http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=01/06/15/0135212 Ex-GOP Senator's Wife Pleads to Email Attack Campaign posted by Declan (declanat_private) on Thursday June 14, @08:32PM The wife of a U.S. senator who unsuccessfully ran for re-election in 2000 plead "no contest" on Thursday to charges of using a pseudonym to send email messages that disparaged her husband's Democratic rival. Minnesota prosecutors charged Christine Gunhus, who married former Republican senator Rod Grams after working on his campaign, with violating state criminal laws. Grams' rival, Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate Mike Ciresi, had filed a complaint under the Minnesota Fair Campaign Practices Act. The risks of using technology you don't completely understand and that could leak your identity are worth noting: * Gunhus is accused of using a Hotmail account (Katie Stevens -- kylombat_private) to send the disparaging email messages, which talked about how Ciresi had represented corporate polluters and anti-union companies. But Hotmail includes an X-Originating-IP: header that shows the IP address of the sender -- a problem if you're typing it from the opposing campaign's computer! * Prosecutors say they traced the IP address back to an AT&T WorldNet user who repeatedly used the "Katie Stevens" Hotmail account by connecting from Gunhus' home number. (Guess they keep Caller ID logs.) Apparently the person using the "Katie Stevens" pseudonym was smart at first, sending the mail from a Kinko's store, but then got sloppy. * The email attacks included Microsoft Word attachments, which a Ciresi aide investigated. The aide found that Word listed the document authors as Grams staffers including -- you guessed it -- Christine Gunhus. * Democratic researchers reported that they found Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs) in the Word documents. The GUID includes the Ethernet MAC address. Prosecutors last August obtained a search warrant to seize Gunhus' computer, from which they could extract the MAC address if the Ethernet card was still the same. * Let's not forget the political risk. In an article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on the pseudonymous mail campaign last year, the Grams campaign offered a remarkably narrow denial. A spokesman hedged: "We didn't put this together and send it out of the Grams campaign office," leaving open the question of whether it was sent by a campaign worker from another location. * And what about the legal risk to free speech? The Minnesota Civil Liberties Union reasonably argues that a criminal law that bans sending pseudonymous messages is unconstitutional. A Supreme Court decision, McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission (http://www.epic.org/free_speech/mcintyre.html), says that a prohibition on the distribution of anonymous campaign literature violates the First Amendment. The state law seems to be ecumenical in its application: A Republican has used it to attack the Sierra Club (http://www.fcregister.com/ziegler11_6_00.htm). Epilogue: Grams managed to derail his Democratic rival's primary bid, and Ciresi did not win his party's nomination. Even though Grams lost the general election in the fall, that hasn't halted his political ambitions. The Washington Times reported on April 13 that Grams is reportedly considering a challenge in 2002 to U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone, a liberal Democrat. _________________________________________________________________ Slate articles from last year on the pseudonymous attacks: http://slate.msn.com/netelection/entries/00-07-21_86798.asp http://slate.msn.com/netelection/entries/00-09-13_89569.asp City Pages article from last year: http://www.citypages.com/databank/21/1032/article8969.asp AP article on the "no contest" plea this week: http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=408342905 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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