[Rhodes22-list] Wally said, "...? ... comments on Obama [Political]

[Michael D. Weisner]

Brad,

I commented a bit ago about the possible credit card fraud that these 
practices encourage.  You said that you had created a bogus donation with 
your credit card information.  I am curious if the transaction actually went 
through.  Yes, I know that the site "accepted" the information, but has the 
charge shown up on your account?

Due to volume, some credit card acceptance sites have relaxed their 
requirements to reduce the website service load and perform more involved 
checks at the time that the charge is actually processed.  This would permit 
the site to enforce AVS, although CVV/CVV2 would not be possible since the 
information had not been collected.  As a note, CVV/CVV2 is not required by 
our credit card processor, even for transactions of this type (card not in 
hand) and even AVS can be overridden, as long as the acceptance site is 
willing to be subject to charge reversal and fee.

>From a legal standpoint, I truly wonder if the practice of accepting 
donations in this way can be deemed criminal (I'm not a lawyer.)  I seem to 
remember that providing fraudulent information in a financial transaction 
may indeed be illegal.

Mike
s/v Shanghaid'd Summer ('81)
       Nissequogue River, NY

From: "Brad Haslett" <flybrad at gmail.com>Sent: Friday, October 31, 2008 8:37 
AM
Ed,

This man/crook is the most polished liar in all the time I've been
following politics.  What is taking place with the credit card
fundraising is criminal.  This post (below) is from an industry
insider who chooses to remain anonymous for obvious reasons.  Everyone
has seen what The One and his minions tried to do to "Joe the Plumber"
using illegal violations of privacy using government databases.

Brad

--------

Because many of our colleagues in the media have failed to investigate
the shenanigans of the Obama Campaign, I have taken upon myself to
uncover some improprieties. One that has troubled me greatly is
Obama's very relaxed donation policies.

I have over 8 years experience working in the payment services industry. By
taking a closer look at Obama's online donation site, I have noticed that
his team has left the door wide open for credit card fraud by not putting in
the security measures to ensure full visa/mastercard authorization
compliance. This is outright irresponsible behavior on the part of Obama's
team and in direct violation of their agreement with Visa/Mastercard.

I did a test on his site. Acting as Joe Stalin, I went onto the Obama site
and donated $5.00. I used false information, address: 100 Red Square,
telephone number 323-666-1953, zip code 10001, Employer: Kremlin
Occupation: Dictator. I did use my valid credit card numbers and expiration
date. The typical security measures, Address Verification System and the
Card Validation Code are not present on the Obama site. So there is nothing
in place to verify who I am. (Please see attachment. [I have his
attachment. I see no point in putting it up; we all know Obama's site
allows this -- ace.]) I clicked submit. The transaction went through.

Then I went to McCain's site, and entered in the same information. Joe
Stalin. $5.00. As you can see, my donation was rejected for errors.

* What's the big deal? Obama has left the door open for anyone to run
prepaid cards and foreign credit cards without proper screening. In
addition, it is easy to run multi-transactions on the same card but
under different aliases. In other words, an organization like Move
On.org could run tens of thousands of transactions for millions of
dollars using essentially cards belonging to only handful of very
large liberal donors like George Soros, Peter Lewis and Eric Schmidt.

In addition, Obama's site violates his agreement with Visa/Mastercard.
Visa Mastercard regulations require each credit card acceptor to
"obtain the 3 digit Card Validation Code [CVV2 found on the back of
your credit card. 4 digits for American Express Cards] and submit this
code with all authorization requests with respect to transactions
where the card is not present..." [cite:] Visa/Master Program Guide.

(Please see attachment or go to Obama's site. You will notice that
Obama's donation site does not have this code requirement, which is in
direct violation of Visa/Mastercard regulations.)

Speculations as to why?

Many foreign credit cards do not have CVV2 codes. Requiring such codes
would limit foreign donations.

Secondly, disabling the security allows would be credit card thieves to
"ping" numbers till they get a hit. In other words, a crook could simply
type in random numbers until he found one sequence that worked in some
fashion. That could give a thief a starting point for committing
credit-card fraud. If all they had to do was type nonsense values for
names and addresses, such as Doodad Pro, they could quickly determine
which numbers were valid - and they could probably program bots to do
that kind of work.

