Fake minister's Blog pulled down after threat of legal action...

Wertz

A weblog which opened just after Christmas, purporting to be the Blog of Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern has been pulled by it's Huntingdon CA webhost after threats of legal action by Vodafone and the Dept of Foreign affairs.

The blog racked up a huge number of hits in the short time it was operating.
It did this by offering itself as a place to "name and shame" local drug dealers, prostitutes and most controversially members of the IRA or other terrorist groups, living in and around the N Louth and Dundalk area.

Any comments posted were allowed to stay without being edited. Several people were named as terrorists, dealers etc and the anonymous blogger received threats on his life unless he closed the site.
As it developed over the 2 weeks a story involving Vodafone's major call centre based in Dundalk emerged. Allegations of breaches of security by members of staff with full access to customer records, call details and other sensitive data were backed by posts from people claiming to actually work in the call centre, saying that all this was going on regularly.
Allegations were also made against sr. Gardaí involving the murder of 2 RUC officers in the 80's. All unfounded but posted nonetheless.

Now being from Dundalk myself, I only managed to come across this site after it got pulled. I heard about it through word of mouth.
It raised some important issues for people from the town, but it also raised issues like the Vodafone thing.
I'm no longer a Vodafone customer, but if I was I'd be concerned about some of the issues raised, and would be made even more suspicious by the speed the company moved to have the offensive material removed. Getting things pulled from a server in a different jurisdiction (especially in the US) must have taken a lot of irate phonecalls and threats to make it happen. Perhaps a similar speed in investigating possible wrong doing at the call centre would be a good idea also...

As I said the site is down (a mirror-site was similarly pulled), but the blogger says it will be back up as soon as the legal stuff is sorted out. He/She also appealed for people to send in photo evidence to back up allegations...

Full story, cached pages & Legal letters

A blog about the blog

Our man in Havana

Where theres smoke etc!

Wertz

Bond-007 wrote:

Where theres smoke etc!

Oh no doubt. Some of the other stuff posted on there that I heard through word of mouth rang very true indeed.
Something like this was always gonna be a victim of it's own success but I'm guessing we're going to be seeing a lot of similar town blogs popping up all over the country. In fact just reading about one involving Newry.
Beats paying €1.50 for the local rag anyhow...

L5

A lot of that vodafone stuff would have some truth in it. I know of one case myself where sisters friend suspected boyfriend was cheating on her, asked one of her friends in the call centre to check his phone, he got her a name age and phone number of a girl her boyfriend was in regular contact with. Turned out he was cheating on her.

Our man in Havana

L5 wrote:

A lot of that vodafone stuff would have some truth in it. I know of one case myself where sisters friend suspected boyfriend was cheating on her, asked one of her friends in the call centre to check his phone, he got her a name age and phone number of a girl her boyfriend was in regular contact with. Turned out he was cheating on her.

That would be a breach of the data protection act and should lead to instant dismissal. Well thats what would happen where I work.

andysnat

I have found comment about this all over the place.

"Dermot" at "Dundalk" was getting over a million hits at peak, and is still huge in terms of visitors. His site was disabled initially after much discussion at Blogdrive, in Huntington CA, not San Jose.

Any further changes you may have noted to the site have been made by "Dermot" him / her self.

The post I have put on my site was just me being jealous of "Dermot"'s success, but I have since found links to me popping up everywhere, giving me the two most successful days in terms of hits to my blog ever. Still only the tiniest ripple of interest though.

The numbers I quoted are those given to me from an inside source though!

Thank you "Wertz", because I have had some hits from here too!!

Wertz

andysnat wrote:

I have found comment about this all over the place.

"Dermot" at "Dundalk" was getting over a million hits at peak, and is still huge in terms of visitors. His site was disabled initially after much discussion at Blogdrive, in Huntington CA, not San Jose.

Any further changes you may have noted to the site have been made by "Dermot" him / her self.

The post I have put on my site was just me being jealous of "Dermot"'s success, but I have since found links to me popping up everywhere, giving me the two most successful days in terms of hits to my blog ever. Still only the tiniest ripple of interest though.

The numbers I quoted are those given to me from an inside source though!

Thank you "Wertz", because I have had some hits from here too!!

Ah my search at the RIPE database showed it as based in San José; maybe a re-direct or some snafu?
I've not got much interest in blogs perse but this one stirred my attention for all the wrong (right) reasons.

The controversy surrounding who Dermot in fact is, is a lesson in the art of gossip and rumour. Personally i think it's someone with a huge axe to grind and enough raw info to start with. SF seem to think it's anyone from the PSNI, Garda Special Branch or MI6 ( :rolleyes: ). The dept of Foreign affairs doesn't know what to think (there's something new). Vodafone don't care who it is once it just goes away quietly

The more I think about it, the less comfortable I am even sending a dodgy txt to a mate. I thought SMS was supposed to be digitally encrypted. In fact I thought ALL private data stored about customers was kept on secure servers requiring authorised, logged access. Big Brother turns out to be some 20-something Dundalk bimbo with a penchant for eavesdropping on all the local "goss"...I'll take Orwell's version before that, any day.

chewy

would there ever be condisations where that sorta blog could last without legal threat etc?

servers where the host doesn't give a sh_t whats on it, or somone hosting it themselves ?

I don't think the perosn was actually pretending it was Dermot Aherns blog, it was jsut a funny name, like bertie's porn?

Wertz

I'm sure there's hosts out there in place where laws are a little less strict or harderto enforce (if at all), maybe in places like former soviet bloc countries or the far east.
But the free speech amendment to the US constitution should have rendered the site safe on US soil (once the host's ToS weren't violated). The fact that it wasn't due to action mostly taken by Vodafone, probably means that it was business related and maybe that pressure was brought to bear financially(?).

