By Technical Means: Does Whois Prove That Obama Will Choose Kathleen Sebelius as VP?

Somebody seeks to prove Obama’s VP choice not by political, but technical means.  We look into this.

There’s been a lot of rumors floating around about whom Barack Obama will pick as his running mate.

This place has tried to figure this out a different way. They take a web-based approach to the matter.  They say that Obama will pick Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius because they heard an ad agency is designing a website for her and because Whois data points to this being true.  As they say (order of paragraphs rearranged a bit for clarity):

Domain Name: BARACKOBAMA.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Name Server: NS05.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Name Server: NS06.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

We will compare the evidence we are allowed to show you without anyone getting fired.

So lets compare our suspect:

Domain Name: OBAMASEBELIUS.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Name Server: NS03.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Name Server: NS04.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

It appears OBAMASEBELIUS.COM is owned by the Obama Campaign, and the ‘hidden’ registration will turn into a website after the announcement. Our lead noted that a site is already being designed .. and advertising agencies are always full of leaks. Again file as rumor until verified…

The article goes on to point out that website names for other contenders don’t match as well or at all.

While we can’t comment on the reliability of a lead from an unknown ad agency, we can comment a bit about the Whois research.  If this place had gone the extra step and checked http://who.godaddy.com/WhoIs.aspx?domain=barackobama.com&prog_id=godaddy for BarackObama.com, they would have found this:

Registrant:
Obama for America

233 N. Michigan Ave
Suite 1100
Chicago, Illinois 60601
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: BARACKOBAMA.COM
Created on: 28-Dec-04
Expires on: 28-Dec-15
Last Updated on: 16-Oct-07

Administrative Contact:
Admin, Admin [email protected]
Obama for America
233 N. Michigan Ave
Suite 1100
Chicago, Illinois 60601
United States
3128192008

Technical Contact:
Admin, Admin [email protected]
Obama for America
233 N. Michigan Ave
Suite 1100
Chicago, Illinois 60601
United States
3128192008

Domain servers in listed order:
NS05.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS06.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

No question as to who owns this site.

Let’s look at another unquestionably Barack website, Fightthesmears.com .  You get this:

Registrant:
Obama for America

233 N. Michigan Ave
APT 2416
Chicago, Illinois 60601
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: FIGHTTHESMEARS.COM
Created on: 01-Jun-08
Expires on: 01-Jun-10
Last Updated on: 11-Aug-08

Administrative Contact:
for America, Obama [email protected]
233 N. Michigan Ave
APT 2416
Chicago, Illinois 60601
United States
+1.3128195555 Fax — +1.3105642007

Technical Contact:
Administrator, DNS [email protected]
8520 National Blvd.
Suite A
Culver City, California 90232
United States
+1.8775784000 Fax — +1.3105642007

Domain servers in listed order:
NS51.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS52.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

Again, no question as to who owns this site:

However, if you check  http://who.godaddy.com/WhoIs.aspx?domain=obamasebelius.com&prog_id=godaddy , you get this:

Registrant:
Domains by Proxy, Inc.

DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: OBAMASEBELIUS.COM
Created on: 15-Jan-07
Expires on: 15-Jan-09
Last Updated on: 16-Jan-08

Administrative Contact:
Private, Registration [email protected]
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599 Fax — (480) 624-2598

Technical Contact:
Private, Registration [email protected]
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599 Fax — (480) 624-2598

Domain servers in listed order:
NS03.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS04.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

Obviously not identical or even somewhat like the Obama sites, but it does come from the same folks who brought you  ObamaBayh.com (even though they used a different domain server).  

If you look around a bit, you’d see that many domain names covering all the political angles get filed long before they have even the possibility of acquiring a tinge of reality, in hopes of a friendly (and monetary) takeover.  That may or may not happen, simply because one can always use a slightly different domain name, i.e. ObamaandBiden.com rather than ObamaBiden.com.  Using different registrants or even domain servers is hardly a big technical problem  Finally, Senator Obama is hardly going to cross a candidate off his VP list just because the best website name was already taken.  

Again, we can’t comment on reports that an unknown ad agency is gearing up for an Obama-Sebelius campaign, but I think we can put the technical “proof” to bed.  Good try, but even on the Internet, you have to take that extra step to prove something.

Ed