Is the Dean Campaign Spamming?

bluelark writes "A few days ago, a friend of mine fowarded to me some spam apparently from the Howard Dean campaign. The sender's return address, however, was [e-mail]. In addition, this is not the Texas email we've all heard about. Being bored, I did some research, and I found some intriguing results. If you are interested, I've posted the the technical details and the the spam. Even though the images in the email are being served from Venezuela, the links in the body of the spam are actually redirects from a marketing partner called eScriptions.net to a Dean for America registration page. It appears that the campaign is outsourcing their email with some dubious marketing partners who are then using notorious spamhauses to send out the actual email. Why does a supposedly "net savvy" campaign even think for one second that this approach is acceptable?"

Re:Oh no!

[bersl2]

Err... make that "being hypocritical"---it's almost the same thing.

Still, it's one more example of how technocracy will never come to be.

Re:Dept. of Nasty Tricks

[jetlag11235]

A link [spamvertized.org] near the bottom of the "technical details" page indicates that Dean was responsible. The page goes on to imply that it was foolish/irresponsible but unintentional.

After the Dean campaign was presented with clear cut evidence as to the nature of emailresponse.net, they investigated promptly and terminated their relationship with the company that same day.

-- jetlag --

Re:Dept. of Honest Mistakes

[sparrow_hawk]

I wondered about this as well, but sadly it appears that Dean did at least pay for the marketing campaign. *However*, it also appears that the campaign was duped into thinking that company they contracted with would only send mails to people who opted-in, so they were actually showing a reasonable amount of acumen, and just neglected to run a Google search on the company in question. Oops.

I'm a little unsure of the submitter's motives in posting a two-week old story to Slashdot, because if anyone bothers to read the rest of the blog, they'll note that the Dean campaign severed its ties to the Spamhaus when it was informed about the actions being taken in its name.

More balanced coverage from Spamvertized.org [spamvertized.org]

It looks like an honest mistake, and its a shame that some people will fixate on this misstep.

This has already been resolved.

[fvdl]

If you had bothered to check the page that you actually link to yourself here [spamvertized.org], you had seen that this already was resolved (5 days ago by the looks of it). To quote: "After the Dean campaign was presented with clear cut evidence as to the nature of emailresponse.net, they investigated promptly and terminated their relationship with the company that same day."

Official Dean For America Response

[Nicco, Dean for Amer]

Dean for America strongly opposes spam and has in place a "no spam" policy. We recently contracted with two vendors who made assurances that their lists were opt-in only. On Tuesday, August 12th, Dean for America received notification from a supporter that spam was being sent. We terminated our relationship with both vendors immediately.

There are currently no third party vendors authorized to send email on behalf of Dean for America and none planned in the future.

Please send any additional complaints to [e-mail] [mailto].

Re:This has already been resolved.

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, and like most political machina they ONLY stopped once they were exposed. They would have kept on doing it if they had not be embarrassed into changing. Seen it thousands of times from both parties.

Do not belive for a SECOND that they didnt know what they were doing. Get a grip dude. They are ALL like that.

Re:you know...

[Daetrin]

I congratulate you on your reasonable view on the spamming issue :) Not good that he fucked up, good that he fixed it.

That being said, isn't anyone on that side of the aisle worried about Dean? I find him to be the easiest Democrat to beat in the fall of 2004. This guy can be turned directly into the scion of leftist antiwar evil with a few carefully placed TV ads.

I have a few worries about his general electability, not because i think he would do a bad job of course, but just because of the smear campaign Bush is likely to run.

However it has been pointed out that Dean's views on gun-control, that it should be left up to the states without any more federal involvement, is likely to pick him up a lot of "single-issue" NRA types. The fact that he's a fiscal conservative who balanced the budget in Vermont, making it one of the very few states with a budget surplus in this time of recession, is likely to pick up some of the Republicans who are more concerned that Bush has turned at 10 year $6 trillion surpluss in a $4 trillion deficit.

