Regular visitors will, I’m sure, understand perfectly well why I was intrigued, to say the least, by this post at Ridiculous Politics…
Tonight’s London Evening Standard has uncovered a Tory Party internet scam - Tories have been caught trying to get voters to disclose their voting intentions with a phoney website.
Members of the public have been duped by a website called VoterChoice.co.uk that promises to stop them from being bothered by canvassers. But those who register are then asked to disclose which party they intend to vote for next Thursday.
The site has been deliberately branded to look like the independent free service to stop unwanted callers. At the end people who register are even given a meaningless “validation number”.
Labour’s Chair, Hazel Blears said: “This is an absolute con, the online equivalent of the Nigerian letter scam purporting to offer something that it clearly does not.”
Leaving aside Hazel’s failure to cite the correct type of online scam - what is described is more of a phishing scam than a 419, this is a story that’s certain worth a closer look, and so…
First port of call, naturally, is the site itself - www.voterchoice.co.uk - which appears to have been hastily removed and shows only a 403 error page from its hosts Freeola.net.
Not to worry, because the next port of call is, of course, Nominet’s WHOIS service, in order to identify the owner of the domain name, which turns out to be a Mr Jeremy Kite of Longfield, Kent (near Dartford), who registered the domain on 18th March this year…
Actually, I’ve got that name slightly wrong…
…its not Mr Jeremy Kite
…because his full title is Councillor Jeremy A Kite, the Conservative Leader of Dartford Borough Council and member for the ward of Longfield, New Barn & Southfleet, and here he is on is his official Local Authority web page, on the Dartford Council website.
Loathe as I am to say this due to my disdain for the body in question, this is clearly a matter the merits investigation by the Standards Board for England, not to mention, from the description of the website, a flagrant breach of the Data Protection Act.
To compound Tory embarrassment, Kite’s exposure as the owner of a scam website comes a mere nine days after a visit to the town by Tory Leader, David Cameron, who was pictured taking part in a flytipping clean-up that opposition members alleged had been deliberately staged as a photo opportunity…
And who was it that was called upon to defend Cameron?
Jeremy Kite, the leader of the council, vigorously denied the suggestion that the rubbish had been planted, but admitted that council workers had collected rubbish from a 20m radius on the same site and piled it in a heap before Mr Cameron’s arrival. “But I can tell you 100 per cent that the rubbish was on that site and was not brought in,” he said. “In fact, we left it there a day longer than it should have been because we knew Cameron was coming.”
I wonder if Kite found the time to show Cameron his new website as well?
If that is true. Caught hook, line and sinker. Love it when either of the two parties get caught out. Sounds like typical parish-pump politics.
April 28th, 2007 at 2:29 amElection Skullduggery…
Someone help me out here. What’s the problem with asking someone how they’re going to vote? Don’t opinion pollsters do that all the time?…
April 28th, 2007 at 7:29 amThere’s nothing wrong with that, Tim, but we find that it’s probably best to be up front as to who you are.
Also, doesn’t it fall foul of the DPA if one gathers personal information via dodgy means?
(Ah, yes. I’ll read the post properly next time)
April 28th, 2007 at 9:04 amShe’s no mug is our Hazel I like her.This is my first visit to a posh blog like this,more used to the rough and tumble at Guidos’ proper and Iains’ of course.I wiped me feet before I knocked though Sir.
April 28th, 2007 at 10:54 amHi there. Hope you don’t mind me contributing to your blog. I’m Jeremy Kite, the guy in the story.
I must be the world’s first ‘phisher’ ever to use their real name and address to register their website and attach their photograph, home phone number and email address to the document at the centre of the so-called ‘con’!!!
If there are dirty tricks here, I honestly don’t think they’re ours. I suspect we’re dealing with an over-excited Labour lad who’s doing nothing all day except firing off half-baked news stories.
But I’m happy to let you judge. Here goes…
What we tried to do is reflect the fact that whilst some people like to see political types turn up on their doorstep three times a night and have a good old discussion about politics, there are some who just find it a real pain in the derriere to be disturbed just as they’re sitting down for tea or Eastenders. During the last election, I actually saw THREE separate parties canvassing the same street at once, knocking on the same doors just a couple of minutes apart. Have a pop at me if you like but I’m just trying to make things a bit more dignified for people who may not be as worked up about local elections as we are.
So, we set up a website, entirely openly, that lets people tell us they’d prefer that political canvassers didn’t disturb them. The website looks professional, not because we’ve modeled it on anything, but because I like good looking website. It’s got three pages.
It asks people to register and write three digits on the back page of our (very blue coloured) CONSERVATIVE manifesto which then turns into a DO NOT DISTURB notice which they display in their window. The only reason we ask residents to register and write the 3 digits is solely to stop us confusing genuine requests not to call with manifestos that have just been idly discarded in windows or visible in porches.
We’re not using, storing, processing or manipulating the data in any improper way. It arrives as an email and we make a note of the voting intention. That’s it. As Tim Worstall says, it’s EXACTLY what every party does when their on the doorstep. We don’t send emails, clever little tailored messages, texts or anything. Strange as it may seem, we just leave people alone.
