Monday, March 18, 2013

RoboReal Calls Revisited: Outrage About The Press Coverage, Not...


...The Poutineing.

Well, well, well...

One of the fine young fellows who worked on the Conservative Party of Canada's candidate in Guelph, Mr. Marty Burke, in 2011 is hopping mad at one of the reporters that broke the Pierre Poutine story that appears to have originated in the campaign concerned.

Now.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the drama played out on the Twittmachine earlier today (these fine young fellows do realize that anybody who wants to can read this stuff, right?).

Here's how it started...



And here's how the other half of the McMaher duo later responded...


For the record, the following is from Mr. McGregor's O'Cit piece from last November in which the reasons for folks wanting to know about Mr. Prescott's knowledge of all things poutiney were laid out:

...Elections Canada investigators have been trying for 19 months to trace the trail of phone records, Internet accounts and other electronic evidence back to the Poutine suspect who launched the Guelph robocalls.

In May, an Ontario court ordered MTS Allstream to turn over records to an Elections Canada investigator who wanted to determine if St. Joseph’s (Hospital) Internet system (where Mr. Prescott was employed) was used to access RackNine, an Edmonton-based voice-broadcasting company.

RackNine’s servers were used to send out more than 7,000 pre-recorded phone messages directing voters to the wrong polling location on election day.

Prescott has an account with RackNine account but says he used the company only for legitimate voter-contact calls during the campaign.

Elections Canada has not accused Prescott, either.

In a court document, investigator Allan Mathews said he traced one of the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses used to access Prescott’s account to St. Joseph’s Health Centre. He sought the court order to help confirm Prescott had an account with RackNine, although Prescott has never disputed that he did.

Mathews also noted that someone had logged onto Prescott’s RackNine account from another IP address, traced to Rogers, that was used minutes later to access the account that launched the Poutine calls.

That IP address was also used by several Burke campaign workers to connect to CIMS, the Conservative party’s voter-information database.


Mathews tried to trace the Rogers IP but found it led to a private residence in the Guelph area with no apparent connections to the Burke campaign or its workers.

Prescott says he can’t explain the confusion over IP addresses.

“If I knew the answers to any of those questions, I’d be shouting them from the rooftops because I want this over with.”

In the same document, Mathews says that he last spoke to Prescott on Feb. 24, the day after the first media reports about the Guelph investigation, but Prescott has, through his lawyer, turned down a request for another interview.

Prescott says he hasn’t spoken to Mathews because of Citizen and Postmedia News reports.

“You made me out to be a suspect, when in fact I was a willing help to (Elections Canada),” he said in a message sent over Twitter. “Therefore, I invoked my right to silence. Innocent.”

Prescott is one of three Burke workers known to have refused further interviews with Elections Canada...



Please note that last bit which, in my opinion, speaks volumes about Mr. Prescott's claims.


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And while my interest in this stuff goes all the way back to what I consider to be the Robo-Call 'patient zero' in Saanich in 2008, I do realize that, what with the current focus on all things provincial, that I've fallen behind in the nitty gritty of the deal....For the latest on all that, I highly recommend you head on over to Alison's place and work backwards from....Here.


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2 comments:

Don F. said...

Sorry to be of topic Ross but I wanted to bring your attention to Jas Johal ripping Joe Oliver a new one tonight on Global. It was a thing os sure beauty like a cleansing spring rain!
Don

RossK said...

Thanks for the heads-up Don.

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