The Wingnuterer

Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

Long time no blog, I am not going to blow smoke or crack any jokes,…. ok maybe a few jokes.  it has been a long time since I have blogged, but this whole Rob Ford/Crack story has me jonesing for fix so lets begin.

1) The background

Unless you have been living under a “Rock” you know that there is a video that reports to be of Toronto Mayor, Rob Ford smoking crack or some other drug.  The story was broken by the Gawker and then separately confirmed by two Toronto Star reporters.

2) Yes, i believe the video exists. Here is why, no sane reporter is going to make up this kind of story, let alone three reporters from two different media outlets.  No media institution is going to put their legal ass on the line unless they have a great deal of confidence in their reporters and what they reported to have seen, the video.  So yes it exists.  The video exists.

3) The Video Exists. So there are only two reasonable positions at this point: A) the video is faked in some way (more about that later) or B) Rob Ford is in that video, associating with gun toting drug dealers and smoking what appears to Crack. THAT’S IT!  Either it is fake or our Mayor is smoking crack (or some other drug) and hang out with the very people he wanted rounded up and deport from Toronto.

So lets deal with the with easiest scenario;

Scenario 1)  Rob Ford is smoking crack and hanging out with gun toting, drug dealers.  Solution, Rob Ford resigns in disgrace and seeks medical help for his addiction.  The time for which Rob Ford to have come forward with this painful truth and play on the public’s sympathy has passed as of today when he let his Brother hold that “Presser”, that could have been phoned in.  If Rob Ford has a drug problem, then he should have been there today to say so, ask for the forgiveness of the Toronto Public and to ask for forgiveness of his family for putting them through this, and seek medical help.  But he didn’t.

If Rob Ford has a substance abuse problem, he has lost all the wiggle room he should be accorded.  He has placed his personal issues above those of his family, his friends and the people of Toronto, he has smeared the reputation of the Toronto Star and two reporters.  He has hid behind his family and brother.  He is not fit to be Mayor,… if the video is legit.

Scenario 2) The Video is Fake.

In this case, the Toronto Star is in some deep shit, but legal arguments can be made, but that is for the courts to decide and lawyer to argue,… if the video is fake. So in this scenario, there are only two ways to fake the video: 1) the video was altered or 2) they found Rob Ford’s twin brother, who looks like him and sounds like him.

Lets deal with #2 - Fake Rob Ford. Seriously?  Ok, this one should be easy to prove.  Find him, in the city of of Toronto, a guy who looks and sounds like Rob Ford would stick out like a,… well like a 300 lb Rob Ford.  A dozen people should be able to call it in,… “Ya I know the guy, he looks and sounds like out Mayor,… it’s spooky”  Done!  Next?

Fake Video Scenario #1 ) Digitally altered Video

Seriously?  I need to actually explain why this is next to fucking impossible?  Ok, ok, ok, lets pretend.  First off, the equipment, software, training and SKILLS required to produce such a video (90 seconds long, contiguous) is not the exactly the skill set found in the average Crack Dealers bag of tricks.  It takes friends of mine the better part of a month to animate 2 too 3 minute of animation.  Their team required 5 people working for a month to do this, and they do simple a life like, cartoonish animations and have mad crazy skills, tens of thousands of dollars of software, some serious education, several years of experience and some rather pricey video rendering computers to do the job.  So ya, not really in the bag of tricks for your average gang of gun toting drug dealers.

Next, the is a master piece of software video engineering, and someone made and fed it to a bunch of drug dealers so they can take down Rob Ford.  SERIOUSLY??? REALLY???  Do we have to talk about this?  Ok,… First off, no digitally master video can be created that will stand up to forensic inspection without being detect once it is available for analysis.  I’m serious here, the tools available to investigators would show such a video to be fake pretty damn quick, and the number of people who could have made and financed such a project (we are talking a minimum of $100,000 to create this, equipment, software and labour) would be very short indeed.  But if this highly improbable scenario is true it is the stuff Hollywood movies are made of.

