Tuesday night, I got an unsolicited anti-Barack Obama message on my cell phone: “Obama denies protection to babies who survive abortions. Obama is just wrong,” read the text.Judging from Twitter, that message and others like it (“the Obama administration perpetuated misinformation about Libya. Vote against Obama!”; “Obama is using your tax dollars to fund Planned Parenthood and abortions. Is that right”) hit many hundreds, if not thousands, of phones in the D.C. area.
The messages originated as e-mails, and they came from a variety of domains including votersett.com, informedett.com, republicanett.com and GOPmessage.com. (The “ett” suffix appears to refer to “e-mail to text” — more on that shortly.)
One reporter's 13-year old daughter received the abortion message. That's just sick.
Via Huffington Post:
The culprit behind the texts appears to have lifted the veil of anonymity on its domain registrations, revealing itself as ccAdvertising, a firm that was accused on Halloween last year of a similar anti-Democratic stunt in several Virginia races, including one involving Republican state Senate candidate Jason Flanary.Flanary lost to Democratic state Sen. David W. Marsden.
Later on Wednesday, the news came that GoDaddy.com had suspended all of the domains. Good, but a little late.
Chris Geidner reports that gay rights groups have filed an FCC complaint against ccAdvertising. If their complaint is upheld, Gabriel Joseph III could find himself owing a lot of money, since the fine is up to $10,000 per violation to a maximum of $1,000,000.
Meanwhile, the Romney campaign adamantly denies any involvement. If their track record with the truth is any indication, you can count on them being in up to their necks.
As for me, I want to know how Gabriel Joseph, III and ccAdvertising got the cell phone number of a 13-year old girl. That's just wrong.