[I consider this latter point a minor concern, given the fact that
most fraudulent donors are willing coconspirators, not credit card
thieves. However, it is interesting that Obama invites this sort of
fraud, and doesn't take the most elemental step to eliminate it --
indeed, he is in direct violation of Visa/Master Card rules in failing
to ask for this code. Why? Because he wants foreign donations, and
he's willing to facilitate the occasional credit-card thief to get
them. -- ace.]

No Address Verification System (AVS)

The Value of AVS from a credit card exper: I have over 30 years of
experience in investigating Credit Card Fraud and I can tell you, which you
may or may not know, that the merchant acquirer that is conducting the
collection of credit / debit card for the Obama campaign are responsible for
the actions to be taken regarding the Address Verification System responses.
The value of the AVS system is that the issuer of the card being used
provides back to the merchant acquirer a response based upon the information
provided during the authorization process. This response indicates to the
merchant acquirer if the card information was validated as to
ownership of the account. It is the merchant acquirer that determines
what to do when
the authorization response is received. In most cases the transaction that
comes back with any negative meaning is denied. However, if the
merchant acquirer has adjusted their system to accept any response as
acceptable the transaction would be completed.

The value of the AVS system is to deny Card Not Present transactions (CNP)
which are suspicious. This protects the merchant against charge backs for
bad transactions. What is interesting to me is that the merchant acquirer
has knowingly violated a basic CNP fraud prevention technique to
accommodate a merchant (Obama Campaign). I think that both the
Associations (VISA & MasterCard) would be highly interested in looking
at the merchant acquirer that was processing these transactions. The
value of ignoring the AVS
responses is that multiple invalid transactions may be made without
fear of being rejected by the authorization systems. This means that
the real owner
of the credit card account is willing to allow multiple transactions
to be made on the account using different names and addresses that
under normal conditions would be denied. The merchant acquirer has a
complete listing of all transactions done and it would be very
interesting to see how many transactions were conducted on the same
account number using different names. I would think that this would be
a Federal violation under the current campaign funding laws.

I hope you will take this inquiry seriously. I want a fair election. I do
not want either side to STEAL the election literally. Obama's tactics have
gone too far in my opinion. McCain is doing the honorable thing on his site
and playing by the rules. Obama is in clear violation of the rules. Is
this change we can believe in?