CONCLUSION - ok so we have the following possibilities

1) Rob Ford is on a video and appears to smoking crack or some other drug

2) The video is fake and we are looking for

• Rob Ford’s twin brother who doesn’t mind being filmed smoking crack and cavorting with drug dealers
• The video is piece of 3d video manipulation that was created for the sole purpose of defaming and discrediting Rob Ford.  This video is, by its nature required to be professionally produce and financed by nefarious evil, leftwing political operatives, who are willing to trust drug dealers as their method to release the video to the public.

So lets apply Occam’s Razor to this problem,….  Ya, problem solved.  So unless I have missed another possibility (feel free to point it out, show your work).

We need to see the video so lets help Rob Ford either get the help he needs or help him clear his name.  There is an Indiegogo CrackStarter page to raise the required $200G to pay for this video, go forth and help bring this video to the light of day.

PS, I have done my part, blogged, tweeted and donated.  I’m looking forward to my commemorative print, cause I think it will be worth a lot more than $200 bucks and it will look really cool on my wall, next to my FireFly poster!

PSS, if the they fail to procure the video they will donate the $200G Gawker pledges to donate 100% of the proceeds to a Canadian non-profit institution that helps people suffering from drug addiction and its various consequences.  If the campaign fails to reach $200G all money will be refunded.  So it is hard to lose on this, either we get our money back, or the money goes to a worthy cause or the video gets released.

So the latest buzz on the Poutine trail is that Elections Canada served freeproxyserver.ca with production orders for their logs. Marc Norris, the admin of freeproxyserver.ca complied with the order, but unfortunately his server log records do not go back that far. This is quite understandable since the amount of data that proxy server generates in day can be very large, and in order to store a years worth of log data could require terabytes of storage, and then additional space for the backups. Given that freeproxyserver.ca is a free service I can’t blame him for spending the additional money.

Now the real interesting thing that wasn’t mentioned in most stories is the fact that both Prescott and Poutine used freeproxyserver.ca to connect to the Rack-9 Servers.  From the Montreal Gazette we have this report Pierre Poutine’s trail goes cold in Saskatchewan

The suspect logged onto RackNine using the same IP address used to access an account with RackNine held by Andrew Prescott, a worker on the campaign of Guelph Conservative candidate Marty Burke. Both Poutine and Prescott’s account were also accessed through freeproxyserver.ca, Elections Canada says.

Now I fully understand why Pierre Poutine need to use a Proxy Server to connect to Rak-9, but why the hell did Andrew Prescott need to use a proxy server to do legitimate work for the Burke Campaign with Rack-9?   When you consider all the thousands of free proxy servers that are available in Canada and across the world, what are the chances that Poutine and Prescott would both use the same one?  Ya, that line that Prescott is using the he “categorically” denies he is Pierre Poutine getting a little stale.

COMING UP NEXT - Nailing Down Poutine’s Time Line and other interesting coincidences between Poutine and the Burke Campaign.

On Sunday I wrote this piece, #RoboCon - The Noose Tightens Around The #CPC Neck explaining the details involving Internet Cookies, IP Addresses and NAT Firewalls and how they relate to the facts that we know about Pierre Poutine.  If you haven’t read it yet, I suggest you take the time.

Now, later on Sunday it was pointed out to me by SaskBoy and another person whom is very well informed on the details of the Poutine Investigation that I made an error by concluding that IP address linking Andrew Prescott’s and Pierre Poutine’s Rack-9 accounts originated from the Burke Campaign Office.  This is factually incorrect, there has been no information stating that the Burke Campaign Office had the Rogers IP Address 99.225.28.34

This bother me somewhat, and I kept mulling over how the ownership of this IP Address could be resolved, and then late yesterday it hit me that I coming at this from the direction.  Instead of asking myself “Is there a way to show that Burke Campaign owned this IP Address during the Election?”  I should have been looking to see if there was a way exclude the Burke Campaign.

