I hadn't seen this mentioned anywhere yet so I thought I would share it here. It really just confirms what we already know- We really need to get money out of politics or at least minimize the ability to influence.
CNN reports they were tweeting internal polling numbers from anonymous twitter accounts which could in turn be decoded and used to pinpoint PAC spending.
The Twitter accounts were hidden in plain sight. The profiles were publicly available but meaningless without knowledge of how to find them and decode the information, according to a source with knowledge of the activities.
The practice is the latest effort in the quest by political operatives to exploit the murky world of campaign finance laws at a time when limits on spending in politics are eroding and regulators are being defanged.
There seems to be some question as to the legality of what was done. If the information had to be decoded in order to be useful and that was shared it would possibly show coordination between NRCC and Super PACs.
"It's a line that has not been defined. This is really on the cutting edge," said Paul S. Ryan, senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization focused on campaign finance issues. "It might not be legal. It's a cutting edge practice that, to my knowledge, the Federal Election Commission has never before addressed to explicitly determine its legality or permissibility."
At least two outside groups and a Republican campaign committee had access to the information posted to the accounts, according to the source. They include American Crossroads, the super PAC founded by Karl Rove; American Action Network, a nonprofit advocacy group, and the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is the campaign arm for the House GOP.
And who would have guessed Rove would be in the mix? And in more shocking news, it looks like nothing is going to be done about it anyway although their deleting the accounts three minutes after CNN contacted them would imply they knew it was not legal and decided to cover their tracks.
The accounts that CNN reviewed were active in the months ahead of this month's election, which gave Republicans their largest majority in the House since World War II and control of the Senate. They were live until Nov. 3 but deleted minutes after CNN contacted the NRCC with questions.
At the very least, this should be investigated but according to the article the "experts" don't think anything will come of it. Perhaps we should push for something to be done?