Well, our shiny metallic friends (and future overlords) can’t cast a ballot just yet, but you’ve got to love a story that starts off like this:
If Texas congressman Ron Paul is elected president in 2008, he may be the first leader of the free world put into power with the help of a global network of hacked PCs spewing spam, according to computer-security researchers who’ve analyzed a recent flurry of e-mail supporting the long-shot Republican candidate.
Sarah Lai Stirland’s Wired article has some excellent details about the spam-for-Paul effort, of which the actual campaign seems to have no knowledge (and which they would have been crazy to approve if they had):
Some participants in the online political world have long suspected Paul’s technically sophisticated fan base of manipulating online tools and polls to boost the appearance of a wide base of support. But the UAB analysis is the first to document any internet shenanigans.
The finding is significant, because Paul’s online support — as gauged by blog mentions, friends on social-networking sites such as MySpace and popularity in online polls — has garnered him wide mainstream print and television coverage, despite his relatively poor performance in offline polling.
Ron Paul supporters are the most persistent/relentless/verging-on-annoying online activists I’ve seen in quite a while (it ain’t for nothin’ that they’ve been banned from certain conservative blogs), but this new endeavour pushes things just a bit too far. Backlash alert! Thanks to tPrez for the initial tip.
– cpd
November 1st, 2007
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The latest of Internet politics legend Alan Rosenblatt’s Internet Advocacy Roundtables covered free online advocacy tools, particularly those available to nonprofits. We heard a lot about the usual suspects — Google Apps, MySpace and Facebook, YouTube, Drupal and Joomla — but I thought the most valuable resource presented that afternoon was Center for American Progress web guru Annie Schutte’s list of various tools for presenting advocacy information online. Her index covers mapping applications, timeline generators, chart and graph creators and more — the kind of non-sexy technologies that actually help get a message across in a way that words alone can’t. I.e., they have the potential to be damn useful. Joe Bob says, check it out. Update: Alan’s pulled together a Google doc (one of those free tools…) that includes Annie’s list, plus a lot more resources suggested during the panel.
One caveat that came up many times during the presentation: just because a tool is free, doesn’t mean it’s actually free. You’ll pay in time, at the very least, and open-source software usually requires a mechanic to tinker with it before it’ll run. You have been warned.
– cpd
November 1st, 2007
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Welcome back — sorry about the hiatus. Just to update you guys, the new e.politics bunker is now purchased and vast renovations have begun that will soon turn it into a vital nerve center for the observation of online politics (i.e., I’m getting it painted). The fact that someone of my ilk has been allowed to buy property of any kind should fundamentally shake your confidence in the American capitalist system, but that’s a question for that another time.
Now that that that whole process is over and I’ve (mostly) sobered up, it’s time for a fresh batch of e.politics. New articles in three…two…one….
– cpd
November 1st, 2007
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