And Aunt Zeituni. Watch the video.
This video is a follow-up to Adrian Murray’s facebook post over the weekend, in which he says that he donated to the Obama campaign as “Adolph Hitler,” occupation “Dictator” living at a German address. As you can see in the clip, citizen journalist George Scaggs of Austin tries the same thing at three different campaign sites, that of Obama, Romney and Santorum. Only the Obama site accepted the donation without the verification number.
Let’s take a look at the three campaign websites mentioned in the video. Here’s Obama’s donation page. All of the following graphics can be enlarged by clicking on them.
The Obama campaign’s donation page for Americans living outside the US also lacks the security verification code field.
Here’s Mitt Romney’s donation page. I’ve circled the verification number field on it. I would have done the same on Obama’s page, but it wasn’t there.
Here’s Rick Santorum’s donation page. The security code field is circled in red.
Only the Obama campaign’s web site lacks the security code field. The others require it, and will not accept donations unless the security code and payment information match up.
Obama’s campaign implemented the same lack of verification in 2008, but the mainstream media never called them on it. It appears as though that episode has prompted a repeat in 2012.
This means three things are likely true. One, the Obama campaign disabled the verification system. The verification system is turned on on web sites that accept credit cards, by default. I used to manage the website for the Texas Republican Party, so I know this from personal experience. Someone had to take the action of turning it off on the Obama site. Two, the Obama campaign can accept donations without the identity of the donor being positively verified. Three, not only can people in foreign countries donate to the Obama campaign in violation of federal campaign law, so apparently can identity thieves who have access to stolen credit card numbers. People who do not know that their credit cards have been compromised may not notice small amounts in the $3 dollar donation range that the Obama campaign has been targeting, when such donations show up on their statements.
Update: Usama Binladen, deceased, is also now an Obama donor.
Obama in 2008 also turned off the ZIP check as well. In 2008 I did exactly as was done here, only I gave an address in Paris, and definitely did not give an accurate billing ZIP, so they were not checking the billing address or ZIP.
Merchants or candidates being careful about the funds they accept can check the first line of the billing address and the billing zip (just like you give at the gas pump) and can decline on a mismatch.
It’s no surprise that Obama has these checks turned off.
makes it easier for all those Chinese dishwashers to donate money!
I’m too afraid of Identity theft to try this myself but one bad thing about this is that you have made donations, no matter how small, to the Obambi campaign. Have you checked your statement to make sure the credit card company actually honored the donations?
According to liberal mentality asking someone to verify that the card belongs to them is racism.
So, the Republican candidate should do exactly the same thing, and trumpet loudly that he is and why he is. Should cause cephalic detonations all over the Left.
Except that that would be illegal. As Obama well knows, since he railed about it in his SOTU address when he ripped the Roberts Court for the Citizens United decision.
Quote: “Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections.”
That was a blatant lie (which MSM have never called him on, either), but also d__ned infuriating in the face his credit card funding shenanigans during the 2008 campaign; coming to a theater near you.
“…people in foreign countries donate to the Obama campaign in violation of federal campaign law….”
It was not widely reported in 2008, but some of Obama’s donations had odd dollar amounts w/ odd cents as well. This was thought to be because these donations came from foreign sources and were attributed to currency conversion. But no one really investigated, so it’s not clear how much money in 2008 was actually foreign.
I suspect more than just “some”; I checked my home town, population 50K, and found a handful of these, clearly bogus. I suspect that across the nation there were a lot more in total.
Well, how else is Putin gonna make good on the money?
There is no law against this?
If not, why are Republicans in Congress doing something about it?
There is no healthy opposition in our system. You’re probably having flashbacks to 20th century America before the instant change sequence was activated. Judges could try to stop him – but they’ll just be ignored and worked around, just like the Constitution itself
I saw stolen credit cards are cheap though because the black market operates under ancient concepts of competition and there’s now an oversupply. Ironic right?
Count on the Stupid Party will not bring this up.
Makes sense. No photo ID to vote, or any ID to vote. At least they’re consistent.
I wonder what happens if a customer whose credit card data was stolen notices the charges, and gets a refund.