The "civil unions" issue will probably hurt him, but he apparently did a very good job of turning a lot people's views around in Vermont, who were initially very against the idea, as long as he stuck with "civil union" rather than "gay marriage." Conservatives get upset about the sanctity of marriage, and homosexuals get upset about the lack of social benefits inherit in marriage, civil unions are a good compromise that doesn't torque off either side off too badly.

Here it is.

[Dan Crash]

The campaign manager, Joe Trippi, has the Slashdot ID #689074 [slashdot.org]. Is it the the real Joe Trippi? Who knows, but he's posted before on Dean campaign issues, and I'm waiting to see if he posts again on this subject.

Political speech is exempt from spam label

[whorfin]

If the National Do Not Call List rules are any indication, Mr. Dean may believe that he is exempt from being labelled a spammer.

From the FTC donotcall site [ftc.gov]:

Will the National Do Not Call Registry cover all telemarketing calls?
Placing your number on the National Do Not Call Registry will stop most telemarketing calls, but not all. Some types of calls are exempt. Political organizations, charities, telephone surveyors, and the business of insurance, to the extent that it is regulated by state law, are permitted to call you.

So if this is specifically exempted from the telephone spam rules, presumably it will also be exempted from any future email spam rules, and thus has already been declared perfectly acceptable behavior.

Nothing surprising here ...

[pherris]

Dean is a hard core politico. He supports the current "war on drugs", the death penalty and NAFTA. He has consistently and prolifically spoken out against medical marijuana laws (this includes the de facto support for imprisoning of the sick and dying for it's use and not allowing individual states to regulate medical marijuana). Vermont newspapers had to sue him when he was Governor for his 2002 schedule, which he refused to release. It seems he spend most of the year out of state. Not to mention that prison sentences more than doubled under his tenure yet crime still increased. I should mention that his has given us very little information on his stance on many issues unlike someone like Kucinich [kucinich.us].

Sorry guys, if you were expecting him to be different from the majority of other politicians then you will be truly disappointed. He might be better than Bush or Lieberman, but not much. If UCE will get him into the Oval Office then UCE it is.

From the Portsmouth [New Hampshire] Herald, August 10, 2003:

"A medical marijuana campaign report card"
Howard Dean - Rating: F+
In short: Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who is a physician, is the only candidate who has actually killed a medical marijuana bill. Because of Dean's actions, Vermonters with AIDS, cancer and other terrible illnesses still face arrest and jail under state law for using medical marijuana. Dean recently retreated from his earlier pledge to direct the FDA to study medical marijuana. His reversal and his actions have shown that medical marijuana patients can never trust him. The only reason we give Dean an F+ and not a straight F is because the latter grade should be reserved for Bush, who is as cruel and heartless as anyone could possibly be on the medical marijuana issue.

Rutland Herald - Newspapers sue Dean for access to schedule [rutlandherald.com]
Portsmouth Herald - A medical marijuana campaig report card [seacoastonline.com]

My advice: pick another horse.

A legitimate DeanForAmerica email...

[Ironica]

Here [boondock.org] (.txt file; download if your browser doesn't like it) are the complete text and headers for the one and only email I have yet received from the Dean campaign. I have been waiting for it; I responded on the MoveOn primary that they could forward my email address to the candidate I voted for, and then a couple of weeks later, MoveOn sent me a confirmation email saying that, if I had changed my mind, I could reply within 48 hours to prevent them from passing it along, but otherwise they would go ahead and do so as I previously requested. (Now *that's* opt-in.) I haven't received even a second copy of this email even though I signed up with the local DeanForAmerica campaign at a festival last month.

Now, I get spam. Lots. Not like some of you spam-magnets, but a bunch. I also get snail-mail political spam out the wazoo because I joined the ACLU. I actually *asked* for email from the Dean campaign more than a month ago, and have gotten just a single missive.

Yeah, I'm sure that his whole campaign is built on spam. You've convinced me!