So the problem is simple, what internet ISP did the Burke Campaign use during the 41th Election?  Was it Rogers, in which case it is possible at the Burke Campaign was the source.  Or was it another company, Bell? Telus, Primus, IGS, Cogeco or any of the numeral other of possible carriers?  If the Burke Campaign used any ISP other than Rogers, then this would rule them out as being the possible source of the Prescott/Poutine IP Address.

So how do we determine what ISP the Burke Campaign used?  Well the old saying, the best records are Tax records, so all we need to do is look at the Burke Campaign financial return for the 41st Election.

The exact form we are looking for is Marty Burke’s Candidates’ Details - Statement of Electoral Campaign Expenses (Part 3a). There is no way to give a direct link to the form since they are generate by a script, so I have included a screen shot.  I have edited it to place the column headers and the appropriate data to appear all in one screen shot, the form was also sorted on Supplier.

Click for large image.

Items #14 and #34 are payments to Rogers, and they fall under Office Expenses - Other (including telephone).  So that rules out anyone saying this could be a payment to a person called Rogers.  Also by examining the entire 3a form (not shown here) we can also see that there are no other payments to any other IPS’s.

From this information we can not eliminate the Burke Campaign as being the source of the Prescott/Poutine IP address, but we also can not conclude that the Burke Campaign owned the 99.225.28.34 IP Address.

Is Stephen Harper Responsible for the election fraud that occurred during the last election in Guelph and very likely elsewhere in Canada?  The answer is YES.  I could go into a long winded explanation for the reasons, but I think there is one person whom even Stephen Harper can’t deny as a reasonable source, a person who makes the argument for Government Accountability and Responsibility very clear.

At worst, he personally ordered it done and chose the people who executed the plan. At the very least, he fostered an attitude within the party [...], chose the managers of the people who committed these crimes and completely and utterly failed to exercise any oversight, supervision or leadership.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter where [his] actions or lack of them fall on that scale. He is the leader and a leader is responsible for the actions of the people he leads.

If he had a right or honourable bone in his body, he’d admit that and resign immediately.

These words are of course those of Stephen Harper when he demanded accountability from the Liberals over the AdScam scandal.  I think that this quote will become my new closing tag on every new post I do and #Robocalls and Pierre Poutine

Update Nut #1 - It has been pointed out by Saskboy and one other highly placed person directly connected to this Poutine affair that I have one point in error, the IP Address linked to the Pierre Poutine has not been directly link to the Burke Campaign Office.  If the IP address is linked to Private Persons internet access or if it the IP address of publicly available WiFi HotSpot (say a Starbucks) then this would place the noose around Prescott’s neck.  So even if Prescott is outed as Pierre Poutine (I’m not saying that it is, at this point), there is still the question of who is/was covering for him when the CIMS database logs were altered.

Update Nut #2 : I have mistakenly identified the Burke Campaign Manager as Marty Morgan and once as Marty Burke when it should be Ken Morgan.  I have corrected these errors and thank you to readers at tyhe Galloping Beaver for pointing out this error.

UPDATE NUT #3 : The Wingnuterer would like to welcome visitors from the Privy Council Office in Ottawa and what I am assume are our Honorable Members of the House of Commons. Nice to see you gents back and reading quality blogs like mine again,… Ok, it’s nice to see gents back reading my somewhat questionable blog again.

The last big news in Pierre Poutine saga was back on April 16th when it was revealed that Robocalls probe extends to Tory headquarters. In that news article it was revealed that log entries in the CIMS Database were blank for the individual whom they were inquiring about.

What does this mean Blank.  Well in a Database system, you can delete a record, but that does not mean that record has been removed.  In fact, the method of “Deletion” is to mark the record as deleted and in subsequent queries made on the Database, records marked as Deleted are not processed/included during those queries.  A record can only be purged from the Database permanently by crunching/compacting/compressing the database.  During this process, the main database files and indexes are completely rewritten and all data marked as Deleted are removed.

