Steve Gillard, in one of the "after action reports" on the Hackett campaign wrote this,
"These are new tools and we're learning how to harness them each day. There isn't even a detailed essay on how to harness online resources for a campaign, much less a book. We are doing this on the fly."...
http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2005/08/nine-months-later.html
And he is exactly right. I want to write and raise a warning flag about certain aspects of the new model that most may not think about, but could be critical in future races.
One of the tools that will be exploited is the near instantaneous communications created by the Internet. Not just public posts on blogs, but email, instant messaging, writing and easily distributing position papers or political strategy, Voice over IP, etc...all the current technologies that shrink distances and make research so easy.
And here is the danger.
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Unthinking use of the Internet for those activities can cause problems; due to the very nature of the Internet.
What do I mean?
Well, leaving the area of political activism, its time to talk about something most are not aware. Unlike telephone calls, or land mail, Internet communications are inherently insecure. It is like every email you send, every web page you look at, every file you download, every IM message you post....is written on the back of a post card. And like a postcard, if you can insert yourself , either technically or through bribery/corruption, in the long, circuitous path of that communication, you can read it with ease. And email messages just don't vanish when you read them. They can hang around ISP servers for months. Logs can show what web sites you look at, what files you down load, what you said in that chat room.
But isn't doing that against the law? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Depends on the circumstances. Plus, both website and ISP privacy policies do not have any legal weight, they can be changed tomorrow to say anything.
Let's remember the past history of the Young GOPers of the Nixon, Bush I era. Remember the dirty tricks of stealing letterhead and spoofing press releases or confidential letters. Rove, etc... have boasted of doing the same and faking the time/place of opposition rallies. The whole bag of "harmless" fun. Well, with email and computers its 10 times easier to spoof press releases to the media, or fake an embarrassing email that can be released to sympathetic outlets/blogs days before an election. And such spoofing can be done leaving no tracks.
Aside from communications, files on disks are passed around offices, laptops are used to write strategy or compile donors lists...would such information be valuable to the opposition? Remember the disk found in the Washington park that had White House plans to sell the war? Laptops can disappear out of cars, CDs can be removed from desktops, wireless Internet connections can be sniffed from across the street.
Aren't you being un-necessarily paranoid?
Am I? Let's look at what we are trying to do. Unseat a corrupt political machine that took years and bundles of money to build. Its finally making some solid returns on investments; funneling millions and billions of public dollars into private pockets. Do you think they are going to stand by and let a few guys with keyboards possibly wreck all that work, especially if they can get on the inside and watch what they are doing? Are they above passing $2000 bucks (pocket change) to a late night shift ISP tech to copy emails between campaign workers, boost a laptop out of a car, or go through a campaign headquarters as a volunteer- grabbing disks laying around?
If you think that's not possible, if not likely, then you are being terribly naive.
In fact, based on the fundraising success of the Hackett campaign and the back channel co-ordination between bloggers, campaign staff, etc. it required (so much so that the RNC had to pump hundreds of thousands of dollars into a safe district/off year election); I would not be surprised if "inquires" have not been made by certain parties about the difficulty of monitoring the Internet activity of Kos, Steve Gillard, Atrios...etc... That the same may be in the works for the campaign staff of a candidate running against a bought and paid for Congressman on the Energy, Commerce, or Defense Committees.
Where do you think all that inside campaign info that suddenly appears in the press comes from? Not all of it is from rummaging through the dumpster in the back.
What to do?
There are effective methods, techniques, and free/low cost programs that cut down on the possible exposure that comes with using the Internet for communications.. Some are built in to most email clients or operating systems. Some are free programs. All of them take practice and effort to use. All of them require thought to balance data security with convenience. Is it worth it? Do you rely on just one lock on your door or several? Is it worth the 10-20 extra seconds to use that dead bolt on your apartment door to secure your old clothes, paperbacks, and computer? Then why isn't it worth the 10-20 extra seconds to secure that email which details the success you are having fundraising in a district?
This is not the time or place to start listing HowTos but with the new Political Process and the Internet being created, and with the stakes so high in the 2006 and 2008 elections, now is the time to think about how to overcome the weaknesses of using the Internet for internal communications in preparation for 2006 and 2008. Build it into the process now, not tacked on after its too late.
Just a few thoughts for those active in creating the New Politics.
Yours-
Ridge