had volunteered for the Angle campaign never would have been contacted to help out because they had, in fact, been tricked.
Regardless of whether the Reid campaign’s spoofing and phishing attempt was criminal, it was sleazy.
Is Reid Campaign Hiding Its Activities To Evade Campaign Finance Laws?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
How can you tell a real one from a fake one? Donating to one or the other will give the same results. You're gonna get screwed either way.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
They have changed it since the story broke (looks like they added more disclaimers). You need to go by the screenshots or try the wayback machine maybe.
Also this isnt the only site: http://swampland.time.com/2014... There are at least 15 others.
What I think is particularly interesting is that people think this is the behavior of just one political party.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Funny how you didn't note that Reid's campaign turned off the donate function. And there is no evidence that Reid's fake site actually collected any PII. The author just assumed it did because the form submit button worked. As a slashdotter, you should know better than to accept that as proof. Terrible, untrustworthy links you got there too. Please learn to link to at least semi-neutral sources.
Let's see what actually following your evidence of equivalency provides:
1) First link, National Review. Terribly partisan but OK, will verify what it says. And truly looks like election fraud. Fair enough there were other sources on this incident -- many more recent ones too. The people responsible have been arrested, gone to trial and have been been sentenced. (Google is your friend). Regardless this is off-topic. You are comparing local election fraud to national. Local and national politics have little to do with each other and the national parties that local politicians identify with have no bearing to local issues. Doesn't matter if someone is pro choice or pro life when their job is to make sure the garbage is picked up and the roads are plowed when it snows. Or perhaps you were saying we should arrest the chairman of the NRCC? Sounds good.
2) What the crap is this blog? The story says he didnt collect money, and has no proof of collecintg PII. No other sources. The story you link also shows technical ignorance about HTML forms. The site has a clear political slant (right in it's header).
3 HotAir, what a waste. Many of the links go back to your second blog link. But at least HotAir links to Politico. Which, despite originally being started by the GOP, is good enough as a source.
Politico states: http://www.politico.com/news/s...
After she won the June 8 primary, Angle gave her actual website a well-publicized facelift and reworded many of her positions on issues including Social Security and Second Amendment rights — statements that as written might have aided Angle in the primary, but would likely be a liability in the general election.
Funny. That actually sounds like what Reid's campaign was saying.
Hall said the website did not have any mechanism to collect the e-mail addresses, adding: “If someone entered data, it did not go anywhere.”
Oops.
Let's check the score:
Election fraud unrelated to fake websites: 1 (to be fair will give your this one)
Democrat funded sites that collect information: 0
Number of NRCC sites that actually collect information: 16
Number of NRCC sites that actually collect donations: 16
Number of on-topic and credible links you provided: 0/3
The GP did however hit the nail on the head when he said the people who engage in this behaviour see themselves as victims. Also from the distant vantage point of Australia it does seem to me that this sort of thing is more typical of the right-wing than the left in the US, perhaps that's because from this far away the US right-wing is seen thru the prism of it's god awful mouthpiece - Fox news? Having said that the level of vitriol and misinformation in US political advertising from all sides is disheartening, the bland acceptance of this behaviour by the free press is just downright dangerous.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
There are equivalencies to be made across the parties. This is not one of them.
Here in Canada we seem to be going to the American system of elections and it is the right wing Conservative Party that is leading the way with attack ads, dirty tricks, now gutting the election officials because they feel being called out every time they break the law is partisan even though it is them breaking or skimming the edge of the law.
So far the center and left have resisted dropping to the same level but as it has been shown that attack ads do work. even if total lies as it seems to be human to pay more attention to bad stuff I'm sure the center and left will be doing the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism