WP: N.H. Blog Unmasks a Campaign in Comments (Clinton campaign sock-puppets)

[Pirate Smile]

N.H. Blog Unmasks a Campaign in Comments

Something smelled quite fishy on Blue Hampshire, the influential liberal blog in the Granite State.

And bloggers at Blue Hampshire were able to trace it back to Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign, which has lost ground to Sen. Barack Obama in a recent state poll.

As on other blogs such as Daily Kos, readers of Blue Hampshire -- about 800 a day, a relatively small but consequential group that includes party activists and state Democratic leaders -- recommend "diaries" that visitors should read. Yesterday, four readers who created new accounts and recommended pro-Clinton postings were traced back to Clinton's campaign. And those readers, Blue Hampshire noted, didn't disclose their relationship with Clinton. In the blogosphere, there's a word for this frowned-upon behavior: "sock-puppeting."

Dean Barker, one of Blue Hampshire's editors, wrote last night that the four accounts had been banned from the site. Kathleen Strand, a Clinton staffer, told Barker, he wrote, that "this was not an orchestrated effort but the product of over-eager staffers and volunteers, done without her awareness, and that it will not be repeated."

Already, the political blogosphere is buzzing about it. Josh Levy of TechPresident wrote this morning: "I'm still amazed that anyone with a basic knowledge of computers would think that they operate anonymously from a campaign office. Haven't we learned anything from Wikipedia?"

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/12/13/nh_blog_unmasks_a_campaign_in.html

The Clinton campaign sure has a lot of over-eager campaign staff freelancing all over the place.

[bunnies]

1. You'd think these campaigns would at least provide a handbook

of what staffers should NOT do. Seems mistakes like this could so easily be avoided.