The Internet is political evil
It's alive!
The evil on the Internet has arisen and walks the Earth. Political skulduggery has embraced the Internet. Finally.
This is the election in which the Internet-for-politics will come into its own. But not by creating informational websites and not even by raising money online. What I am really waiting for is the dirty tricks squads to come out in force.
First shot goes to Barack Obama whos online strategy firm BlueWaterDigital took a mean shot at Hillary with a 1984-invoking YouTube video showing a scary Senator Clinton. Well, the company didn't do it...one of its employees did it without the knowledge or approval of management or by Senator Obama's campaign. Wait, what's that? Sorry, the easter bunny wants to tell me something.
I expect so many more of these...in my book, Privacy Lost, I have a section describing what I call a Digital Watergate and this is a good example. It's just too easy to slur and slander on the Internet. I don't know how they caught this guy, Philip de Vellis, but I suspect that he wanted the credit badly enough to out himself. Don't expect the real professionals to go down this easily.
I will follow this kind of stuff closely. Expect fake websites, fake mailings and slur campaigns on the 'Net starting, say, a day or two before a major primary.
Let the games begin!
Posted on March 22, 2007
