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

[Brad Haslett]

Mike,

It went through (trust me, my wife keeps a very close eye on that
account to see what I've purchased for the airplane).

If I did something illegal then I insist on being prosecuted.  In
fact, lets prosecute everyone that donated using a fake name.  That
ought to be fun!

Brad

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 7:56 AM, Michael D. Weisner <mweisner at ebsmed.com> wrote:
> 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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