Right Wing Group Disrupted the Iowa Caucus

It appears that the breakdown of the phone reporting system for Iowa Caucus results was caused by a deliberate effort on the part of right-wing conspiracy site 4chan, which posted the phone numbers on its web site and encouraged readers to flood the lines so that they would not operate.

This appears to be a deliberate attempt to sabotage the Democratic Party.

President Trump, who crowed in tweets about what the breakdown in the caucus process said about the Democrats has been quiet to this point, though its a new story. Should he speak out?

What should be done to prevent this sort of blatant interference with democratic processes?

Oh that’s delightful.

While this is obviously not right, and it highlights some of the terrible people in this society, the fault still lies with the Democrats. If they could not have a system that was capable of operating without this minor level of interference, then they own the blame.

Now, as for what should be done about those who did this? Nothing, in my view. We are all free to pick up a phone and call whomever we choose. And as long as we are not threatening anyone of course.

Is it crappy? Yes. Is this unexpected in Trump’s version of America? Nope. This is the Idiocracy. Cruelty and ignorance and trolling are en-vogue. Look at the President for the prime example of this truth.

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Weakness always exposes itself by blaming anything and everything…other than the person in charge. Stop looking down people. That isn’t the true problem. All of this should have been forecasted and processes put in place to counter probable problems and this was predictable. Look up at who is in charge and that’s where the blame should go.

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You beat me to it and I agree with you.

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It should have been predicted that Trump supporters on 4chan would intentionally interfere with the Iowa caucus?

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They basically conducted a distributed denial of service (ddos) against the system. There isn’t enough information to know if they had mitigation’s in place to combat this type of threat.

I would not simply put blame of this on the Dems. This group could have very well over powered the system that was built to have a certain level of load balancing to combat this threat.

Can’t always blame the victim

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Bam…ya got it and if you didn’t figure on this…as Trump would say…“you’re fired”. :sunglasses:

Not necessarily that exact scenario. But predicted there could be disruption in the phone system and have a viable back-up plan in place. Besides, the underlying issue was not even with the phone system. The roll-out (or lack thereof) of the App is what the real problem was here. The Democrats punted it into the bleachers big time, and they have only themselves to blame.

Well it’s certainly a good thing the FEC can’t reach a quorum to even try to work on it.

Also, if you’ve figured out a way to stop DDOS attacks whether digital or phone phreaking you should tell someone.

Meh…I don’t know the technical issues like you do. But from what I do know, the issue was not even the phone system. Sure, it became another problem after the first series of problems began to expose themselves. Such as precinct captains not being trained on the App. No dry-runs. Lack of communication to the polling stations. Multiple precincts opting days in advance to forgo the App and instead rely on the phone system as they had done in years past. The phone system being dramatically understaffed due to the belief everyone would use the App instead. Etc.

Democrats own this mess wholly and fully.

I don’t believe for a millisecond that if this had been an Antifa attack on a Republican effort that you would be saying any of this.

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If this were a Black Lives Matter operation against a Republican electoral process would you take the same position. Of course you wouldn’t!

Don’t get me wrong. My response does not absolve them of the overall mess.

I am just making the point that this is a very complex issue. We don’t need a “Trump Summary” of these complex issues.

I am actually diving a bit deeper into the technology issues. It’s pretty interesting.

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That is a great point!

I’m not tech savvy enough to even know what that means. :man_facepalming:

But again, that is beside the point. There were a host of issues well before it reached the problems of the phones being inundated.

I most certainly would. I’m not easily boxed in to a partisan tribe these days. :slight_smile:

That is fair. I respect your knowledge on these issues, as they are far from my own expertise. I’ll be genuinely curious to see what you learn and can hopefully explain in quasi-layman terms to folks like me. :smiley:

Wait for it Russia hacking … :ru:

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This â– â– â– â–  was like actually phreaked.

The positions taken would be reversed.