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I think that's why the Mafia used to just threaten them. When you've got pictures of a guy sleeping with prostitutes and they got elected on "family focus" and do photo ops outside church with their wife of 14 years and fives kids, it suddenly becomes easy to "buy" politicians. Or, the old balls and the literal vice.

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I wonder if this approach is more common than we think. It seems to me that it's relatively easy to 1) find dirt on someone, especially a public figure who has more to lose for relatively small 'crimes', 2) blackmail said politician and ask him to do something relatively small, 3) ask for ever bigger 'favors', using the earlier favors as further material to use for blackmail-purposes.

If it's really that easy, I can't see why it's not common and relatively rarely uncovered or discovered...

Xkcd - wrench vs encryption

http://xkcd.com/538/

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