These US Presidential contestants can't even secure their websites – what hope for America?

The majority of US presidential candidates' websites failed a basic privacy and security audit. In the Presidential Candidate Online Trust Audit, an audit by the Online Trust Alliance (OTA), the failures in 17 out of 23 cases came as a result of a variety of poor privacy practices, including the sharing or trading of website …

[Anonymous Coward]

endorsement from OTA = giving campaign suspension speech

>Scott Walker (Rep), Rick Santorum (Rep), Jeb Bush (Rep), Lincoln Chafee (Dem), Chris Christie (Rep), and Martin O'Malley (Dem) all received an endorsement from the OTA,

Sigh so basically the <1% crowd (other than Bush and even his campaign is floundering). Figures.

[Irongut]

Jeb Bush

Must be the first test he's ever passed.

[Mark 85]

So much like robocalling....

.. I guess we can expect the Congress to override the FTC guidelines, etc. for politicians. What a sad, sad state of affairs. We're supposed to support them, trust them and elect them?

[Pascal Monett]

No, you're supposed to believe that you're electing them.

If the guy you think you elected actually gets the job, you have nothing to do with it.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Pretty sure aliens beam dumbfuckeration waves onto the Glorious Homeland!

It's only explanation that makes sense, and I don't even need NAVY CSI style image enhancement techniques to come to that conclusion.

Foreign Policy by Intimidation: GOP Candidates Show How It's Done

GOP-think ... has an underlying racist tone to it, with the presumption that those not quite Caucasian foreign people are not really like us, don’t think like us and can be shot or droned on sight when they fail to heed our advice. It’s not about Israel per se or about anything that would make sense to any disinterested observer. It is all about having a “security zone” that is global in reach and preempts the rights of anyone else. It is coupled with superpower hubris driven by an “exceptionalism”-derived unwillingness to treat people who are not Americans with any respect or consideration. Washington reflexively turns potential friends into enemies at every opportunity and perseveres in a foreign policy based on a whole basket of false premises that has been disastrous vis-à-vis any actual United States interests. Unfortunately for the American people the likely alternative to all this blatant and dangerous nonsense is Hillary.

[Dan Paul]

Re: Pretty sure aliens beam dumbfuckeration waves onto the Glorious Homeland!

When the effeminate so called "president" Obama went on his "apology" tour, the US lost the "respect" of Vladimir Putin, ISIL, and Al Qaeda. They don't need a love letter, they need their ass kicked. When Putin told Obama he could "toss his salad" over Crimea and Ukraine, Obama got out the tongs and oil.

So emboldened, Putin took Crimea and Eastern Ukraine and ISIL took much of Syria. The direct result we are well aware of is the Syrian refugee problem that faces all of Europe, the downing of Flight 137 by Russian forces and the limp wristed and cowardly response by NATO to the Ukraine incursions.

Russia and ISIL/Al Qaeda, only respect fear and intimidation. Same as Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini. Now even NATO means nothing as the only teeth it EVER had was the full force of the AMERICAN Military. Bitch all you want about the USA but YOUR spineless leaders sat by and did nothing while hundreds of thousands died or were displaced.

If that is the only way to get your point across to murderers, then what's the problem with using the tools that actually work? Being a wimpy pussy obviously doesn't.

Wimpy apologists who interfere with our military leadership don't win wars, they only lose them. We already saw that in 'Nam. Too bad no one learned from History. They also don't get any respect for giving 5 top level Al Qaeda operatives back for one useless combination traitor/deserter. They also don't get any respect or deserve any from the hundreds of thousand of military veterans who served during the Iraq/Afghanistan wars because he devalued their service by sympathizing with the enemy and appointing his buddies to positions they weren't qualified for. No, Obama was too busy getting on late night TV shows and playing games to care about being the Commander in Chief.

And as far as "Aliens beaming dumbfuckeration" they must have hit you right between the eyes because you and your kind got the full dose.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's endemic

Obama had his CIA cleaned and A/V secured Crackberry hacked... They are all clueless.

[Will Godfrey]

Oh dear.

