Today’s Daily Caller posted a story today that illustrates the problems with controlling the amount of money that flows into some political campaigns and the sources of these donations.
The article reports:
A Jerusalem journalist writing for a conservative website reported Monday night that he was able to make two small financial contributions to President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in the name of the late terror mastermind Osama bin Laden.
Aaron Klein, writing for WorldNetDaily, said he successfully made campaign donations of $15 and $5 through a “proxy” service that masked his location and provided the Obama campaign website with a Pakistani Internet Protocol (IP) address instead.
The Obama campaign, Klein wrote, accepted and acknowledged both contributions, made with a disposable credit card, and followed up with additional fundraising emails to a Gmail account set up in the dead terrorist’s name.
Even though the Obama campaign is touted for its technological sophistication and sites run by top Obama technology advisers use the “CVV” feature, the Obama campaign itself does not use the “CVV” feature on its donation pages — even though it does use the feature on the merchandise pages where it sells campaign merchandise.
This means someone who donates $2,500 to the campaign online has to go through less security than someone who goes online to buy an Obama campaign mug.
There are simple ways to prevent foreign donations being made online. The problem here is that some candidates are not willing to employ these measures. The answer is not more regulation–the answer is honest people running for office.
