Obama Campaign Steals from NSSF

A little background to this story – back on National Hunting and Fishing Day, I received an email from the campaign of Barack Obama which contained a statement on National Hunting and Fishing Day.  It was pretty much the same old story of him saying that he plans to preserve our sporting heritage and the right to keep and bear arms, etc.  After I read it, I thought “huh, he’s really going after ‘the gun vote’ “, and then put it out of my mind.  It never occurred to me to think about how exactly the Obama campaign had gotten my personal email address.

Well, it turns out that they got my personal email address by stealing it from the National Shooting Sports Federation.

The Obama campaign in Indiana, on September 27, unlawfully obtained and made unauthorized use of a proprietary media list belonging to the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) – the trade association for the firearms industry.  Sen. Obama used this list to e-mail a press release concerning National Hunting and Fishing Day.  Earlier today, NSSF sent a “cease and desist” letter to the Obama campaign demanding that they immediately stop any further unauthorized misuse of its proprietary media list.

The list contains the names and addresses of members of the media that attended the NSSF Shooting Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show (SHOT Show) – the world’s largest firearms trade show and the 23rd largest trade show of any kind in North America.

The list can only be obtained from NSSF and its use is tightly controlled by NSSF.  Neither the Obama campaign, nor its operations in Indiana, obtained any rights from NSSF to use the list.

NSSF’s letter also demands that the Obama campaign destroy all copies of the list, identify how they obtained the list and pay monetary damages to NSSF for its misappropriation and unauthorized use of the association’s intellectual property.  NSSF demanded an immediate response from the Obama campaign and has threatened to file a lawsuit against the campaign if its demands are not met.

“NSSF will not sit idly by while its legal rights are harmed, particularly for partisan political gain,” said NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel Lawrence G. Keane.
NSSF is also encouraging all sportsmen and gun-owners to visit the NSSF Voter Education Web-site and educate themselves about the candidates’ records and positions on issues important to them in this election.

This is the third post I’ve written today about shady and possibly illegal tactics used by the Obama campaign to try and win this election.  The NSSF views their mailing list as a trade secret, and the misappropriation of a trade secret is a federal crime under the Economic Espionage Act, assuming that someone at the Obama campaign fraudulently obtained the list from NSSF.

So, now on top of voter fraud, we now have the Obama campaign stealing trade secrets from NSSF.  I really can’t imagine what’s next – I mean, what do you graduate to after voter fraud and felonies?  Do you just start having your minions attack Republican voters on Election Day?

The only other thing I can take away from this is that it really reveals how desperate Obama’s campaign is to get “the gun vote”;  they’re willing to steal NSSF’s proprietary mailing list and risk legal action for what, to send a statement that was probably widely ignored and dismissed by the gun and outdoor writers that received it.

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