Campaign Tech

The campaign of former Sen. Norm Coleman has alerted donors that a database containing personal data, including credit card numbers, has been circulating on the Internet.

Minnesota has a number of consumer protection laws that govern the use of personal information, which has raised questions about whether the Coleman campaign has violated state law.

There’s a divide opening in how the media is covering the story of Norm Coleman’s vulnerable donor database: Some outlets blame shoddy security practices by the campaign, others blame “hackers.” The latter group — which includes Politico, MinnPost and right-wing blog Power Line, among others — echoes the campaign’s assertion that the exposure of donors’ [...]

Donors to Norm Coleman responded to news of a campaign data breach with “extreme anger,” worry about their credit card accounts, and suspicion of the Al Franken campaign. Here is a sample of what Coleman campaign contributors are saying.

Former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign spokesman Cullen Sheehan suggests that the publication of a campaign donor database on Wikileaks.org is the work of politically motivated individuals who have “found a way to breach private and confidential information” and may be a “political dirty trick.” MinnPost’s Joe Kimball echoes the sentiment, attributing the discovery of the unprotected database to “some hackers.” But according to the IT professional who first called attention to the exposed donor database, the site wasn’t hacked at all.

In late January, allegations were leveled that former Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign faked the crash of its website, claiming droves of disenfranchised voters brought down the server seeking info on whether their votes were counted. While that charge hasn’t been definitively proven, the scrutiny by web enthusiasts exposed a bigger problem for the campaign: an unprotected database that contained information on campaign donors, including names, email and home addresses, credit card numbers and the three-digit security codes. On Tuesday, donors received an email from the website Wikileaks alerting them that the site has revealed some of the database information.

When locals gather to choose delegates at DFL precinct caucuses Tuesday, three Minneapolis City Council candidates will be looking for the first signs of success from skills they picked up at a recent weekend at Camp Wellstone.

In separate e-mails sent almost simultaneously this evening, Al Franken and former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman offered takes on President Obama’s inauguration as diametrically opposed in style as the Senate contenders are opposed in their rival campaigns. Franken’s is an unadorned, even bland two-paragraph statement about the honor he felt at attending the inauguration and [...]

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak announced today he is running for re-election. The announcement took the form of a mayoral message on Twitter directing people to a video on YouTube, which in turn directed viewers to his new campaign Web site, where surfers can further connect to his Facebook page. Rybak’s only announced rival (aside from perennial candidate Dick Franson) is [...]

The main story so far in Minnesota’s statewide election recount — besides incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s continuing slim lead over Democratic challenger Al Franken and the role of wrongly rejected absentee ballots — has been how the unexpectedly large numbers of ballot challenges from both campaigns have affected the recount’s running vote tally. By questioning election officials on 27 of every 10,000 ballots cast for either man, the campaigns have temporarily removed nearly 6,000 votes from the official recount totals, leaving Coleman in command (for the moment) of a 344-vote advantage. But take one statistic from Monday’s recount action — Coleman challenged 35 more ballots than did Franken — and extrapolate it across eight days of a recount that’s now nine-tenths done, and you can show, on paper at least, how Coleman’s ballot-challenge lead could account for his lead in the running tally of overall votes.

With all Barack Obama’s administration will have to focus on — economy, war, healthcare — it’s remarkable that it honed in on such a tiny detail: it switched the copyright notice on its website to the freest Creative Commons license. As a nod to government transparency, the move seems to be largely symbolic, as commenters [...]