A wave of about 100 phony signatures onto an online anti-Icesave petition prompted calls for investigation from one member of parliament, as some of the spamming came from the IP addresses of government offices.
The online petition, hosted by InDefence, calls for the president to veto the Icesave bill, should it pass parliament. It has so far garnered about 34,000 signatures. A wave of phony signatures appeared on 11 December, some of them originating from ministerial offices, Statistics Iceland, and the state broadcasting service, RÚV. Fréttablaðið, which was previous named, has been withdrawn.
Conservative MP Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir took the matter very seriously, saying in parliament yesterday, “It is unusual in a case as important as [Icesave] for so many signatures to originate from government offices and RÚV, whether it’s done in private mail or not,” and called for an investigation.
Vísir reports that Bjarni Guðmundsson, the director of RÚV, contacted InDefence and asked exactly how many of the phony signatures originated from his offices. InDefence responded that it had been three or four. As a result, Guðmundsson dismissed any cause for internal investigations.
How many signatures, real or not, originated from other government offices remains undisclosed.