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 7:14 AM, Tootle <ekroposki at charter.net> wrote:
>
>
> Wally said, "Who said they were? "
>
> If you listen to the Main Stream Media, Obama gets 95 %, 97 % of black
> people and gets high percentage of whites who feel guilt without analysis 
> of
> the man's background, beliefs, real political contributions, etc.
>
> I have said it before and say it again, I have been fortunate to be
> personally acquainted with people who have held high political office, in
> both parties.  I have known many good, honest and dedicated people in that
> group.
>
> I have personally known people of all races who were honest leaders.
>
> I have also been exposed to devious and down right crooks.  I access Mr.
> Obama as less than honest and more devious.
>
> See attached political cartoon:
>
> http://www.nabble.com/file/p20264705/fallowers.gif fallowers.gif
>
> It was posted on this forum by one of those behind 'Obama' that he, 
> 'Obama,
> is a friggin genius'.  I have not seen any evidence of superior intellect.
> He has not submitted his college record as real proof of achievement.  All
> that may be the result of quotas, glibness and parroting back the
> professor's views.
>
> Rather my assessment is that most members of this forum possess equal or
> greater intellect and abilities, you included.
>
> I have seen too many Elmer Gantry's to follow one on so little evidence. 
> I
> have too often experienced people who had the ability to look you or 
> others
> in the eye and constantly lie.  I believe he is a polished deceiver.
>
> Ed K
>
> On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 9:01 AM, Tootle <ekroposki at charter.net> wrote:
>
>>
>> Not all black men are sheep.  Here is the opinion of one who is not:
>>
>> Oct. 29, 2008
>> A perfect storm
>> By Thomas Sowell
>>
>> http://www.JewishWorldReview.com <http://www.jewishworldreview.com/> |
>> Some elections are routine, some are
>> important and some are historic. If Senator John McCain wins this
>> election,
>> it will probably go down in history as routine. But if Senator Barack
>> Obama
>> wins, it is more likely to be historic— and catastrophic.
>>
>> Once the election is over, the glittering generalities of rhetoric and
>> style
>> will mean nothing. Everything will depend on performance in facing huge
>> challenges, domestic and foreign.
>>
>> Performance is where Barack Obama has nothing to show for his political
>> career, either in Illinois or in Washington.
>>
>> Policies that he proposes under the banner of "change" are almost all
>> policies that have been tried repeatedly in other countries— and failed
>> repeatedly in other countries.
>>
>> Politicians telling businesses how to operate? That's been tried in
>> countries around the world, especially during the second half of the 20th
>> century. It has failed so often and so badly that even socialist and
>> communist governments were freeing up their markets by the end of the
>> century.
>>
>> Every weekday NewsAndOpinion.com publishes what many in the media and
>> Washington consider "must-reading". HUNDREDS of columnists and 
>> cartoonists
>> regularly appear. Sign up for the daily update. It's free. Just click
>> here.
>>
>> The economies of China and India began their take-off into high rates of
>> growth when they got rid of precisely the kinds of policies that Obama is
>> advocating for the United States under the magic mantra of "change."
>>
>> Putting restrictions on international trade in order to save jobs at 
>> home?
>> That was tried here with the Hawley-Smoot tariff during the Great
>> Depression.
>>
>> Unemployment was 9 percent when that tariff was passed to save jobs, but
>> unemployment went up instead of down, and reached 25 percent before the
>> decade was over.
>>
>> Higher taxes to "spread the well around," as Obama puts it? The idea of
>> redistributing wealth has turned into the reality of redistributing
>> poverty,
>> in countries where wealth has fled and the production of new wealth has
>> been
>> stifled by a lack of incentives.
>>
>> Economic disasters, however, may pale by comparison with the catastrophe
>> of
>> Iran with nuclear weapons. Glib rhetoric about Iran being "a small
>> country,"
>> as Obama called it, will be a bitter irony for Americans who will have to
>> live in the shadow of a nuclear threat that cannot be deterred, as that 
>> of
>> the Soviet Union could be, by the threat of a nuclear counter-attack.
>>
>> Suicidal fanatics cannot be deterred. If they are willing to die and we
>> are
>> not, then we are at their mercy— and they have no mercy. Moreover, once
>> they
>> get nuclear weapons, that is a situation which cannot be reversed, either
>> in
>> this generation or in generations to come.
>>
>> Is this the legacy we wish to leave our children and grandchildren, by
>> voting on the basis of style and symbolism, rather than substance?
>>
>> If Barack Obama thinks that such a catastrophe can be avoided by sitting
>> down and talking with the leaders of Iran, then he is repeating a fallacy
>> that helped bring on World War II.
>>
>> In a nuclear age, one country does not have to send troops to occupy
>> another
>> country in order to conquer it. A country is conquered if another country
>> can dictate who rules it, as the Mongols once did with Russia, and as
>> Osama
>> bin Laden tried to do when he threatened retaliation against places in 
>> the
>> United States that voted for George W. Bush. But he didn't have nuclear
>> weapons to back up that threat— yet.
>>
>> America has never been a conquered country, so it may be very hard for
>> most
>> Americans even to conceive what that can mean. After France was conquered
>> in
>> 1940, it was reduced to turning over some of its own innocent citizens to
>> the Nazis to kill, just because those citizens were Jewish.
>>
>> Do you think our leaders wouldn't do that? Not even if the alternative 
>> was
>> to see New York and Los Angeles go up in mushroom clouds? If I were
>> Jewish,
>> I wouldn't bet my life on that.
>>
>> What the Middle East fanatics want is not just our resources or even our
>> lives, but our humiliation first, in whatever sadistic ways they can 
>> think
>> of. Their lust for humiliation has already been repeatedly demonstrated 
>> in
>> their videotaped beheadings that find such an eager market in the Middle
>> East.
>>
>> None of this can be prevented by glib talk, but only by character, 
>> courage
>> and decisive actions— none of which Barack Obama has ever demonstrated.
>>
>> Posted by
>> Ed K
>> --
>> View this message in context:
>> http://www.nabble.com/An-African-American-comments-on-Obama--Political--tp20246512p20246512.html
>> Sent from the Rhodes 22 mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
>
>
> http://www.nabble.com/file/p20264705/fallowers.gif fallowers.gif
> --
> View this message in context: 
> http://www.nabble.com/An-African-American-comments-on-Obama--Political--tp20246512p20264705.html
> Sent from the Rhodes 22 mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
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