Also, will the more tech savvy than me please chime in below... Any campaign has all their code stored someplace, just in case something (like this) happens. How long would it take to put the website up on another server? Ten minutes? An hour? Surely less than 24 hours, right?
It seems that the news story has more value than their website, because they are not taking the steps necessary to get it back up as soon as possible.
Also, why aren't the mainstream media people asking the tech writers/correspondents at their own outlet? They should be able to answer these questions...
UPDATE:
Charles Gaba in the comments (in full, because he said it better than I could have):
I'm a web developer, not an actual sys admin, but I can tell you this much: the Lieberman campaign SHOULD have a full backup of the site, the database, redundant servers and power supplies. They SHOULD have several alternate domain names to redirect the primary domain towards, and each of those domains should be set up on a different server with at least a "bare bones" version of the website (the static stuff at least).
For that matter, I'm a bit stunned that a campaign as large and expensive as this one is doesn't have their web server in-house in the first place (instead of using an external 3rd-party hosting company). That's the sort of thing I'd expect from someone running for state house or city council, not the United States Senate (especially an incumbant!). I have no idea whether the Lamont campaign site is hosted in-house or not but I'd be pretty surprised if it isn't.
The bulk of the Lieberman campaign's static content (positions, photos, media files, etc) should have already been hosted on at least one backup site, hosted separately, at (for example) lieberman2006.com or something like that. In that situation, all they would have to do would be to change the name servers to repoint towards the alternate site--or, at worst, put a "this site has moved HERE" link on joe2006.com, just like you'd see on the simplest mom & pop site.
None of this is meant to forgive whoever took it down, but it shows a stunningly sloppy IT team at the Lieberman camp IMHO.
The Lieberman campaign sloppy? Couldn't be...
14 comments:
Is the Lamont camp offering the person who hacked the Lieberman website or another one of its techies? Just curious.
The website has been down, on and off, for 14 hours or so. The Lieberman campaign has had ample time to switch to new servers.
Instead, its techies are posting on Connecticut Local Politics.
I'm not accusing the Lieberman campaign necessarily of acting in bad faith, but they're clearly not in any hurry to get their website back online.
Anon - 2:28 - I assume you have some facts to back that up, right? No? Just randomly making accusations, huh? Well, you are supporting the right guy, I guess.
dem office holder - why would they? They are getting free press by not fixing it..
MSNBC had their tech guy on.
Also, McDonald's wouldn't allow Burger King access to their computers- we have a general potentially ahead.
bluecoat-
I realize you didn;t ask me but I am involved in party politics and have no idea what you mean by your question. Is it in relation to an individual or the ad?
bluecoat--
OK, I got it now. Does it say on the bottom of the ad who paid for it?
Did they say "Vote for xxxx" or did they just list the candidate they'd endorsed? Have a copy of the ad you can post?
The law says that you cannot use party funds in a primary.
I am not positive in this instance as it isn't directly the candidate but the DTC...and without seeing the ad. Does it mention a general message about voting today?
If you are concerned you could always forward the ad to Election Enforcement.
You have every bit of standing as you are a registered voter and it may be illegal.
I believe the Party Rules - not State Election Law - say party funds can not be used to advocate candidates in a Primary.
Bluecoat: Weicker Liker is correct (2d time in 2 days for the record). The Republican party rules do not allow this, but the Democratic party rules do allow it. Not surprising. These ads are typical Bridgeport DTC, which is run by Stafstrom (one of Joe Ganim's boys and hand picked by Mario Testa). New name, new face, same old ethics. He even had a drug dealer and the Mayor's coke supplier on the DTC and did nothing about it. The Bridgeport DTC went overwhelmingly for Lieberman and Malloy, even though most Ds in the city favor Lamont and JDS.
Let me address some of the comments going on here. Many of you know me from my comments here in the past. I am currently working as the technology coordinator for the Lamont campaign. We have put together a great team handling many aspects of our technology, and I want to thank everyone who has been involved.
One of our biggest concerns when we were first setting up our site was to make sure that we had as secure and reliable a site as possible. We have spent extra money making sure that our servers are safe. We do not host the servers in house. There are people that do a much better job of providing safe and secure servers than we ever could. We are actually using several different hosting companies as part of our redundancy plan.
From what I’ve seen, it does appear as if the Lieberman campaign did not establish sufficient IT security policies. It may be that the site has gone down due to the burst of traffic the campaign has generated, or it may have gone down due to some sort of hacking, probably a distributed denial of service attack.
To a certain extent, it is inappropriate to ‘blame the victim’. Just because someone didn’t properly secure their site doesn’t vindicate people who are illegally breaking in. On the other hand, before getting involved in politics, I was a technology executive on Wall Street. Any information security officer at a financial institution who places blame for a site going down on the perpetrators could kiss his career goodbye.
At the Lamont campaign, we are fortunate that we haven’t suffered from a successful attack. Such attacks are bad for democracy and should be condemned. I hope the Lieberman site gets back up soon and everyone can focus on getting the vote out.
It is absolutely and completely legal for the DTC to run ads or spend money on a primary - take that to the bank. Done it personally in at least 50 races.
Also for those campaigns that need internal webservers...here a quick walk-through....
http://switch.richard5.net/isp-in-a-box-using-a-mac-mini/
-Rellguru
Post a Comment