A couple of months ago, someone tried to set up a fake Facebook account in my name.
Apparently this happens: there are even handy web guides on what to do when you suspect an “impostor” account is lurking out there and Facebook has a procedure to thwart such fraudsters.
I have no idea why I was a target and suspect it was a little random. Alert friends of mine chatted to the imposter and got some gibberish answers about money they could win.
In the meantime, I ran around and battened down the virtual hatches, which in this day and age mainly involves changing passwords and such.
The drama, such as it was, lasted about an hour. But an hour was long enough to feel seriously creeped out.
I tell this story only to highlight what seems to be missing from the ongoing investigation into fraudulent calls in the 2011 election — the “robocalls” scandal, as it’s called.
In a recent court ruling, Federal Court Judge Richard Mosley said systemic efforts were made to suppress the vote across Canada in the 2011 campaign and that the unknown perpetrator used the Conservatives’ database, the Constituent Information Management System (CIMS), to pull it off.
“The most likely source of the information used to make the misleading calls was the CIMS database maintained and controlled by the CPC, accessed for that purpose by a person or persons currently unknown to this court,” Mosley stated in his ruling .
The judge also said that Conservatives were not all that helpful during the trial, playing it as “trench warfare” instead of a legal proceeding.
If that had been my database (or yours, I suspect), my reaction would be similar to the one I experienced after hearing of the fake Facebook account: surprise, dismay, anger and then swift efforts to get the fraudster(s) shut down.
Instead, the Conservative party issued a bizarre email to reporters, hailing the court ruling as a victory because election results weren’t overturned. “Court sides with Conservatives,” read the headline on the statement by spokesperson Fred DeLorey.
Where was the outrage over their database being hijacked? Where were the reassuring words to supporters, or the thousands of other people whose names are in that database, that the party was doing everything it could to make sure the system couldn’t be hacked?
Ever since the first news of the robocalls fraud emerged more than a year ago, it’s been perplexing to see the Conservatives’ stunning lack of curiosity about alleged abuse of their secret campaign weapon called CIMS .
Prime Minister Stephen Harper initially dismissed reports of robocalls as a “smear campaign” by sore losers of the 2011 election.
And then, to punish our curiosity I assume, we were subjected to backbenchers Pierre Poilievre and Dean Del Mastro sneering at any suggestion that the Conservatives were linked to vote-suppression activities. We’ve also heard Conservative backbenchers scoff that it’s “only” 1,400 or so complaints being investigated, in more than 240 ridings across the country.
Moreover, we learned this week, thanks to confirmations by chief electoral officer Marc Mayrand , that Conservatives have been slowing down the criminal probe into robocalls — keeping investigators cooling their heels for months, scheduling interview appointments that get cancelled and making key people unavailable for questioning.
You don’t need a degree in psychology to ask: Is this how people act when they’ve got nothing to hide?
It’s not clear who’s giving these politicians advice, but it’s interesting how many of them believed they could weather serious controversies in the past few weeks by saying nothing at all, and blaming their accusers for their troubles.
Maybe we all watched too much TV in our youth. After all, when witnesses acted this way in Columbo or Murder, She Wrote, it was called “foreshadowing,” to give us hints about the real culprits.
In the fictional world at least, people who stand in the way of investigations or express no curiosity about the alleged crime are usually the ones who don’t want the truth to be exposed.
But this isn’t a TV mystery.
Federal Conservatives tend to present themselves as the party for the average, hard-working men and women of Canada, who simply want politicians to do their jobs and protect the public interest.
Those are the very people, however, whose information is stored in the party databases. People who have donated to the Conservative party, written letters, signed petitions, put up a lawn sign — all that data, and much more, is housed within CIMS.
No one is asking that the Conservatives appear contrite about robocalls.
But it might help their case with the public if they appeared somewhat concerned.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Susan Delacourt
Apparently this happens: there are even handy web guides on what to do when you suspect an “impostor” account is lurking out there and Facebook has a procedure to thwart such fraudsters.
I have no idea why I was a target and suspect it was a little random. Alert friends of mine chatted to the imposter and got some gibberish answers about money they could win.
In the meantime, I ran around and battened down the virtual hatches, which in this day and age mainly involves changing passwords and such.
The drama, such as it was, lasted about an hour. But an hour was long enough to feel seriously creeped out.
I tell this story only to highlight what seems to be missing from the ongoing investigation into fraudulent calls in the 2011 election — the “robocalls” scandal, as it’s called.
In a recent court ruling, Federal Court Judge Richard Mosley said systemic efforts were made to suppress the vote across Canada in the 2011 campaign and that the unknown perpetrator used the Conservatives’ database, the Constituent Information Management System (CIMS), to pull it off.
“The most likely source of the information used to make the misleading calls was the CIMS database maintained and controlled by the CPC, accessed for that purpose by a person or persons currently unknown to this court,” Mosley stated in his ruling .
The judge also said that Conservatives were not all that helpful during the trial, playing it as “trench warfare” instead of a legal proceeding.
If that had been my database (or yours, I suspect), my reaction would be similar to the one I experienced after hearing of the fake Facebook account: surprise, dismay, anger and then swift efforts to get the fraudster(s) shut down.
Instead, the Conservative party issued a bizarre email to reporters, hailing the court ruling as a victory because election results weren’t overturned. “Court sides with Conservatives,” read the headline on the statement by spokesperson Fred DeLorey.
Where was the outrage over their database being hijacked? Where were the reassuring words to supporters, or the thousands of other people whose names are in that database, that the party was doing everything it could to make sure the system couldn’t be hacked?
Ever since the first news of the robocalls fraud emerged more than a year ago, it’s been perplexing to see the Conservatives’ stunning lack of curiosity about alleged abuse of their secret campaign weapon called CIMS .
Prime Minister Stephen Harper initially dismissed reports of robocalls as a “smear campaign” by sore losers of the 2011 election.
And then, to punish our curiosity I assume, we were subjected to backbenchers Pierre Poilievre and Dean Del Mastro sneering at any suggestion that the Conservatives were linked to vote-suppression activities. We’ve also heard Conservative backbenchers scoff that it’s “only” 1,400 or so complaints being investigated, in more than 240 ridings across the country.
Moreover, we learned this week, thanks to confirmations by chief electoral officer Marc Mayrand , that Conservatives have been slowing down the criminal probe into robocalls — keeping investigators cooling their heels for months, scheduling interview appointments that get cancelled and making key people unavailable for questioning.
You don’t need a degree in psychology to ask: Is this how people act when they’ve got nothing to hide?
It’s not clear who’s giving these politicians advice, but it’s interesting how many of them believed they could weather serious controversies in the past few weeks by saying nothing at all, and blaming their accusers for their troubles.
Maybe we all watched too much TV in our youth. After all, when witnesses acted this way in Columbo or Murder, She Wrote, it was called “foreshadowing,” to give us hints about the real culprits.
In the fictional world at least, people who stand in the way of investigations or express no curiosity about the alleged crime are usually the ones who don’t want the truth to be exposed.
But this isn’t a TV mystery.
Federal Conservatives tend to present themselves as the party for the average, hard-working men and women of Canada, who simply want politicians to do their jobs and protect the public interest.
Those are the very people, however, whose information is stored in the party databases. People who have donated to the Conservative party, written letters, signed petitions, put up a lawn sign — all that data, and much more, is housed within CIMS.
No one is asking that the Conservatives appear contrite about robocalls.
But it might help their case with the public if they appeared somewhat concerned.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Susan Delacourt
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