There's no doubt the blogger themselves was having a pop at Ahern, but strictly in a humourous, not a malign sense. There was a statement posted that it was in no way affiliated with D Ahern TD. It's just like me or you coming to Boards.ie and signing up as "Darth Vader or whoever. The laughable fact that Dermotahern@hotmail.com was not already registered speaks volumes...

Our man in Havana

Wertz wrote:

I'm sure there's hosts out there in place where laws are a little less strict or harderto enforce (if at all), maybe in places like former soviet bloc countries or the far east.
But the free speech amendment to the US constitution should have rendered the site safe on US soil (once the host's ToS weren't violated). The fact that it wasn't due to action mostly taken by Vodafone, probably means that it was business related and maybe that pressure was brought to bear financially(?).

There's no doubt the blogger themselves was having a pop at Ahern, but strictly in a humourous, not a malign sense. There was a statement posted that it was in no way affiliated with D Ahern TD. It's just like me or you coming to Boards.ie and signing up as "Darth Vader or whoever. The laughable fact that Dermotahern@hotmail.com was not already registered speaks volumes...

It has been already been registered as is Dermot_Ahern@hotmail.com

boy1er1990

Wertz wrote:

A weblog which opened just after Christmas, purporting to be the Blog of Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern has been pulled by it's Huntingdon CA webhost after threats of legal action by Vodafone and the Dept of Foreign affairs.

The blog racked up a huge number of hits in the short time it was operating.
It did this by offering itself as a place to "name and shame" local drug dealers, prostitutes and most controversially members of the IRA or other terrorist groups, living in and around the N Louth and Dundalk area.

Any comments posted were allowed to stay without being edited. Several people were named as terrorists, dealers etc and the anonymous blogger received threats on his life unless he closed the site.
As it developed over the 2 weeks a story involving Vodafone's major call centre based in Dundalk emerged. Allegations of breaches of security by members of staff with full access to customer records, call details and other sensitive data were backed by posts from people claiming to actually work in the call centre, saying that all this was going on regularly.
Allegations were also made against sr. Gardaí involving the murder of 2 RUC officers in the 80's. All unfounded but posted nonetheless.

Now being from Dundalk myself, I only managed to come across this site after it got pulled. I heard about it through word of mouth.
It raised some important issues for people from the town, but it also raised issues like the Vodafone thing.
I'm no longer a Vodafone customer, but if I was I'd be concerned about some of the issues raised, and would be made even more suspicious by the speed the company moved to have the offensive material removed. Getting things pulled from a server in a different jurisdiction (especially in the US) must have taken a lot of irate phonecalls and threats to make it happen. Perhaps a similar speed in investigating possible wrong doing at the call centre would be a good idea also...

As I said the site is down (a mirror-site was similarly pulled), but the blogger says it will be back up as soon as the legal stuff is sorted out. He/She also appealed for people to send in photo evidence to back up allegations...

Full story, cached pages & Legal letters

A blog about the blog

I HEARD THAT THAT WEBSITE WAS CHANGED(WWW.DERMOTAHERN.IE)
DOES ANY1 KNOW WHAT IT WAS CHANGED TO? I WILL BE FINDING OUT NEXT WEEK BUT I DONT KNOW FOR SURE DOES ANY1 KNOW THE NEW WEVSITE? Conor Boyle -- galway--

boy1er1990

Does anyone Know the website for any of them?
i will be getting the new one i think but i'm not so sure if am or not--probaly not
but do u know any website with that stuff on it?
Conor Boyle --somwhere in GALWAY

boy1er1990

Does anyone Know the website for any of them?
i will be getting the new one i think but i'm not so sure if am or not--probaly not
but do u know any website with that stuff on it?
Conor Boyle --somwhere in GALWAY

Stephen

lay off the crack pipe.

joe.

class. i know of a lot of people mentioned there. scandal.

Rew

Wertz wrote:

The more I think about it, the less comfortable I am even sending a dodgy txt to a mate. I thought SMS was supposed to be digitally encrypted. In fact I thought ALL private data stored about customers was kept on secure servers requiring authorised, logged access. Big Brother turns out to be some 20-something Dundalk bimbo with a penchant for eavesdropping on all the local "goss"...I'll take Orwell's version before that, any day.

Id did a bit of research on SMS security and bascly its not. So keep that in mind for dodgy txts. The SMSC admins can do what they like including reading SMS's and genetating fake SMS's (but anyone can do that).

Wertz

For anyone interested, or that just wants to laugh at how sad this whole thing has become follow the linky...

http://dundalk.blogdrive.com/

Not so controversial now when they decide to edit it, but the continuing talk of british MI involvement make it entertaining anyways...

ShiverinEskimo

For one, having worked in Vodafone, no, call centre agents cannot see the actual text of your SMS, they can in certain cases see the numbers you have text and subsequently fine the name of the person you texted assuming that the number you text is another vodafone and that the person you text has registered their phone.
as mentioned the people in charge of the SMS servers CAN read your SMS but that is limited and as far as i know, it is controlled in Sandyford in the vodafone complex.

I read all of the blog when it was up and yea it was funny, but a little dangerous considering I could easily have posted the name of someone I didn't like as a drug dealer or terrorist and possibly bring harm to them. Funny perhaps, but not very wise.

Rew

My understanding of SMS, and from the reseach I did, they are sent encoded (not encrypted) but basicly in the clear to and from the phone so potentially they could be grabbed as they fly around the air.