Obama campaign intentionally disabled address verification on donations (AVS)

A company hired by Newsmax to look into some of the questionable donations to the Barack Obama campaign has found even more strange cases of those who don't appear to be U.S. citizens, such as thousands for an assortment of Middle Eastern and Asian countries: link.

However, the most important bit appears to be the news that AVS was intentionally disabled and by a major company. Some news reports haven't mentioned it, and some have thought it could have just been an innocent move such as due to a bug in their software (no, really: meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/10/persecute_or_prosecute.php). However:

Newsmax asked James Wester, a spokesman for Chase Paymentech, who was responsible for taking the unusual step of deactivating the Address Verification Service recommended by VISA USA on the Obama Web site. Such security features can be deactivated by the processing company, or at the request of the merchant, in this case, Obama for America.

Wester said that Paymentech was "not going to be issuing a statement at this time."

VISA USA has a series of verification tools it recommends to online merchants to prevent online credit card fraud and to guarantee the security of personal credit-card information...

Other tags: kenneth timmerman · obama money · usa visa

Politics · Thu, 10/30/2008 - 10:08 · · Importance: 21

24Ahead.com

Independent, in-depth coverage of immigration, politics, and media bias since 2002. Also: multiculturalism, Los Angeles, California, privacy, and occasionally celebrities and wacky humor...

If you can't find what you're looking for, see the About page or use the navigation features to the right.

Start here