In A Politically Sticky Situation? Blame A Hacker!

from the new-strategy dept

There's some news spreading today, based on a San Francisco Chronicle article and now being passed around via Reuters, that California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's computer was hacked, and that's how a transcript of politically damaging comments were leaked to the press. What's interesting is that it seems like there are a bunch of ways that data could have been leaked -- and no one seems to give any evidence to support that the computers were hacked. It is quite possible that they were hacked, but following so closely on similar charges that came out during the Connecticut Democratic primary for the Senate race, where Senator Joe Liebermann's campaign claimed their web server was hacked (even though most now believe it was just a poor web setup by the hosting company they used), you have to wonder if claiming you were hacked is becoming an easy political way to deflect controversies. Suddenly, the story is about the hack (true or not), rather than the actual issue. It may turn out that none, one or both of these situations involved actual computer hacking, but it is interesting to see how the hint of "hacking" (even without any details) becomes a big story so quickly.