Democratic Underground - Over on the RW Side, Someone Is Trying to Stir Up Shit Between Ron Paul & Guiliani

Anyone see this Wired article?

'Criminal' Botnet Stumps for Ron Paul, Researchers Allege

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.

The spamming allegations are based on a slew of e-mails captured by contributors to the university's Spam Data Mining for Law Enforcement Applications project, a research venture that receives 2.5 million spam messages a day, and selects about 100,000 a week for analysis. The project receives its spam from other researchers with ties to ISPs, and in some cases from "trap" addresses that have never been used for any other purpose.

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/10/paul_bot

Now, you go to YouTube, and there is a video accusing the author of posting to Guiliani's forum, looking for payment.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=U5LgUiz2mBA

I think it's pretty interesting. I've been saying that Ron Paul is the RW equivalent of Howard Dean's 2004 run and, IMO, these spammers are doing what someone was paid to do to make Dean and his gang look bad in 2004: make constant phone calls in the middle of the night.

Now, you look at the video re: the Guiliani forum and you know ... would a Wired writer really be stupid enough?

Fun shit.

Over on the RW Side, Someone Is Trying to Stir Up Shit Between Ron Paul & Guiliani [View All]