I'm intrigued that the plan to write the letter about Labour leadership seems to revolve around an email account. Using an example account such as signonnow@hotmail.co.uk would be a way to anonymise the letter ownership, but raises all kinds of other questions.
If the email address were to escape into the public domain {ahem}, it may need to be changed to prevent all manner of people sending things to it and perhaps getting back messages like this:
SMTP error from remote server after RCPT command:
host mx4.hotmail.xx.xx(xx.55.37.xxx]:
550 Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable
ESMTP (Nemesis) id 0Mxx-1MC5rZ3rxP-111dLY;
Thu, 04 Jun 2009 06:02:54 +01:00
Of course, a more determined person might try other approaches, but just as likely are the people with technology to 'mute' or 'spam' the account.
So my guess is that there would be at least a couple of dummy accounts to attract all the unwanted attention, so that the real account or other record where people could write 'I agree' or send in copies of the pre-written letter was somehow unmolested.
This also assumes capabilities of MPs to send from a suitable recognisable email account to avoid ambiguity. Otherwise anyone with technical knowledge could send in mail header revised emails purporting to be from the relevant people.
I'll be interested to see the side commentary about Denial of Service attacks, Password Reset attempts and log searches for the chosen account over the next day or two, plus any thoughts of e-monitoring (by anyone from the State to the simply curious) or simply running google searches to see what turns up.
And come to think of it, "I agree" as a header is a fairly easy thing to filter.
In other news, Labour supporter Sir Alan Sugar visits 10 Downing Street today, amongst speculation that Gordon is seeking extra advisors to support the Cabinet...what is that Apprentice catchphrase?