As Hamer quite rightly says, the issue is whether we’ve been open about what we’ve done. Well, here’s the facts (missing from the Standard’s story, natch) …
1) the ONE and ONLY place we promoted the service was on ONE WHOLE PAGE of our 12page Conservative manifesto that - as you might expect from a manifesto - is plastered with Conservative logos. The DO NOT DISTURB notice voters display is actually the back page of our manifesto. I actually think it’s virtually impossible for ANYBODY (except Hazel Blears by the sound of it) to reach a conclusion that it was anything other than a Conservative initiative. We haven’t promoted the website in any way, other than in our huge, bright Tory blue manifesto. Honestly, it just defies belief to say we’ve set out to con anyone.
2) The FRONT PAGE of the website contains just TWO prominent links. One takes you to REGISTER, the other takes you to ‘IMPRINT’. The page it takes you to has no other content but the following words in normal sized type (none of your .5 point, grey on black!) in the middle of the page which says “Promoted by Keith Ferrin on behalf of Dartford Conservative Candidates, all at ….(then the Dartford Tory address)
As for Data Protection, well I’m told we are a registered data keeper in relation to our normal work as a local Conservative Association. We’ve not gathered any information that we don’t already store. Like every other party we have a electoral roll system that stores Voting intentions gathered from canvassiong (doorstep or online)
We took the site down because, quite frankly, if Labour and the other parties aren’t going to take any notice of the request to leave people alone, there aint much point to it.
Now, I know a blog like yours owes no favours to a minor local politician but I do hope there’s a streak of fairness in there!!
We’re just trying to use a basic bit of technology to give voters (who want it) a bit of peace and quiet during a big, closely fought election. We’ve done nothing more than any elector could do by scrawling ‘leave me alone’ on a bit of A5 and putting it in their window. No deceit, no con,just quite a bright idea actually.
Sorry for the long blog
Jeremy Kite
April 29th, 2007 at 12:28 amIncidentally, nice blog.
April 29th, 2007 at 12:31 amWell as I said in my only ever other posting here I like Hazel.I also think this chappie seems a pretty decent kind of a bloke.When we of the proper Labour party get rid of Tone and his odious crew all will be well again,you’ll see.Tell Hazel to dis Blair on the doorstep and I may move into your area and cast a vote or two or maybe more! Liked the “nice blog bit” at the end Jeremy good move,do you think they bought it ?
April 29th, 2007 at 11:58 amI have a soft spot for Hazel too actually although I think she’s leapt on the bandwagon of this story a little too quickly since she clearly didn’t research the background.
I do worry that she’s a little over eager to appear youthful and ‘with it’ on occasion - leading to one embarrassing stunt to far on occasion perhaps - which a woman of her intellect really doesn’t need to do but yes, I think she’s a pretty straight sort of person …. although of course, as we know, Toneee is ‘pretty straight sort of guy.” (source T.Blair himself)
J
April 29th, 2007 at 12:38 pm“over-excited Labour lad” - how sexist!
If this guy - and I agree he seems to be a decent fellow - really intended this to be a deterrent to all canvassers, did he contact the other parties before setting up the website?
I suspect the truth is this was a bit of electoral innovation that wasn’t properly thought out - but I’m sure we’ll see the web used more and more for direct voter communications.
Maybe if parties are more upfront about it it will avoid the impression that people are being duped - which is the definitely the case here.
April 29th, 2007 at 6:43 pm[…] found this Ministry of Truth story hilarious. Councillor Jeremy Kite, the Tory leader of Dartford council sets up a website to capture electors voting intentions. […]
April 30th, 2007 at 7:09 amThat’s the trouble with you politico types you always look for the bad in folk.I am a Labour voter but loath the crew that has been in charge for the last ten years,every bleedin’ one of them.I think this guy (Tory Chappie) took the time to post, and unlike our man (Labour Fellow) came across as o.k. by me.I may now change my mind and vote Tory, and then again I may not.See what the lads in the pub think,couple of jars of the “amber nectar” and we are liable to be the swing vote you lot talk about.
April 30th, 2007 at 10:07 amMike, you may wish to read my follow up post on this, which amongst other things explains something of the difficult this story has generated due to the conflicting accounts given by Jeremy and the Evening Standard.
Just hit the home page and you’ll find it.
April 30th, 2007 at 12:58 pmBefore you convice yourself that Jeremy is a great bloke you should know that his council he has wasted £millions on a football stadium that is of no benefit to the vast majority of people in the borough, decimated the town centre through a poorly thought-out redevelopment plan and now claims credit for NOT putting a road through the park when it was his party’s idea to do it in the first place!! Now he wants to allow Tesco to build a massive store in the town centre, ruining the small businesses.
p.s. he insists on putting his face and name to everything associated with the council. Some ego!!
Steve
May 4th, 2007 at 1:38 pmWell said Steve. If you lie a run down main street and boarded up shop fronts, then come to sunny Dartford. By forcing out all the local businesses, there is even less reason to visit the town. Naively the council thought that Bluewater would help to regenerate Dartford - yeah, I know.
Street cleaning - doesn’t really happen anymore. the it around the Orchard theatre and shopping centre gets a quick once over, as does Lowfield Street, the rest of Dartford doesn’t.
Frankly, the council is working harder and harder to just make the town suck. And that’s why my family and I are planning to move out.
May 7th, 2007 at 11:40 am