election4sale.com




Delivered-To: hans@ubermorgen.com
X-Authentication-Warning: cortez.sss.rpi.edu: baumgj owned process doing -bs
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 14:37:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: James M Baumgartner <baumgj@rpi.edu>
X-Sender: baumgj@cortez.sss.rpi.edu
To: hans@ubermorgen.com, liz@ubermorgen.com, frank@rtmark.com,
        admin@rtmark.com
cc: dstewart@dreyerboyajian.com
Subject: meeting with feds

All,

I just got back from a meeting with a U.S. attorney about
voteauction.com's true intent.  I know that some of you disagree with this
tactic, but I always intended on revealing that voteauction.com was not
actually involved in the sale of votes.  Also, this is the only way that I
could possibly defend my involvement with the site.  My conversation with
the U.S. attorney (and an FBI agent) was friendly and understanding, they
seem to be convinced that my intentions with the site were political
satire / media intervention and they realize that any prosecution would
result in very negative PR for them.  However, they seem to be somewhat
suspicious of Mr. Bernhard.  My lawyer attributes this to a general
distrust of foreigners on the part of the FBI.  So now I have to persuade
them that Hans had the same intentions as me (that is, no votes were going
to be bought or sold, it was intended to raise awareness about the issues,
et cetera.)

At this point, I should sever any ties with anything that you may decide
to do with voteauction.com or any derivitive of that name.  The content
that I provided is public domain and free of copyright, so I have no say
in what you may decide to do with that.  You probably should not cc me
on any emails about future plans that you might have for the project.

Hans, I understand that my lawyer tried to contact you and that you wanted
verification that he is, in fact, my lawyer.  His name is Dan Stewart, he
works for Dreyer Boyajian LLP, his email is dstewart@dreyerboyajian.com.
His phone number is +1-518-463-7784.  He was highly recommended by Paul
Rapp, one of my thesis committee members.  I've been happy with what he
has done so far.

As far as the Illinois lawsuit goes, it seems like they are pretty
satisfied so far, except that they still want the names and information
about the people who registered from Illinois.  Since the only way I could
access that information was through typing a specific url (which is now no
longer available) I can not give them that information.  Luckily, I never
kept that data on my computer.

I am going to set up a new site, election4sale.com, this will be the
meta-site for voteauction.com.  I will include information about why I
started voteauction.com and the fact that it was not a real auction, et
cetera.

That's about it.  Hans should probably have his lawyers contact Dan
Stewart for response to the illinois lawsuit.  There is concern over
whether or not Illinois has jurisdiction because voteauction.com was not
actually transacting in commerce in Illinois (of course, the Illinois
board of elections would disagree.)

I talked with Mark Anderson (from wirednews) and relayed most of what I
can legally tell him at this point (there was no auction, the site was
intended to be political satire, et cetera.)  Wired will have an exclusive
on the story for 24 hours, then I'll start talking to CNN and some of the
other 40 people who have called me in the last two days.

James Baumgartner
