Strange story from The Hill on how Norm Coleman supporters' private info was likely breached:

Norm Coleman's Senate campaign said Wednesday that the private information of its supporters has probably been breached and is encouraging them to cancel their credit cards.

Coleman backers began receiving e-mails Tuesday night from an e-mail address at wikileaks.org stating that it possessed personal information about them and was preparing to post it online.

The same address stated in an e-mail early Wednesday morning that "we have discovered that all on-line Coleman contributors had their full credit card details released onto the Internet on 28 of [January], 2009, by Coleman's staff."

Coleman's campaign followed with an e-mail Wednesday morning that said the campaign became worried that its firewalls had been breached in January.

"We contacted federal authorities at that time, and they reviewed logs from the server in question as well as additional firewall logs," campaign manager Cullen Sheehan said. "They indicated that, after reviewing those logs, they did not find evidence that our database was downloaded by any unauthorized party.

"Let me be very clear: At this point, we don't know if last evening's e-mail is a political dirty trick or what the objective is of the person who sent the e-mail.

"What we do know, however, is that there is a strong likelihood that these individuals have found a way to breach private and confidential information."

Coleman's campaign is encouraging supporters who think they might have contributed to the campaign to cancel their credit cards.

Since I received said Tuesday e-mail, this story has a personal interest for me. I honestly could not recall if I had donated money on-line to Coleman or not. When the second e-mail arrived with a link to an Excel file with a list of donors and some of their credit card information (which I am not posting a link to for obvious reasons), I was relieved to not find my name.

Not sure of what the point of all this is or who is behind it. I am sure that's going to cause a lot of headaches for people who did nothing more than exercise their political freedom.

Labels: Politics-Local (08-09)

Posted by Chad--Link