Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Sometimes The Destination Really Is The Most Important Part Of The Journey.

AllTheLinksThatMayOrMayNotFit
EightPlusOneStillEqualsNineVille

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Update Late Tuesday: Looks like Mr. McKnight really does exist, and it looks like he does have the skill sets described below....But....There is also the matter of the 'destination', which goes like this..."the contractor.....volunteered briefly on a local Conservative campaign in Edmonton last federal election"....
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All kinds of folks appear to be searching high and low for one Mr. Rick McKnight, who apparently does/did all sorts of things for Mr. Matt Meier and his company RackNine.

Unfortunately, however, when Postmedia reporters McGregor and Maher asked Mr. Meier and Mr. Meier's lawyer about the good Mr. McKnight they ran into both a real and, it would appear, a virtual stonewall:

...Meier, who is said to be helping Elections Canada with their investigation and has repeatedly said he had no knowledge of the "Poutine" robocalls, has declined to comment on McKnight's identity.

In an interview, when asked how a reporter could get in touch with McKnight, he said "you don't," and hung up.

Later, he referred queries to his lawyer, R. Justin Matthews, who offered a cryptic reply.

"How does one define a real person?" said Matthews in an email. "Would a web-design employee that chooses to use a different name online (which some people seem to do these days) be considered a real person?"


Now.

To the best of our knowledge there is, as of yet, no hard evidence of who the good Mr. McKnight actually is in meatspace.

But his Interwebz tracks appear to be leading some interesting places that may not all be virtual.

Beijing York, in the comments here, and at The Galloping Beaver, has done some linked-in type tracking that you may want to check out.

Of course, other possibilities exist, as Holly Stick has suggested on the same comment threads.

Regardless....

The upshot is that, given all the stonewalling, we still do not know Mr. McKnight's true identity, be it real or virtual.

Which is fair enough.

But let's just consider for a moment that Mr. McKnight is, indeed, a real person.

And let's assume for the same moment that Mr. McKnight really is a fabulous web designer and a boffo marketing manager which, apparently, are/were a couple of his duties at RackNine.

In other words, let's consider that Mr. McKnight is the real deal.

So.

If that were to turn out to be the case, why would Mr. Meier tell Mess'rs McGregor and Maher that they couldn't get in touch with him and then hang up abruptly?

Hmmmmm.....

Could it be, perhaps, that Mr. McKnight's Interweb tracks and, more specifically, the destination or destinations to which they lead is the real issue here?


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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

From the Globe and Mail story noted above:

"The firm says it initially balked at revealing his true identity because they didn’t want to breach their staffer’s right to privacy. But journalists quickly drew media attention to the mystery staffer."

I guess this means that if the media draws attention to mystery bloggers related to robo calls their true identities will be revealed as well.... or the fact that in this instance of Rack9 having caved into the media questioning bode better for them now, to come clean, rather than wait out the storm of questioning that might make them look terrible in the eyes of the public opinion.

Does this then mean that the Media is not applying enough pressure on the Conservative Party of Canada and their staffers?

RossK said...

Good question Anon--

And I am not sure of the answer.

However, it may be worth asking if this, too, was another limited hangout - in which a little is revealed in an effort to slow or stop more digging.

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