So why does this distinction require such a detailed explanation?  The answer is simple, the only way to remove data in a log file is to over write record(s) with new data, and to selectively write to a log file in a database requires special security.  By Special Security I am referring to the type of security that is required by someone who has Administrative Privileges and the type of access/tools to the database that would facilitate this type of operation.  From my understand, I do not believe that the CIMS web interface has those required tools built into its program.

Now keep all of the above in mind and lets look at the bomb shell that was dropped on Friday, May 4th. Robocalls IP address same as one used by Conservative candidate campaign worker, Elections Canada alleges. I am just going to point out some the most critical information, but I recommend you the entire article for yourself.

The sworn statement filed by Elections Canada investigator Al Mathews and released Friday makes a crucial link between the calls and the Internet Protocol address (IP) used to arrange the fraudulent calls made through Edmonton voice-broadcasting company RackNine.

The IP address was used both by Burke campaign worker Andrew Prescott to arrange legitimate calls with the company and by whoever placed the fraudulent calls that sent hundreds of electors to the wrong polling stations, Mathews alleges.

RackNine records provided to Elections Canada showed that Prescott’s account had been accessed from 99.225.28.34, a Rogers IP address in Guelph. He used his account to send out robocalls promoting Burke campaign events.

Now I think its more than fair to say that there is no smoking gun proof that Prescott logged into to the Poutine account and made the illegal phone calls.  It can only be said that same computer in the Burke Campaign office logged into the both the Poutine (client #93) and Prescott’s (client #45) account.

Wait a second, couldn’t the Poutine account have been accessed from any computer in the Burke Campaign Office since it was behind the firewall IP that was recorded?   Well the short answer is yes, but the real answer is no.  Any computer in the Burke Campaign Office would appear to be coming from the Rogers IP Address is 99.225.28.34 (the IP on record for the Burke Campaign) with a NAT firewall (NAT Firewalling is the most common and prevalent form of Firewall) unless it was routed through a proxy server.  Poutine did use a Proxy Server to hide his true IP address from the Rak-9 Servers, but on May 2nd he made a critical error that circumvented his use of the Saskatchewan based freeproxyserver.ca.  To better understand this error, we have to look at another news article.

From the National Post article John Ivison: Closing in on Pierre Poutine, published on Marth 8th, 2012 we learn how the owner of Rack-9, Matt Meier, was rightly pissed off that his company had been used as an instrument to thwart democracy, and how Matt Meier continued to investigate to uncover the true ID of Pierre Poutine.

Mr. Meier said he had his “Eureka” moment at 3 a.m. one morning, and by 5 a.m. had written a 22 page report for Elections Canada. “He [Pierre Jones] screwed up. Just for a fraction of a second but it was enough for me to find him,” he said.

So what was this Eureka Moment, the answer is not in this article, but I do remember a more detailed article that out lined an interview with Matt Meier on how he tracked down the trail of IP addresses used by Pierre Poutine, a trail of cookie crumbs (it took me a while to locate the exact article again). From the article Pierre Poutine: Will Mystery Robocaller be unmasked Monday? we have this very interesting tidbit of information

Early last Tuesday morning – as in 2:45 AM early – Meier sent me this message: ”I think I know who Pierre Poutine is!!! I’ve been scouring all servers for logs and I’m pretty sure he messed-up hiding himself.”

The brain-wave hit him, he told me later, in the middle of the night, when he suddenly remembered that he had a tertiary server, which he hadn’t turned over to Elections Canada, because it wasn’t subject to the original court-issued production order. When he went back and analyzed the data on that server, he realized that the person who’d uploaded the fake calls had used a phony IP address. But when that user signed off, Meier told me, he left behind a tell-tale “cookie”, which left a trail of what you might call digital cookie crumbs, that led, in turn, to the real IP address.

It was the Rack-9 Server Cookie that led back to the Burke Campaign IP Address, but if Poutine was using a proxy server, how could have Poutine screwed up and not used proxy server on May 2nd? The answer is this, Poutine did use the Proxy Server, but it didn’t matter because the computer he used had initial picked up its initial Rack-9 Server Cookie when Prescott had connected to the Rack-9 Servers to place earlier, legitimate Robocalls.

