Gov’s campaigners caught in online smear campaign

It was only a matter or time.

Rich Miller writes today someone using an Internet connection belonging to the Blagojevich campaign was making anonymous comments on his blog.

For example, a commenter using the Blago campaign’s Internet connection claimed to be a supporter of GOP gubernatorial candidate Jim Oberweis, who criticized “gay loving, gun hating, tax raising insider Judy Baar Topinka, who is being investigated by the feds to steal this election.”

Nixon’s campaign workers had a term for this kind of activity: “ratfucking.” It’s as old as sin and politics, but it’s always entertaining to catch someone in the act.

Another anonymous comment from this IP address criticized a reporter as a “talentless hack” and a “bottom feeder who hasn’t done a worthwhile bit of journalism in his life.”

All Rich did was track the commenter’s IP address. Most people who comment on blogs don’t realize that some blogging systems like Word Press allow the site’s administrator to track the people who leave comments, if not by name by their unique locations on the network. I can do it, so can Rich. It’s a very useful tool for stopping spam and identifying trolls.

My own policy is to not pay any attention to IP addresses unless I’m forced to. One, more than one person uses the same computer, making it hard to determine whether someone is playing games or not. Two, some people read my site at work, and I don’t want their bosses to find out. Three: I want people to read and comment, and to do so anonymously if they wish.

In other words: Publicizing my commenter’s IP addresses is not something I’d normally do.

But I agree with Rich about this case. The volume of these specific comments suggests some deliberate effort to affect the campaign for governor. Rich has been using Word Press for about a week. Before, he was using Blogger, which didn’t allow for IP tracking by blog administrators. How many comments to his old site were efforts to “ratfuck” the campaign?

I’m worried about something else, and it’s something I would have warned Rich about it had I known in advance: Prepare for subpoenas for records on your commenter’s IP addresses. Politicians use the courts against each other, and they don’t care one whit whether they have to use to Constitution as toilet paper to get what they want. I can see U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald going on a fishing expidition at Rich Miller’s expense.

Blagojevich,dirty tricks,IP addresses,blogs,comments,Word Press