Angry in the Great White North

From the Globe and Mail:

Liberal Party officials are now investigating whether party membership lists were improperly distributed to disseminate anti-Michael Ignatieff material as the race for the Liberal leadership turns nasty.

Senior Ignatieff strategist Ian Davey believes another leadership camp is using the new membership lists to contact Liberal members, sending out anonymous letters and pointing to a website full of anti-Ignatieff material and criticisms.

Mr. Ignatieff is the perceived front-runner in the leadership race.

The letter also provides a link to an anti-Ignatieff website -- http://www.stopiggy.com -- that goes into much greater detail about the writings and views of Mr. Ignatieff, some of which Mr. Davey said are absolutely wrong and distorted.

What next? Hacking Ignatieff's website?

One thing you have to say about Michael Ignatieff -- he inspires people.

In this case, he has inspired someone at Thunderline Internet Solutions, a website development house in Thunder Bay, Ontario, to create StoppIggy.com, a website dedicated to achieving one goal -- keeping Michael Ignatieff from destroying the world!

One of the staff at Thunderline in a young man named Justin Davis [Actually, this turns out not be true, according to Thunderline]. Justin was convicted of hacking back in 1998:

A computer hacker in Thunder Bay who virtually shut down a local Internet provider's system was sentenced yesterday to six months in jail. Justin Davis, 19, was convicted of fraud for using a computer decrypting program and two counts of fraudulently using a computer password. Judge F.A. Sargent said NorLink Communications and Consulting was forced to spend thousands of dollars purchasing new equipment after the incident. Judge Sargent placed Mr. Davis on probation for two years and ordered him to make $10,000 restitution to NorLink. Defence lawyer Christopher Watkins said his client believed he was being challenged to break a code to gain entry into the NorLink system. (The Globe and Mail; September 1998)

Now he works for Thunderline:

Mr. Davis, convicted last May of offences related to illegally obtained passwords he used to gain free Internet access, now hacks for a living, legally, for Thunderline Internet Solutions, a company that tests systems, networks or Web sites to see how hackable they are.

"Most companies are just sloppy when they set up their Web sites. They don't take the time to become aware of how their systems function. Some even forget to set up passwords", he said.

I wonder if the Michael Ignatieff website is sufficiently protected against malicious hacking. Hacking is a bad thing, but to these people, such niceties fall to the wayside if it helps to STOP IGGY!

Stay tuned.