Bachmann. Gingrich. Romney. Perry. Paul. Outside of Paul, that’s a murderer’s row of icky politicky politicans and a group so easy to poke fun of the jokes write themselves. More seriously though, the GOP believes hackers are targeting the Iowa caucus polling system to screw with results and mess with the Republicans. I wonder why!
A video, supposedly posted by Anonymous, called their supporters to “peacefully shut down” the Iowa caucus because of the corrupt political system in the US. The GOP is afraid that the Iowa caucus will be “marred by hackers who corrupt the database used to gather votes and crash the website used to inform the public about results that can shape the campaign for the White House.” The Iowa caucus, of course, is hugely influential in naming a presidential candidate because it’s always been the first step to get nominated. A hacked vote would give a fat black eye to the entire process.
So in response, the GOP is stepping up their security (they’re not even sure if the threat is real) by “boosting the security of the electronic systems” that’ll be used to vote. Sounds terribly vague! Actually purposely vague because the GOP doesn’t want to offer up the specifics of what they did because they’re afraid the hackers would then game plan around their security strategy. I think it’s probably just a bunch of red tape wrapped around the computers. [AP]