Will the credit card company ask for a chargeback from the Obama campaign? Does the credit card company want to have to give loans to minorities with no income? Do they want the IRS going over their records with an electron microscope?
Is it possible that these are not affiliated with the Obama campaign and are just fake?
The site is Barackobama.com and the bottom of the page says “PAID FOR BY OBAMA VICTORY FUND 2012, A JOINT FUNDRAISING COMMITTEE AUTHORIZED BY OBAMA FOR AMERICA AND THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE.”
Ya, just go to Obama’s website.
Now we know what Anonymous and Lulzsec do with all of the credit card #’s they steal.
Oh come on. Get real. Obama needs a way for all of those “falsified” voters to be able to donate money (granted, with someone else’s credit card).
Is Obama desperate or what?
Go find out who the payment processor is to truly follow the money.
Don’t you people know that requiring a CCV disenfranchises seniors, the poor, and the most vulnerable, and takes away their voice? Obtaining a CCV is an undue burden. We are taking this to the UN Human Rights Council, because when it comes to taking care of those insisting on their human rights, China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Cuba don’t mess around much…
The undue burden being that for senior citizens to have to turn their cards over with their arthritic hands/wrists/arms and bad shoulders. And that is if they can even figure out what the CCV is. It’s disenfranchisement, ageism, racism, and moneyism all rolled into one arguement. Good grief now…we can’t have that. That’d be like asking someone to provide non-refutable proof (like a photo i.d. which can also be an undue burden for a senior citizen to remove from their pocket) to vote. And let’s not forget the illegal aliens and having to provide proof of eligibility to vote being an undue burden upon them as well. tsk tsk tsk…what to do. What to do I say.
I hope to be disappointed by at least one of the millions of members of his party, but I figure that not one Democrat will call the twisted little creep with the exquisite daddy issues out on this.
The problem isn’t Obama, he’s only the most prominent symptom. The problem is the entire stinking Democratic Party. I hope you scum are proud of yourselves–you take money from foreigners for Presidential election campaigns.
If you know an Obama voter, think about what this person is comfortable with doing.
rules and law are for honest people.
the obama group and democrats in general are not honest.
And of course the Repubs are always honest, as with going to war with Iraq and the WMD and the 4 TRILLION dollars the the 2 bush wars are costing us. Then there is the fact that over 6000 American lives have been lost. Is that the kind of honesty you’re talking about?
Seriously, THAT’s all you have as a come back? “Bush did bad stuff, too”?
Those two wars had Congressional authorization (unlike the Libya “kinetic action”). Heck, the Iraq stuff had UN authorization, too (they tried to get new stuff from the UN, and that failed, but the old ones were still in force and had been violated by Iraq, so from a UN/international law perspective, new authorization was unneeded, anyway).
And how much of that body count (especially in Afghanistan) has happened in the last 3 years? Oh right… move along, time to change the subject.
But really, lying and breaking the law is just fine because some other President did something legal, with full Congressional authorization, that you disagree with… that makes perfect sense.
I wonder if this is a new “feature” of Obama’s web site. If this feature was recently added, could it possibly coincide with the theft of those millions of credit card numbers in New York? Inquiring minds want to know.
– still living in the White House?
I work for a Fortune 100 company specializing in e-commerce software. The default install has verification on. It would take a deliberate decision to disable that feature in any e-commerce application I am aware of.
The antidote is simple – continue to make small donations in the names of Assad, Putin, Ahmadinejad, Idi Amin and then have someone from Breitbart ambush them with questions as to why they took money from such people. Their only defense will be to say that it was unintentional and a result of their sloppy web page. Either way they look bad
Also, a bunch of donations that exceed the legal limit for individual donations from “Michelle Obama” at “1600 Pennsylvania Ave.”
I just made a donation from “Vladimir Putin”, residing at “The Kremlin, Ulitsa Borovitskaya, Moscow”. Next stop, waiting to see it show up on my account and opening a dispute.
Well, they do have the luxury of knowing that nobody in the Democrat media will ever mention any of this on air or in a newspaper. 60 Minutes will do an investigation of this when pigs fly.
