[Vision2020] Fwd: Help us get to 200,000 by tomorrow

[Thomas Hansen]

Greetings Visionaires -

I tend to disagree with Mr. Jones.

Yes.  Electronic "signatures" can be forged to an electronic petition.

However, I am certain that once the petition is filed and the proper
authorities desire to challenge its validity, this can be done quite easily.
Part of the "signature" requires that the signer enter his/her e-mail
address, mailing address, and phone number.  Verification requests can be
electronically sent to e-mail address.  Verification requests can be
conducted telephonically or via US Postal Service.  If the proper authority
does not receive a favorable response to the verification request, that
"signature" can be discounted.

It is that simple.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

-----Original Message-----
From: Ry Jones [mailto:v2020@ryjones.org]
Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2003 7:07 AM
To: vision2020@moscow.com
Subject: RE: [Vision2020] Fwd: Help us get to 200,000 by tomorrow


I don't consider the message forged, however, the results are easily forged.
Saying "we only need 250 more from Idaho!" is meaningless when you can write
a script in a few minutes to grab stuff out of the phone book and stuff the
results. Are they going to have the results of the campaign audited by a Big
Five (er, Big Four, um Big Three) accounting firm? No.

Online polls and calls to action such as this are a distraction for
activists. They do not accomplish anything.

Looking at the web page, it is trivial to write the script I talked about
since you just need to generate urls out of people's info and visit them.
One could write a script to register every single phone having person in the
US with this campaign in a few minutes; let it run for a few days and you're
done. Whee.
-----Original Message-----

Why do you consider that message forged?  It is not - see
http://www.moveon.org/ if you're inclined.

Shawn

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