Experts predict internet-based dirty tricks campaigns

The web may not deserve its reputation as a great democratic tool, security experts say. They predict voters will increasingly be targeted by internet-based dirty tricks campaigns, and that the perpetrators will find it easier to cover their tracks.

While politicians have been quick to embrace the internet as an enabler for democracy, established security threats like spam emails and botnets – collections of "zombie" computers remotely controlled by hackers – all open new avenues for fraudulent campaigning. So said experts at an e-crime summit at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania last week.

Dirty tricks are not new. On US election day in 2002, the lines of a "get-out-the-voters"
phone campaign sponsored by the New Hampshire Democratic Party were clogged by prank calls. In the 2006 election, 14000 Latino voters in Orange County, California, received letters telling them it was illegal for immigrants to vote.

But in those cases the Republican Party members and supporters were traced and either charged or named in the press. Online dirty tricks will be much less easy to detect, security researchers say.


http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn12754

(more examples in article)

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Early awareness is a good thing.

As Nov 2008 approaches expect to see huge numbers of right wing propaganda in your inbox as foolish but innocent right wing friends forward all sorts of stuff to you. Near the end of 2004 I was getting 2-3 a day about Kerry.

Surely we have enough writing talent right here in DU to slander every Republican candidate up, down, and sideways.

I write essays and editorials which are forwarded by this group to who knows how many others. Difference between me and the freepers is I give sources and backup my claims.