I know two lawyers in Southern Alberta who brag about both illegally donating to Obama’s 2008 campaign and being part of the phone bank calling people in the US on his behalf. Sad.
Note as well the absence of the required FEC compliance box to collect employment information.
Looks like they put one in eventually. I just saw it, 04/03/2012.
Is his campaign taking donations in Rial or Yuan?
Nice work on the photo.
You do know that if you go to the website, you can see where they ask for a passport number.
Do you have a fake one of those as well?
Fail
When I saw your comment I went to the website to check it out. It does ask for your occupation and employer (both fields are *ed as mandantory but I didn’t try to make a contribution to see if it would let me). It looks like the fail is on you. There is nowhere on the page where you are asked for your passport info. I did not follow the link for Americans living abroad but according to the article they will charge you no matter what you put in for name and address as long as they have a valid card number. I have no problem beleiving that.
In summation, Andrew your attempt at showing this to be a failure was such a fail it made you the Dumb A** of the day!
Criminal conduct and no MSM, the ends never justify the means. A great argument against Romney–he just is too much of a pussy to investigate and prosecute Obama and company.
OK, so nobody in the political world with the authority to call Obama out on this is going to say a word. When it comes to reining in Obama, the FEC is a joke and the Republican opposition is worse.
However, what about the company that gave the Obama campaign a merchant account so that his website is able to accept credit card payments? They have very strict rules about maintaining security, including verification of cardholders. I am a small business owner myself, and I know that my online merchant account would be suspended or canceled if I permitted my website to operate as Obama’s does. They wouldn’t object to foreign purchases, but the disabling of security features intended to verify cardholder addresses and CCV would be a major violation of their terms of service.
The public can fight back by launching a vigorous campaign directed at whoever provides Obama’s merchant account. Make them enforce their rules and require cardholder verification for all payments made to Obama’s site (ditto for all PACs and other political groups that accept donations paid by credit card). A private business exposed as allowing security features to be disabled would be much more responsive to public pressure than is our political leadership. Remember, credit card security rules are intended to prevent stolen credit cards from being used, and companies that issue merchant accounts take this duty VERY seriously. Ignoring a blatant violation like Obama’s website would be an enormous public relations disaster for the private business that provides his merchant account as they would not only lose the trust of all their merchants, but also of all the individuals whose credit card numbers may have been stolen. Massive financial losses could accumulate, even if only at $3 a pop. Even if the company that issued Obama a merchant account is run by fervent Obama supporters, they could not accept the damages that public exposure would bring them. I also wonder if a company that allows merchant abuse like this is vulnerable to legal action, as in our security-conscious world this must be a violation of some financial regulation or other.
How do we find out who provided the merchant account, and where would we send our e-mails, letters, and phone calls? We the people have the power to stop this by putting pressure on a business that depends on its reputation for upholding secure standards.
Mr. Preston: Please use PJM to kickstart a nationwide campaign to protest the company that provides Obama’s merchant card privileges.
Re: bank (w/ merchant account relationship)
Is likely a large bank with an executive office largely friendly to (or cowed by) Mr. O.
Turns out the bank doesn’t care, what happens is the campaign can do this as long as they are willing to bear all the risks and costs. Which means that when challenged the money is immediately refunded and the bank / credit-card-clearing consortium gets a handling fee/penalty. Call it a win-win especially since no one challenges the offshore contributions, because no one knows, and the illegal donor certainly isn’t going to complain when they pay their credit card bill.
However, there have been rumors of one of the anonymous like groups which has stolen large number of credit cards over the years (as well as some insider knowledge of how card numbers are “minted”), who also run their own botnets for fun and (click fraud) profit will do something mischievous this year – point their botnets at Mr. O’s campaign and start making multiple thousand dollar donations to his campaign using these millions of valid cards but with names and addresses in error. When the actual card holder notices the bill on their statement, they’ll demand (and get) a refund, plus the Campaign will pay anywhere from a $10 to $100 penalty per transaction.
