Comfortable Disappearance

There’s been quite a bit of press lately over the Minnesota Senate race. Now, I’ve tried to stay away from posting about campaigns this cycle, but this BS by Republicans should not be allowed to slide, especially by technologists.

Apparently, a “liberal” blogger found an ad on an unsecured website (hosted by Mark Kennedy’s media people). So this blogger sent the ad to Amy Klobuchar’s communications director. Well, that was probably not a wholly intelligent move, but then again, it probably wasn’t the worst move either. So, Klobuchar fires her CD, and GOP blogger’s and pundits go apeshit saying that a Klobuchar operative hacked Kennedy’s website to find secret information.

Note to Mr. Kennedy’s campaign: “hacking” does not involve getting information from a public URI! I just used Google to find out what Kennedy’s home page looked like on 9/16/06. Oh my God! I’ve hacked his website! I’m going to be on the front page of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune tomorrow for hacking his site again. God, I only wish. You see, I simply looked at the cached version of Kennedy’s site. When Google combs the web for information, it stores in its servers, the version of the page it saw when crawling the web. This is called the “cached version.” It’s simply another way to get information off the web, and probably one that Kennedy’s campaign wouldn’t like to see.

MN GOP chairman, Ron Carey says this about the event:

This is an extraordinarily sad day for all Minnesotans who value fair play in public life.

Wrong, Mr. Carey…it’s an extraordinarily sad day for all Minnesotans who understand anything about the webternet, because we realized that campaigns will still take any stupid opportunity to try and garner bad press against the opposing side. (I take that back, it’s not “an extraordinarily sad day,” because we know this all ready)