Wired News reports that the University of Alabama is accusing the Ron Paul campaign of using botnets to send political spam. The University's Spam Data Mining for Law Enforcement Applications project processes 2.5 million spam messages a day, and the researchers noticed that a flood of spam promoting the candidate was being laundered through systems in Brazil, Nigeria and elsewhere. From one e-mail:"This is clearly a criminal act in support of a campaign, which has been committed with or without their knowledge," says Gary Warner, the University of Alabama's director of research in computer forensics. "The question is, will we see more and more of this, or will this bring shame to the campaigns and will they make clear that this is not a form of acceptable behavior by their supporters?"

Paul spokesman Jesse Benton denies the campaign's involvement. "If it is true, it could be done by a well-intentioned yet misguided supporter or someone with bad intentions trying to embarrass the campaign," he says. "Either way, this is independent work, and we have no connection."