'Stop Fox News North' petition? We didn't sign it

We haven't seen or found the list of names yet, but it appears that along with Boba Fett and Margaret Atwood (hmmm, wonder who would win in a blaster duel...), someone decided to sign the even awesomer names of Kady O'Malley and Chris Hall to the "Stop Fox News North" online petition.

Trouble is, the real Kady O'Malley and Chris Hall didn't. Hardy har, fraudsters.

It kinda goes to show the problem with petitions, online or no. Sure, who's to say Boba's politics didn't jibe with Kory Teneycke's? But since he's still wallowing in agony in the Great Pit of Carkoon, we're pretty confident it's not really him, either.

Chris's midichlorians started tingling that something was up when he got the following email last night:

Thank you for signing the petition! Your name has been added.

The more people join this campaign, the more powerful our call will be. Please help spread the word -- forward this link to friends and family, and post it on Facebook:

Thanks so much,
The Avaaz Team

UPDATE: Alright, Kady just got off the phone with Kory Teneycke, who said he was emailed the fictitious names on the petition by the very person who had added them. There doesn't appear to be a who's-who official list of the signatories anywhere online. 

IMPORTANT CORRECTION: I've been informed that technically, it is not 'the pit of Sarlacc,' but the Great Pit of Carkoon, in which a single sarlacc lives (plural: sarlacci, according to Wookieepedia)

Below is Avaaz's own shame-on-you statement on the kerfuffle, which seems to blame not the basement-dwelling spammers who scanned our email addresses, but the "poisonous political climate and deeply deceptive tactics that have been bred by the radical right in Canada and its progenitor in the US." It also calls for the perpetrators to be "brought to justice" (for an online crime, should they be pwned?):

Yesterday Avaaz experienced an attack on our "Stop 'Fox News North'" petition consisting of fraudulent sign-ups of targeted individuals.

There is evidence of a deliberate and illegal effort designed to discredit Avaaz and violate an important form of democratic expression for Canadian citizens. If this is confirmed we will request a full investigation, and help to bring the perpetrators to justice.

It seems likely that the people behind this attack wanted the public to think that Avaaz is a spamming organization. They targeted key journalists in an effort to damage Avaaz's reputation in the press.

But the truth, the law, and 414,000 very real Canadian Avaaz subscribers -- the largest online activist community in Canadian history -- will set the record straight, about us, and about the forces behind this attack.

It's deeply disturbing that in all Avaaz's years of campaigns against US President George Bush, Burmese, Zimbabwean and Sudanese dictators, irresponsible multinational corporations and corrupt politicians, no one has ever yet stooped to this kind of tactic to undermine our members' right to express their views.

We do not yet have all the facts, but it appears to speak to the poisonous political climate and deeply deceptive tactics that have been bred by the radical right in Canada and its progenitor in the US. It is precisely this kind of bare-knuckled, brazenly deceptive and often hateful political climate that Sun TV's "Fox News North" appears keen to promote.

Canadians understand this, which is why, in just over 36 hours, well over 50,000 Canadians have signed our petition against Stephen Harper's attack on the independence of the CRTC as it resists the Sun TV request for access to Canadian's cable fees.