Attacks using technology; political and otherwise

Blogging will be light today.  Not only have I barely slept since Friday when my work server began suffering a variety of attacks (the joys of being a small business owner! nobody to dump this problem on) but reading up on how to deal with all this is time-consuming.  As are the support calls coming in from clients.  I’ve never considered how expensive this sort of thing is – while I’m dealing with it, I’ve not been able to spend time on new, income generating projects that clients are waiting for.  So the real cost of lost income, plus the untrackable cost of lost referrals from annoyed clients – if things aren’t going perfectly, why would they send their own clients and friends to me? – are racking up.  Multiply that by… I don’t even know how many; it’s not like these attacks are unique.

The Jawa Report is probably going to be the most-linked blog on the conservative side of the blogosphere today, for doing original reporting that the media refuses to do.  David Axelrod, Obama’s chief media strategist and known Astroturfer (paid manufacturer of “grass roots” support) is implicated in creating and disseminating Palin smear videos.  Here are the summary points of the Jawa post – click through to read it; their research isn’t conclusive proof, but it’s very compelling – and the coverups have already begun as you’ll see in the post updates.  This sort of technological attack on candidates wasn’t possible in the past, when connection speeds made online video impractical.  The cost both to create and disseminate this sort of underhanded smear campaign, and to fight back against it, is racking up the cost of elections.

• Evidence suggests that a YouTube video with false claims about Palin was uploaded and promoted by members of a professional PR firm.
• The family that runs the PR firm has extensive ties to the Democratic Party, the netroots, and are staunch Obama supporters.
• Evidence suggests that the firm engaged in a concerted effort to distribute the video in such a way that it would appear to have gone viral on its own. Yet this effort took place on company time.
• Evidence suggests that these distribution efforts included actions by at least one employee of the firm who is unconnected with the family running the company.
• The voice-over artist used in this supposedly amateur video is a professional.
• This same voice-over artist has worked extensively with David Axelrod’s firm, which has a history of engaging in phony grassroots efforts, otherwise known as “astroturfing.”
• David Axelrod is Barack Obama’s chief media strategist.
• The same voice-over artist has worked directly for the Barack Obama campaign.

This suggests that false rumors and outright lies about Sarah Palin and John McCain being spread on the internet are being orchestrated by political partisans and are not an organic grassroots phenomenon led by the left wing fringe.

Good news on one front – Watt’s Up With That has apparently not suffered a denial of service attack; it was legitimate (and well deserved!) traffic.  I shamelessly lifted the cartoon from his post since it’s such a perfect fit for how my weekend’s gone.  UPDATE: Never mind – it WAS an attack at WUWT.  Punks…