rom carefully targeted denial-of-service attacks to fake websites with false polling place addresses, online voter-suppression tactics could wreak unprecedented havoc on the November election, according to a new report released Monday by a group of privacy and election protection organizations.
"The unique features of the internet that enable efficient distributed communications are exactly those that make it difficult to regulate,"" concludes the 43-page study (PDF; 736 KB), which describes a plethora of dirty tricks that fraudsters could pull off during the final few hours of a closely fought presidential election.
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In 2004, operatives made a number of efforts to mislead certain segments of voters. One example: The New York Times reported that fliers with official-looking letterhead appeared in predominantly black neighborhoods in Pittsburgh that said that because of unusually high voter registration, Republicans were scheduled to vote on Election Day, and Democrats were supposed vote the day after.
Monday's report — by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Century Foundation, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and Common Cause — predicts the same tactics will go high-tech this year. Federal law makes deliberate misinformation campaigns a crime, with penalties for violators of up to five years of prison time and fines of up to $250,000. But prosecutions are rare, and likely to get rarer.
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