Not Just Beautiful

Elegant, deliciously elegant. COMPLETE OWNAGE: John McCain Myspace Page Hacked.

The bozos known as people "formerly employed by the McCain campaign". Copied NewsVine Founder and CEO Mike Davidson template. Mr. Davidson had released the template to the public with the request that he be given credit. Not only did they not give credit, they LINKED IMAGES BACK TO HIS SERVER AND SUCKED UP HIS BANDWIDTH.

The authoritarian mind is so utterly self centred that it has no conceptual tools for dealing with the network.

Which is why a major Presidential candidate from the right would employ people who didn't understand how vulnerable they were.

Which is why Presidential adviser Karl Rove and other White House staff used Republican party servers and personal email accounts to send 95% of their emails. The justification is worth its weight in gold.

"We just got a bit lazy," said one aide. "We knew E-mails could be subpoenaed. We saw that with the Clintons but I don't think anybody saw that we were doing anything wrong."

They may have GOT lazy, but they started out stupid. Or as Josh Marshall suggests

"they can’t have even the vaguest claim to shielding those communications behind executive privilege.”

For minds steeped in hierarchy and control, networks and open systems are incomprehensible and frightening, which is why they try to close them down and why, when they do use them, they get it so badly wrong.

Good.

Comments

[Branedy]

Wouldn't it be great to finally get a politician that 'gets' the net?

[Earl Mardle]

You bet. I think Gore does, and Howard dean gets grassroots networking and distributed power sources, but nobody I can think of actually wades in and feels at home.

And I live in Australia where the pols think they can control it by local legislation.

Ack Thbbptptp!

[Branedy]

Here in Ireland all the political parties now have web sites, some are Blogging and doing podcasts, WOW.

[Jon Husband]

No argument from me, of course.

I wonder what (not if) vehicles the PTB will use to try to legislate and monitor control. The net neutrality toing-and-froing seems to be the key issue for now, and of course the telcos and PTB are glad of each others' sympathy and support, but there will be subsequent attempts, of that I have no doubt.

I suspect that big media will coopt much of what was once known as blogging, including much of the political blogging. the bright lights will remain as rare as truly effective investigative journalists have been, but there will be larger and more easily-reached audiences. But the spin applied will be (already is) massive, and propaganda as an art and science is likely to reach new heights .. humans being humans, wot ?