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.

  • Glide
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    1 month ago

    Excuse my ignorance here, but what is the data that they’re collecting being used for? We see polls every day suggesting that Trump and Kamala are closer in votes than anyone on Lemmy would like, but now I wonder who exactly is being grifted. Is this Trump being lied to and paying for a service he isn’t receiving, or is this data being falsified to make Trump look more popular than he is, lending weight and legitimacy to his claims of widespread voter fraud?

    I’d love, for once, for Trump’s own philosophies to be biting him, but based on the past, I’m worried this is just another tool in the misinformation arsenal.

    • boatswain@infosec.pub
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      1 month ago

      This isn’t about gathering data so much as it is encouraging Trump supporters to get out and vote, is my read.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      We see polls every day

      Some polls are bullshit, but polling aggregators still use them.

      So if you look at respectable independent polling, it doesn’t matter at all.

      If you blindly follow aggregators, then it would effect the overall numbers.

      But from the article it’s grifting from Musk’s PAC, they’re the ones paying for the canvassing that’s not happening