It’s called political influence. A politician doesn’t like what is being said about them, so in fighting back he abuses his authority. What happens in this story would of gotten lambasted in the US, and had numerous parties refusing to take part. But in Canada if a site spoofs/degrades a politician and they have power, they can do something about it. They can remove it from the DNS registry. I can’t say enough about how disgusted I am about this abuse of power.
Campaign gets tangled in website spoof
It was all the buzz in official Ottawa yesterday — a hilarious political whodunit in this age of websites, platforms and templates.
Overnight, someone built a website spoofing Liberal leadership candidate Joe Volpe and his acceptance of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from children, including the 11-year-old twins of a former vice-president of a generic drug company.
By early yesterday afternoon, the Volpe team had the website pulled down.
It was called youthforvolpe.ca and asked children to donate $5,400 and indicate whether the credit card being used is “mommy’s or daddy’s. . . .”
It also included testimonials, and under the heading, “How can you help,” it said: “Want to support Joe, but don’t know if you can? Talk to your parents, you might have already done your part.”
Early yesterday, the website address was flying into the inboxes of politicians, political staffers, journalists and even the strategists from other leadership campaigns.
Mr. Volpe’s campaign had the site shut down without knowing, it seems, who put it up: “Hi Everyone,” wrote Brenden Johnstone, who is with the Volpe campaign, in an e-mail to other leadership campaigns. “There has been concern about how the issue of the Volpe donations was reflecting on the leadership race.
“My Office has had the website suspended through CIRA [Canadian Internet Registration Authority] and CDNS [Canadian Domain Name Services] and it will be down as soon as 6 p.m. I think the issue with the website has been dealt with. . . .”
At one point, the Michael Ignatieff campaign’s Quebec youth director, Marc-André Gendron, was suspected because the website was similar to other political sites he had created. Mr. Gendron denied any involvement, pointing out that one of the testimonials was from two children named Chris and Toby Aggarwal. As it turns out, Sachin Aggarwal is the Ignatieff campaign’s director of operations.
“. . . It strikes me as an effort to frame us,” a senior Ignatieff strategist said
Tags: Crime, Interesting, Internet, Politics
