Exclusive: clip from canvasser for Musk’s America Pac reveals apparent ease in which GPS location can be spoofed
Donald Trump’s ground game in Arizona and Nevada may be undercut by canvassers working for America Pac using GPS spoofing to pretend they have knocked on doors when they haven’t, according to multiple people familiar with the practice and a leaked how-to-fake-location video.
The ramifications for Trump may be far reaching, given America Pac has taken on the bulk of the Trump campaign’s ground game in the battleground states, and the election increasingly appears set to be decided by turnout.
A bootleg how-to-spoof video, made by an America Pac canvasser in Nevada and obtained by the Guardian, shows the apparent ease with which locations can be changed to fake door-knocks, calling into question how many Trump voters have actually been reached by the field operation.
The video, shared with a few hundred canvassers, walks through the setup: a user downloads a GPS-spoofing app to falsely place themself at the door of a Trump voter, fakes responses to the survey and takes steps to cover up the fraud by varying the survey responses to make it believable.
I don’t know shit about american polling but isn’t there a software solution that guards against it? I assume pollsters are given android tablets by the orgs, and that it would be pretty trivial to lock them from installing apps if someone is interested in that. Like, parent control with a pin code or whatever.
Trivial, smart, and likely amongst the first operational considerations when “real” political advocacy organizations do it.
I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they had a BYOD policy and the “PAC” exists mainly in three forms: A hastily made app, Leon’s drug fueled rants, and the media’s overestimation.
What little canvassing I’ve done has been using your own device, and that was where I was volunteering for a cause I believed in. If the canvassers are paid and not ideologically motivated you could imagine tablets walking off.