Moe Lane

OK, I admit it: when I heard this morning that Rep. Weiner had supposedly sent a coed a picture of his (encased) genitalia via Twitter, I assumed that somebody was just having his or her little joke by hacking into the man’s account and indicating that Weiner is, as I put it, one of the bigger d*cks in Congress.  But that was before Ace of Spades demolished this argument utterly (H/T: Neil Stevens) (remember, folks [and bad Moe!]: identity theft is a crime), so now I am taking this seriously as a possible scandal, and I found something interesting going on.  Somebody’s scrubbing the recipient’s Internet presence, even as we speak.

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Executive summary: the Democrats are handing out people’s phone numbers to anybody who feels like phone banking for them.  Specifically, they’re handing out people’s full names, city and state, gender, age, political affiliation, and phone number.  Presumably, these would be people who contributed to either OfA or the Democrats generally – which means that these are people with credit cards.  In other words, this is identity-theft softcore pr0n.

Safeguards?  Ha!

This is NOT standard practice for political parties.  When a party has a volunteer work their phone bank, they typically have the phone bank worker sign documentation (paper or digitally), usually stating that they won’t misuse the information to which they are being granted access.  The phone bank typically controls access either with a password account if the system is online, or by physically limiting access to where they have the phone bank if it’s an office style set-up.  You don’t just let any person wander in off the street, rifle through your voter files and make calls on your behalf.

But that’s just what the DNC and OfA are doing here.

True, it’s a cherished tradition in American cultural life that actions should have consequences, but throwing 25 bucks to a plausible-sounding flim-flam man in 2008 probably shouldn’t put you at risk at having your identity stolen in 2010.  Or even having your name and relevant info put in a robocall spammer database.  Although the Democrats clearly disagree; and I bet that nobody involved with this program is in the database…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: If you’re a Democrat who doesn’t see why this is a big deal, then you need to stop and think.  Seriously. This is one time where thinking like a paranoid and a conspiracy theorist would actually be helpful for a change…

Frankly, there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to give this ‘activist’ group any more free publicity for their movie than they’ve already gotten:

The U.S. Chamber filed a lawsuit yesterday against activists who last week staged a fake news conference announcing that the business trade group had changed its policy on climate legislation.

The suit filed in federal district court cites trademark and copyright infringement and said that the Yes Men group staged the press conference stunt for financial gain.

“The defendants are not merry pranksters tweaking the establishment,” Steven Law, the chamber’s chief legal officer and general counsel, said in a statement. “Instead, they deliberately broke the law in order to further commercial interest in their books, movies, and other merchandise.” The movie “The Yes Men Fix the World” opened Friday.

…but if you’re going to rip off an organization by using their logos and name for publicity purposes without paying for the privilege, well, it’s hard to do that without at least a little bit of publicity. The Chamber of Congress’ own post on the subject is here; they’re taking this lawsuit seriously – and given the current political climate, possibly so should the defendants.  I can think of about forty or so ruling-party Congressmen who would just love to do the Chamber of Commerce a favor right now.

Moe Lane

PS: The Electronic Frontier Foundation, of course, thinks that this is a First Amendment issue.  They don’t mention the film at all, because, well… it’s much more convenient for the EFF if everybody keeps thinking of this as a First Amendment issue, and not as commercial identity theft.  I have a lot of sympathy for the EFF’s goals, but these guys that they’re defending shouldn’t have appropriated the CoC’s name and public identity to generate buzz for their film.

Crossposted to RedState.