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| Saint Stephen on Robogate |
Yesterday Pat Martin said on CBC that the Conservatives were "laying the foundation for throwing some kid under the bus," as a result of the massive conspiracy that is Robogate. Well, it didn't take long did it? Look here to see the scapegoat that the Conservatives have targeted to take the fall. I mean, I am pretty cynical but even I was surprised by the speed at which they found some foolish Conservative lackey on which to attempt to put the blame. I really have to wonder how many times the CPC can attempt to do blame some pion before the majority of people actually start to catch on.
This one surely won't wash with anyone who is not blindly partisan or has some commonsense. Robogate took a great deal of effort and organization from many ridings to be effective. Since only known Liberal and NDP supporters received phone calls in a wide variety of ridings, there had to have been a central organizing group that got these lists in order to make the calls. It is simply inconceivable that any one person made this happen, particularly a lackey like the one that they have targeted. It is now clear that on more than one occasion the CPC has engaged in large-scale organized efforts to undermine the democratic process. Meanwhile, as a commentator on my last post pointed out, Conservative bloggers, faced with their party being a criminal, anti-democratic organization, are desperately trying to suggest that the Liberals or NDP must be behind this conspiracy because Saint Stephen can do no wrong.
How long will the centre hold?
6 comments:
It's possible that one person was responsible, as long as one person had access to:
-the national database; and,
-a Racknine client-account.
Doesn't mean no one else knew about it, or helped, but it is technically possible.
The events are a bit mysterious: the person(s) responsible knew enough to use a disposable cell phone, but not enough to realize that it would be easy to trace the calls back to Racknine AND their client-account. Weird.
The problem is, Anonymous, that no such "national database" is supposed to exist and if it does exist, only those at the highest level of the CPC would have access to it.
It's the conservative party's supporter database. All parties have their own versions. Every street address in Canada is in there. Then they add information about who (might) live there based on doorknocking. The primary aim is to identify your supporters, so you can follow-up with them to get out the vote, another aim is to catalogue your opponents' supporters (most easily by noting lawn signs). Hundreds of people would have access to some of the data, and dozens to all of it.
On further reflection, however, the actual toughest part of this thing to pull off alone was the voice recording itself. I heard it on CBC and it was very well done, very authentic sounding (and done in english and french). So this person would have had to hire voice people to read a script too. Possible, but unlikely, to have been arranged in secret.
Before the Conservatives brought in their constituent database, CIMS, they were so happy and excited to talk to everyone about how great it was going to be and that their party was embracing the information age.
Since the database got up and running, they've refused to say word one about it. One might wonder if they think Canadians would be disturbed the extent of the party's tracking of personal details. Good thing for the Conservatives that political parties have special exemptions for privacy legislation.
Someone at Dr. Dawg's pointed out that each call was tailored to the person's location, which would probably require a database and maybe a lot of time to implement. The Conservatives have a database which is a CMIS (Common Management Information Service) network system:
http://www.niagarafallsreview.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?archive=true&e=767356
Yes, if the phone messages we're as sophisticated in the other 17 ridings as they were in Guelph (this tailored with a plausible alternate poll location), then it all but rules out a solitary actor.
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