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.
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.
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.
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 ----
The ultimate object in politics is to WIN.
And in the end, what does that get you? What do you "Win"? When you are dead and gone, what difference will any of it make?
The world today sees "enemies" in far too many places. Our enemies are across the field in a football stadium, applying for the same job we want, working at a competing company, immigrating to our towns or just members of a different political party.
And the truth is that real enemies, those that want to see you dead, benefit from you seeing everyone as an enemy. When you see most everyone as an enemy you have far fewer friends. You fail to see what that you have far more in common with your perceived enemy than those things that make you see a Democrat or Republican or Libertarian as an enemy.
The truth is that there is a difference between an enemy and an opponent, between those that want to destroy you and those that you will have to live with and cooperate with once the football game, job interview, work day, naturalization ceremony or political campaign is over. This country was founded on the idea that we could disagree, put it to a vote and still live peaceably with each other once the decision has been made.
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.
No one is really surprised by this, but we can be disappointed. And we can demand better, that those that want our votes show us that they can be trusted to act in a decent and ethical manner most of the time. We can't expect perfection but we can ask that the ultimate object in politics is to govern well and honorably.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
It would be good for people to be careful, but in our capitalist society it is more important to make transactions as fluid as possible. For instance, can you imagine what it would be like if you went to the store and had to read every can of beef soup because some company might have put rat in it to save money. Sure, this is an extreme example but we have laws about transparency in commerce not to protect consumers, but to maximize the velocity of money through high consumer confidence.
There are certain transactions that have such a high fraud rate and are are of little economic value that the common sense approach is just to avoid them. Door to door magazine sales, services that claim to give you your credit rating every month, donations over the phone, most extended warranties, have so much find print or or just outright fraudulent that they have killed what could have been a reasonable market model.
For instance, I liked Best Buy but stopped shopping there because of the stories of employees losing their job because of not selling extended warranties. I don't buy them most of the time, and did not want the guild. Likewise, I no longer give donations over the phone because of substantiated reports that in the some cases the firm doing the collecting takes a majority cut, leaving little for the charity. I know many who do the same. These firms are put in danger because some are not on the up and up.
So here the problem. For an individual point of view, selling an selling an iPad box for $200 is a great profit margin. From the point of view of an economy that needs to push tablets to grow, it is not so great. From the point of view of a narcissistic committee who sees their donations plummeting, setting up a misleading, though totaly legal, and the idiots who donate deserve to be robbed website, is a good idea. But from the point of view of nation who wants to make donating to public candidates as easy and painless as possible it is bad.
Like donations to the fire department fund that do not benefit the firefighters, this kind of misdirection is going to hurt the entire political donation industry. Already if one is going to be so foolish as to make a donation over the phone, one has a checklist of 20 items to go through. Pretty soon making a donation over the internet is going to be same hassle, which means it will not happen. Of couse, when most of your contributions come from a few rich corporations and not the grass root this does not matte.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
No. It was founded on the idea that if you couldn't live with it, you could go west and start a new place (or even live by yourself in a cabin somewhere). But the West is full now, and America is running into the same problems as everyone else: people actually have to reach a livable compromise. And it's failing economically, politically and culturally, as that same never give up -spirit that once inspired pioneers against the elements now fuels petty tribalism by sending people against other equally determined people.
America can't even pass a budget without turning it into a ridiculous drama, and a lot of people actually encourage it precisely for the harm it causes ("starve the beast"). The end result will be another civil war, collapse or a total cultural reform. Something's gotta give.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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
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.
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