With luck it’ll bankrupt the campaign (but.. TBTF will be invoked and we’ll continue down the path to being a Venezuela ..)
I doubt they will have to pay a penalty, but what WILL happen if there’s multiple occurrences of fraud/chargebacks is that the CC companies will shut off the transaction channel as a preventative measure, while they investigate.
Which is even better, because that stops the money flow, and forces them to scramble to switch to a different CC gateway (IF another gateway will even accept them). Lost time + lost money + scandal + potential for legal action.
This would also allow someone to go to CVS, Walgreens, Walmart etc and purchase $10000 of Visa/Mastercard “gift cards” in small amounts and launder NObama campaign money to VIOLATE FEDERAL LAWS.
Well, if the FEC and the courts won’t enforce this… how about someone makes the credit card companies enforce it?
1.) Make a $2 – $5 donation. I.e. “nothing I can’t afford to lose”.
2.) Wait 24-72 hours until it shows up on the CC statement (not the paper statement, that’s 30 days, but should be in the online account).
3.) Contact the credit card company’s Fraud Prevention department and complain about an unauthorized charge.
Result # 1 – Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and Amex FLIP THEIR LID from 100′s of chargebacks occurring in a short period of time.
Result # 2 – V/M/D/A shut down the CC gateway that’s accepting data from the online form (Authorize.net, etc). Or reject the transactions on the back-end. Or both. Any way, the transaction flow STOPS.
Result # 3 – V/M/D/A investigate the acceptance process. Note the lack of CVV verification. Note the lack of address verification. Note the lack of billing ZIP code verification. Also, I’m sure that once they dig a little deeper, violations of the PCI-DSS compliance will be discovered on the back-end.
Result # 4 – V/M/D/A sue the legal entity controlling the card acceptance process for willingly and knowingly committing multiple instances of fraud.
If the government won’t enforce its laws, it’s time for citizens to act. I sort of feel bad for dragging the credit card companies into this mess, though… if anyone’s got a better idea, let me know.
Another idea: E-mail your local news stations with a “news tip”. Explain how this would make a GREAT nightly news segment – “Electoral Campaing Violates Credit Card Security, Accepts Stolen Cards”. They can even get video evidence easily. It’s a ready-made scandal!
Another option is civil disobedience. A couple of million of us bitter clingers could make a strange amount donation (like $1,987) under a fake name and address since the campaign doesn’t check, using an anonymous browser (search for “inprivate browsing”), then when the charge shows up in the “recent activities” entries on your account, call and report the fraud, and it’ll be refunded and the campaign will get the bill plus a merchant penalty (granted, the bank might be waiving it, but we can FOIA that eventually and get it declared a donation). Arguably this is another loss to civil society but it’s not like oranges have been safe when left unattended on a cart since the change in common values we saw in the 60s.
What about a petition on whitehouse.gov/petitions calling on the administration to enforce campaign finance laws by requiring political donation websites to use address verification ?
To Tom Jones the 9th and Ari Tai:
Thank you for building on my proposal in comment #26 that we take the fight directly to the credit card processing company. This would be the best and fastest way to get the credit card security violations at Obama’s site shut down immediately. Waiting for the FEC or politicians or the DOJ to conduct an investigation would not achieve anything — the election would be long past and the abuses would have continued unimpeded during the period when it mattered, delivering large amounts of illegal donations to Obama’s campaign. An after-the-fact solution is no solution at all, especially if no one in authority even attempts to address the issue. Nothing was done to thwart Obama’s credit card security violations in the first election, and there’s no reason to believe that any action will be taken by government officials this time either.
However, you have advocated targeting the credit card company by advising people to charge a donation at Obama’s site with their own credit cards (a perfectly legal act), using false info to lay a trail for a future investigator (probably not actual fraud when using one’s own card, but a violation of credit card security rules), and then file a FALSE report that the card was used fraudulently. I have several questions about the legal, ethical, and practical implications of such a plan.
1. I don’t know if filing a false report over a legal action one performed oneself is itself a crime (everything else is these days, why not that?). I would hesitate to follow your plan without first being assured by an attorney that I would not be committing a crime of some sort myself somewhere in the process you outline.