To understand this better we need to look at how Internet Cookies are used and what they are comprised of.  An Internet Cookie is a simple text file that is stored in your internet browser cache.  A cookie is issued from a web server that you connect to and the cookie can contain many different pieces if information, but the one single unique piece of information that is common to all cookies is a Unique IDentification code (UID).  Now many web servers may issue several different Internet Cookies associated to a computer connecting to them, but the most simplest and common cookie is the Tracking Cookie. A Tracking Cookie will always be unique to computer and a local computer user profile.  This cookie is what used Meier to tracked down the computer in the Burke Campaign Office, and that cookie was issued under the account that was used to access the Client #45 account.  We know this is the case because the Prescott account was setup before the Poutine’s (Client #93) and Prescott’s account would have been issued a Rack-9 Server Cookie first.  So when Poutine logged into the Rack-9 Servers from the Burke Campaign Office, the Rack-9 Server requested if the computer being used had any Rack-9 Server Cookie, which according to Matt Meier, it did.  The Computer at the Burke Campaign relayed it’s cookies back to Rack-9 Servers, which in turn logged the UID of the cookies in the Server Logs.  Now the Internet Cookie in question was a Logout Cookie, and this type of cookie isn’t consider a user identification cookie type, like those associated with user accounts, but are commonly used to track the last time a specific computer was connected to a server, but there’s the rub, the Cookie is assigned a UID and that UID can be associated with more than one user server account, but with only with one computer and one local computer user account on that computer.

So where does this leave us?  Lets examine the facts that we know are 100% certain

1. Pierre Poutine made #robocalls calls using Rack-9.
2. Pierre Poutine claimed to have been given Matt Meier’s personal and private connect information.
3. Pierre Poutine had sufficient security access to access the CIMS database and pull digital lists of NON-CPC supporters
4. Pierre Poutine had sufficient knowledge of setting up and using Burner Phones and untraceable Pay-Pal accounts.
5. Pierre Poutine had sufficient knowledge on how to use masking proxy servers.
6. Pierre Poutine had access to same computer and local computer user profile that was used by Prescott to connect to Rack-9 on May 2nd to make the illegal voter suppression #Robocalls.
7. The computer used to make these illegal voter suppression calls was used from behind the Burke Campaign NAT Firewall and is directly linked to Burke Campaign Rogers Account that was assigned the IP Address 99.225.28.34

So was there anyone else in the Burke Campaign Office that had the personal and private contact information for Matt Meier?  Well according to Prescott, he shared this contact information with  Michael Sona and Burke Campaign Manager Ken Morgan.  So we have three possible people who did have Matt Meier’ personal and private contact information, but we can rule out Michael Sona as Pierre Poutine, since it is known that Michael Sona acting as an observer at one of Guelph’s polling stations all day, and as such he could not have been in the Burke Campaign Office to place the illegal voter suppression #robocalls with Rack-9.

So we are down to two rats in the Burke Campaign office on the Day of May 2nd, Campaign Manager, Ken Morgan and Andrew Prescott.

Now that is not the end of this, ignoring the other 199 ridings that are being investigated, there is the very important point I made at the beginning of the article.  Someone with Administrative Rights to the CIMS database blanked out the log records which point to the Poutine List pull.  Now I am fairly certain, that no one in their right mind is going to allow people who are under suspicion of being Pierre Poutine or who are even associated the Burke Campaign to be allowed access to the CIMS database in order to prep a copy of the database that is intended to be sent to Elections Canada for this investigation.  So it is obvious that we have a person higher up the CPC food chain actively and knowingly attempting to cover up this crime.

As for Sona, Prescott and Morgan, there is two possible scenarios to consider.  Let me VERY CLEAR, these are only hypothetical possibilities, none have been proven in a court of law, nor is there any clear evidence to support them.

