The Perils of Web 2.0 and Political Campaigning

United State Presidential contender Senator Barack Obama has been at the forefront of taking the 2008 race Web 2.0, encouraging supporters to join his MyBarackObama.com web community, create their own blogs, add him to their MySpace friends list, and generally take advantage of every and any online community aspect to spread the word to take his campaign to the masses.

As one of the first candidates to really take advantage of every aspect of the Web for his campaign, Obama is also one of the first to discover the perils of having so much information available and portable for his supporters. The Smoking Gun has obtained a cease-and-desist letter sent to the owner of a web site that encourages pedophilia.

The site, registered out of Panama, has taken photos of Obama's young daughters (ages 8 and 5) and displayed them along with pictures of other underaged children and grandchildren of candidates, evaluating their "cuteness."

Certainly, one of the downsides of taking everyone and everything online is the sheer amount of information that is shared and replicated in a scale that makes it almost impossible to track it all. With political candidates in the spotlight as much as they are, the dangers of that information being used in ways such as this are compounded, and yes, the safety of minor children might come into play. With enough personnel to track references to family members, it might be possible to find some of the most offensive issues, like this one, but the downside of immediate information sharing is that situations like Obama's will become all too common.