The only one that surprised me was Lawrence Lessig.

[RobHib]

Lawrence Lessig in list, very expected.

Rather surprised to see Lawrence Lessig (Dem) in the list.

I wonder if this is the result of hypocrisy, double-standards etc., or just oversight and bad management.

[RobHib]

Re: Lawrence Lessig in list, very UNexpected.

Duh, of course the title is supposed to read "...very unexpected."

[Your alien overlord - fear me]

Always on SSL so data is encrypted between punter and pres-wannabe. However, that data is then sold on the open market to, well let's be honest, scum and their phone/email scumware.

Why didn't the OTA audit how the data was sold and in what format format, plain text on a USB stick perhaps?

[ecofeco]

The PTB are clueless about the Internet

The rich and powerful may have all the money and guns, but they truly are clueless about the Internet.

Crazy changes are coming. Despite the legion of cat video watchers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The PTB are clueless about the Internet

No, because cat videos are used by our feline masters to properly program us. It's no accident civilization arose in cat friendly Egypt (not sure about China). I'm well trained so I know these things.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: The PTB are clueless about the Internet

The rich and powerful may have all the money and guns, but they truly are clueless a̶b̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶I̶n̶t̶e̶r̶n̶e̶t̶.

FTFY

[Ian Michael Gumby]

Uhm... news flash...

Walker exited the race already so I guess it doesn't matter what sort of grade he got. ;-)

Wonder why the lights are still on at his campaign site?

[swschrad]

grab for the green

hard, broke losers "suspend" their campaigns so they can fundraise to pay off the monstrous bills they ran up being losers. if they closed their campaigns with a trail of red ink behind them, the Federal Election Commission would sic the lawyers on their dessicated wisps, demanding payments and reports of why they didn't file reports, and all the truck that follows hiring losers to manage their losingness.

but Perry and Walker are still, in life, losers.

the folks who give money to dead-meat losers, that's a special kind of loser. and hey, guys, I can harness the sun and enrich your sex life for half that price with my special power of "meh," send some over here....

[T. F. M. Reader]

Can the results be construed...

...as indicators of which of the candidates are capable of hiring decent help and competent advisors? Surely a necessary qualification to running a government? And arguably much more important than being personally well versed in the minutiae of every single issue.

[Wzrd1]

Re: Can the results be construed...

More likely it can be construed that the CIO of the hosting service hired a competent information security team to secure the servers.

The CSO would then consult the legal team to ascertain which disclosures should be made, terms of use displayed and disclosure of information sharing performed.

Most of these sites use pages identical to one another, candidate regardless, it appears thus far to be approximately 3 main hosting services and two or three odd ones out.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Can the results be construed...

Perhaps the sites were deviod of data. Just like the endless empty promises that all politicians seem to spout all the time these days?

If there was no data to steal then it couldn't fail now could it?

US Pres elections must be the biggest generator of hot air the world has ever seen.

As well as spending frankly obscene amounts money that could be better used elsewhere.

Just my $0.02 worth.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Can the results be construed...

More likely it can be construed that the CIO of the hosting service hired a competent information security team to secure the servers.

Except that the sites differed little in terms of (what's commonly conceived of as) "security". What distinguished them was privacy policies, or lack thereof. While that may be of interest to some security practitioners, it's not generally an area that an IT security team has control over.

(Of course using "security" in this broad, hand-waving sense is largely meaningless. Statements like "Always-On SSL ... improves security" are basically equivalent to "I don't know what 'security' means but I'm going to talk about it". But that's what the article and most of the discussion do, so here we are subdued to what we work in.)

[Naselus]

Independent John McAfee doesn't have an official US pres bid site to audit, as yet.

Oh, he does. It's just so secure you don't get to hear about it.

[swschrad]

he took over IBM's web site

you haven't heard about it yet because, well, security. and sneaky. once it gets hosted in Belize, the facts will be out.

((and other fairy tales, the likes of which McAfee is never out of))

[Anonymous Coward]

People in glass houses...

Blighty government and academia are unable to secure their servers and that is a lot more important than U.S. wannabes.