Possible Senario #1 : All three of them could have been in on it.  From news reports we know Sona was mouthing off about the idea of using misleadng calls during the campaign.  We know Prescott had all the skills and knowledge to put the plan in action.  Morgan was the man who allowed it happen, because we all know that in the CPC if you want to break wind, you need permission, in triplicate, before you’re allow to unclamp your sphincter.  Now I am not saying that this is way it happened, but given the nature of the CPC, it does beg the question.

Possible Scenario  #2 :  It was one of the three of the people in the Burke Campaign who had Matt Meier’s personal and private contact information.  So pick among the three, Sone, Prescott or Morgan.

Possible Scenario #3 : Prescott isn’t Poutine, it was someone else.  If this is the case, then that person went through extraordinary lengths to frame Prescott as the most likely suspect in the event that the Poutine Rack-9 #Robocalls were tracked to the Burke Campaign Office.

Still in the very end, given any of these three possible scenarios, the unavoidable fact remains that someone deliberately, maliciously and criminally altered the CIMS database logs that were given to Election Canada.  What’s the punishment for altering evidence, obstruction an investigation and criminal conspiracy?

There is no polite way to put this, but to say that someone high up in the CPC delete database transaction log data from the copy of CIMS that they gave to Elections Canada.

Robocalls probe extends to Tory headquarters

There are a couple of very interesting revelations in this story (emphasis added by me)

They (Elections Canada) are now certain the list of numbers in Guelph that received the robocalls came directly from CIMS, according to the source. The CIMS data were compared to listings of the outgoing robocalls provided under court order by RackNine and matched perfectly, the source said.

Well it gets better, we further read;

“As you know, we have proactively reached out to Elections Canada and offered to assist them in any way we can,” party spokesman Fred DeLorey said Monday night. “That includes handing over any documents or records that may assist them.”

So the CPC willing prepared Documents and copy of the CIMS database for Election Canada to use in their investigation.  Now given the nature and severity of the crimes being investigated, one would make damn sure that any of the information isn’t tampered with or redacted in way.  One would make sure that the information given to investigators is on the level, because if it turns out that the data looks, how shall we say, cooked, then it makes you look as if you are actively trying to thwart the investigation and cover up criminal activity in your political party,… you know,… just saying.

CIMS is known for its tight access controls and detailed event logging and retains a digital record of every transaction on the database. Interns and volunteers have been sanctioned when the logs showed they had looked up Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s listing, for example.

The investigators have inquired about CIMS logs for one particular user in the party’s headquarters. The logs show blanks between this person’s CIMS logon and logoff on the day the Guelph data was accessed, according to the source.

It is now abundantly clear that someone with high enough security access to CIMS tampered with copy of CIMS given to Elections Canada.  Sorry, if the excuse “It was just an over site,… It was a clerical error” does not wash.  It doesn’t matter if the person who deleted this information was in cahoots with Pierre Poutine or not, this person has actively attempted to subvert a criminal investigation.  That in itself is another crime.

Time to start another investigation

The Daily Zorpheous

If I missed any please let me know, I may added them.

The Daily Zorpheous

(wow two in one day)

When we know about who Pierre Poutine is, I’ll update the credits for this Daily Zorpheous.

Now I am not faulting Elections Canada here,

“Over 700 Canadians from across the country have informed us of specific circumstances where they believe similar wrongdoing took place,” the statement said. “I appreciate the interest that Canadians have shown in this matter and thank them for their continued collaboration.”

Now the last time I checked there were more than 700 people living in Guelph and according to my atlas, Canada is not confined to city boundaries of the City of Guelph.  Yet all the HarperBots seem to think that this is now a dead issue because there are only 700 complaints.  The only thing that this number demonstrates is the apathetic response of Canadians when it comes to reporting a crime of this nature.  Consider the fact that Elections Canada reported that 281 call back phone calls were made to the Poutine “Burner” phone on election day.

Thankfully, Elections Canada isn’t listening to the Ezra’s and the CPC HarperBots, they at least understand their duty when it comes this matter, although it may have been slow to the initial response.