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How do today’s code rats hide foreign donations?

IP forgery, for one.

The problem being, not every hipster code rat is on the  side of statism — no matter what pop culture or Mac commercials have led you to believe.  Which means that, if they dig, they can see what it is you’re doing, and might even be disposed to illuminate it.

Which, oops!

Of course, there’s a simple explanation here involving an intolerant California Youtube video maker, the Stafford Act, and Bush.

And the FBI is on it.  So.  No more questions, please.

19 Replies to “How do today’s code rats hide foreign donations?”

  1. newrouter says:

    “And the FBI is on it. So. No more questions, please.”

    they’re busy in the benghazi holding pattern no?

  2. Ernst Schreiber says:

    This is why we need firm spending limits and public financing of campaigns.

    /pious liberal blather

  3. eCurmudgeon says:

    I dunno. Since I’m a strong believer in Hanlon’s Razor (“Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence”), I can’t help but wonder if this just some left-over site debugging code or template logic that never got removed once it went into production.

    For the kind of money we’re talking about here, I’d expect a more elegant mechanism such as a custom Apache logging plug-in or a network of proxy anonymizers…

  4. leigh says:

    That’s one of the problems with thinking of oneself as a sooper jeenus. Little details like that will trip them up everytime.

  5. geoffb says:

    a custom Apache logging plug-in or a network of proxy anonymizers

    That would show intent wouldn’t it? And this way they have to old Democratic Party excuse of “We’re just a bit dumb, but our heart’s in the right place.”

  6. dicentra says:

    I dunno. Since I’m a strong believer in Hanlon’s Razor (“Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence”), I can’t help but wonder if this just some left-over site debugging code or template logic that never got removed once it went into production.

    We’re talking about Chicago Politicians. Why on earth wouldn’t you reverse that?

    The dextrosphere pointed out the “hole” in the credit-card donation page back in 2008, but it was not fixed or reported. People were donating $5 in the name of Adolf Hitler and Mickey Mouse, from overseas and also using multiple, fake addresses for the same credit card. The only way that could happen is if the credit-card verification thingie were deliberately disabled, so that it wouldn’t flag a mismatch between the card number and its billing address info (not to mention the CVV number; how many sites don’t require that these days?)

    They’ve got auditors, don’t they? People who are required to check through the records? They didn’t notice all the $5 donations from fictional characters and dead dictators?

    How on earth can you suspect that they wouldn’t do such a thing, knowing that the MBM would keep mum for them? The O-ministration is full of sociopaths; this is a walk in the park for them.

  7. exanter says:

    eCurmdgeon, Hanlon’s razor may explain maydescribe the ip thing (still, it’s out-of-your-way dumb even then), but it sure as hell doesn’t explain the whole bullshit “we have our own extra-speshul verification process” that they claim for not using the CVV for verification. Oh wait, it may “scare away” some small crooks^H^H^H^H^H^H donors.
    Yeah, that’s the ticket. Worked in Illinois, anyways.

  8. Ernst Schreiber says:

    If the dead can vote, why shouldn’t they be allowed to donate as well?

    The Chicago Way baby!

  9. jrd says:

    If you can build the site you can trouble shoot for something this easy to spot. To me the lack of elegance explains a lot. This was spotted a while ago and there were no consequences – these people clearly see themselves above the law, having already rationalized the ethical & moral dilemma. Sad thing is this story is going to get buried because the GOP wants to cautiously remain above the fray and views raising the larger issues as a distraction ( Obama is a good, though incompetent dunce). Obviously this is more interesting than how fast Ryan can run a mile as it was when compared to Palins trash. My point is that incompetence has little to do with it. Being brazen is the point. Let’s skip the handwringing and just assume most of Obama’s haul is foreign.

  10. leigh says:

    Vote early and vote often, Ernst.

  11. Ernst Schreiber says:

    It’s not the voting leigh, it’s the counting.

    Or did you miss the part of Key Largo.

  12. leigh says:

    I thought it was Stalin or Lenin who said that?

  13. Ernst Schreiber says:

    E.G.R., as Johnny Rocco, has a great line about counting the votes and keeping on counting the votes until the count came out right.

  14. geoffb says:

    Someone must be beta testing the 2nd term of Obama at WOW. Absolute beginners laying waste to entire regions.

    Ah well, how about a song.

  15. geoffb says:

    Candidates need only publicly report campaign contributions over $200. For donations between $50 and $200 (the average donation in Obama’s huge September haul was $53), candidates are simply required to make an effort to obtain accurate identifying information—information they aren’t required to report.

    Mary Biskup of Missouri appeared to give more than $170,000 in small donations to the 2008 Obama campaign. Yet Biskup said she never gave any money to the campaign. Some other contributor gave the donations using her name, without her knowledge. (The Obama campaign explained to the Post that it caught the donations and returned them.)

    Returned them to who?

  16. beemoe says:

    lol at the political imagery, but that WOW thing actually sounds like fun, something that game seems to have forgotten.

  17. Squid says:

    If any of you haven’t read Neal Stephenson’s Reamde yet, you really should. It’s a rollicking good time; much closer to Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon than to his more ponderous offerings. It has MMORPGs and survivalists — what more could you ask for?

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