2. Even if filing a false report is not illegal, once our group-plot is exposed you can bet that the left and the MSM would instantly direct the story away from Obama’s behavior and turn it into a story about right-wing extremists doing something worse than Hitler. Kill the messenger and all that. You’ve seen them do it successfully a thousand times.
3. The left is entirely comfortable with using immoral, unethical, and illegal means to accomplish their objectives. Most of us on the right are not, and I wonder how many of us would be willing to embrace the situational ethics and moral relativism required to follow your proposals.
The method I proposed, starting a nationwide protest directed at the credit card processing company, employs entirely legal conduct and is quite simple. Those who write or call the credit card processor (a private business) to report and protest Obama’s violations of the credit card security measures all businesses are required to follow would be acting entirely within the law and, as a Victorian novelist would put it, without a stain on their character. Companies do respond to public pressure, which can be vigorously applied in a straightforward manner, without the dubious but admittedly ingenious machinations you recommend. Credit card processors are especially vigilant in maintaining security, and public exposure of their failure to do so could be ruinous to their businesses.
I would extend my original proposal to include taking the protest to all of one’s personal credit card issuers. They, too, are vigilant in protecting their customers against the risk of stolen credit cards being used to defraud cardholders. Protests lodged directly with Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express would cause them to consider dropping the credit card processing company that granted Obama’s website a merchant account but failed to enforce industry-mandated, government-regulated security steps to prevent credit card fraud. The processor might brush aside our complaints initially, but they cannot afford to lose their accounts with credit card companies. If they were to receive complaints directly from the public AND from the credit card companies that use their service, then we could expect immediate and decisive action to shut down Obama’s security-free site. No matter how cozy their relationship with Obama might be, they cannot afford the public relations nightmare we can create, nor the risk of potential legal penalties themselves. At the very least, they would force him to use all the requisite security features, which would satisfy our demand that he follow the same rules as everyone else.
To “pa”: you’re right, I think we went a little over the line here. It’s just such a goddamn outrage…
Can anyone find out which CC gateway that site uses? I took a glance at the code, but didn’t see any tell-tales like an Authorize.net post URL or any other CC gateways I’m familiar with.
Thanks, Tom. It is easy to get caught up in an exhilarating thought. I do think your plan was creative, detailed, and well-explained — and actually a thoughtful attempt to correct an injust abuse to all of us.
I don’t know how to identify the credit card processor, and I have no intention of going to Obama’s site to look anyway. I had hoped that Bryan Preston would mention our discussion here so that a much larger, presumably more knowledgeable, readership would be able to help us find out where to start our protest. Perhaps one of the people who have already tested Obama’s site knows the answer; they do have a charge on their credit card that they could ask their credit card issuer to explain.
Somebody with a bigger voice than mine needs to kickstart a public protest. If we can spread the idea further than this comment thread, then I’m sure we will hear from someone who can give us the contact info we need.
What makes you think they (the credit card companies) aren’t in on the scam?
Obama campaign accepting dirty money from people using the pseudonyms of “criminal terrorist scum”?…isn’t it the the same thing as “laundering dirty money”?
Gee, where have I heard of this scenario before?
Oh yes, the Chicago Mob.
The Obama National Capitol of “Pay to Play”, featuring the dirtiest politicians, murder for hire and the voting dead.
Amusing that they accept such obvious crooked “donations” and even use crooked means to transfer the dough.
Are these people REALLY this stupid????
No. They just think WE are.
You’re missing the obvious. They aren’t stealing the money. They aren’t laundering money from terrorists.
They are laundering money from Obama’s wealthy pals on Wall Street.
http://crayfisher.wordpress.com/2012/04/03/they-arent-stealing-it-theyre-laundering-it/
What if we all report it to the FEC and forward it on to all our contacts – make the complaints go viral! With that many complaints the FEC will be forced to take some action. We can also make sure that all local and national media outlets receive the video and number of complaints that have been filed.
Here is a link to the fec site with information about how to file a complaint.
http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/complain.shtml#intro