Yet another unintended consequence of a functional and useful campaign website:

Let’s say you’re running for president and you’re web casting live to house parties all over the country next week – mostly in the early primary states where you have an organization. You want as many people as possible to attend these events, so you set up a click and find page on your web site – just type a zip code and find an event within 10, 25, 50 or 100 miles of your home.

It’s a great use of the web, one Wal-Mart figured out long ago. But with political campaigns, it’s also a peek inside the other guy’s progress. The number of house parties a campaign can pull together is a benchmark of relative strength. So the media, or another campaign, can simply type in a few zip codes to get a complete run down of what you’ve got going on.

For instance, both Edwards and Obama are web casting to house parties this month – Edwards on March 28th, Obama on the 31st. And they both have this feature on their sites. Obama's is nicer.

As the situation stands, Obama has 8 parties scheduled within 25 miles of my house in Franconia, Edwards has 1; Obama has 19 scheduled within 25 miles of Concord, Edwards has 2; Obama has 5 within 25 miles of Portsmouth, Edwards has none; Obama 11 in Keene, Edwards 3; Manchester 27 for Obama, 5 for Edwards; Nashua 5 for Edwards, 36 for Obama. You see where this is going.

That kind of inside baseball is generally under tight wraps, especially if you’re the Edwards campaign. The staff and the field people know how many parties are planned, but they also know enough not to go blabbing it to anyone. Now they don’t have to.

This is how intelligence has always been gathered – good information is readily available, sometimes just staring you in the face. And these days, there’s a lot more of it.