The DNC contracted with a vendor to manage databases of the candidates for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016.
We can assume that one of the duties expressed or implied in the vendor's contract was to secure the information of each campaign from the other campaigns.
In October and again recently, the vendor failed to secure Hillary' s campaign's information, possibly by weakening or shutting down a firewall that set Hillary's data apart from the information, the data, of Bernie Sanders' campaign.
The Sanders' campaign discovered the breach. In October, they were concerned that Sanders' data had also been breached and that access to Sanders' data had been allowed to one or more of the other campaigns. (Based on a video of a press conference by Bernie's campaign manager.)
Again, recently, the Sanders' campaign discovered that it had, due to a failure by the vendor to secure Hillary's data, obtained access to that data. Sanders' employees ran queries that tested the data to which they had access for data that belonged to Hillary's campaign, and the tests were positive. Hillary's information was available to Bernie's campaign.
Upon learning of this, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, before completing an objective test of the security on the data and before giving Bernie's campaign adequate opportunity to respond to requests for data or information, and perhaps without having properly asked Bernie's campaign for the information, went to the press screaming that Bernie's campaign had accessed Hillary's data (via access provided apparently, necessarily by the vendor's failure to adequately secure it) and that Bernie would be refused access to his own campaign's data as a result. Bernie's campaign has been damaged by the DNC's refusal to allow Bernie to access his database for a certain period of time at this crucial stage in the campaign.
Bernie filed a lawsuit for an injunction requiring the DNC and its vendor to allow Bernie access to his own data.
I assume that some sort of arrangement, some sort of partial settlement that required Bernie to provide information regarding the breach of the firewall and the queries his campaign made and perhaps other information was made, and the DNC and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz backed down and is allowing Bernie access to his own material. This is my guess.
Based on my experience, I suspect that as a part of that agreement, Bernie was required to apologize openly to Hilary for any breach. This is just my guess, but Bernie apologized during the debate.
In my opinion, the DNC and its vendor and possibly others need to apologize for the fact of the breach of the security measures that were supposed to have been taken by the vendor. It is nearly impossible for me to believe that Bernie Sanders' campaign would have had any contractual or other duty to protect Hillary's campaign database. Bernie is noted for his honorable conduct, but to expect Bernie's campaign to identify and separate Hillary's data from his own when they were apparently both made available to him would require him to do the very queries of the database that it appears that his campaign made. Thus, in my opinion, not knowing more than others not directly involved in the situation, the duty that was breached was on the part of the DNC's vendor or possibly the DNC itself. I seriously doubt that Bernie had any contractual duty to protect the security of Hillary's data. I can't understand how that would even work without Bernie's first querying all the data he had and identifying the data of Hillary -- which is, from what little I know about the situation, what his staff did.
Hopefully, an INDEPENDENT review of the vendor's security and firewall systems and of any access by any campaign to the information in another campaign's database will be conducted as soon and as openly as possible.
We Bernie supporters view the DNC as so biased in favor of Hillary that we question whether this was perhaps to some extent, whether conscious or not, intended to harm Bernie's campaign. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has close ties to Hillary as do some of the employees in the DNC's vendor for the databases.
Further, the DNC's conduct in other respects has, in the view of many Bernie supporters, been detrimental to the campaigns of all candidates other than Hillary. For example, scheduling the third of only six debates on the Saturday night, a party night across the nation, before Christmas insured a very lower viewer base.
In addition, requiring that candidates who participate in the six official debates may not debate other than in those debates is a travesty of the democratic process.
As a Bernie supporter, I wish to have a full investigation of the relationship between the DNC, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and the Hillary campaign.
The DNC led by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz appears in my view to have no intention of allowing any candidate other than Hillary to win the nomination.
These are the facts as I understand them based on what I have read. I think that we Bernie supporters have a lot to be angry about. This primary process is a travesty.
I think that Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is losing a lot of Democratic voters. I for one have stated all along that I will vote for all Democrats on my ballot, but NOT FOR HILLARY.
The DNC acts very much like a machine that wants to control the outcome of the primary process.
I wish Bernie luck in his lawsuit. We Democrats deserve to know the whole truth about the functioning of our Democratic Party. It appears that since at least 1992, our Party has strayed from representing the working people of America. We need to get back on track. Bernie's movement includes all of us who want reform within the Democratic Party and our country.
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