The from salon.com: DNC’s “data-gate” disaster was completely avoidable—and extremely troubling

[Douglas Carpenter]

The DNC turned what should have been a small-bore scandal into national news — and for what?

by Bob Cesca


FILE - In this Aug. 26, 2014 file photo, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. speaks to the news media.(Credit: AP)

The Obama administration boasts a relatively simple mantra when it comes to foreign policy: “Don’t do stupid shit.” The Democratic National Committee and chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz would do well to adopt this slogan, especially given the stakes of the 2016 election and how badly it fumbled the data breach fracas.

The DNC, along with the two top-shelf Democratic campaigns, have one basic job in addition to electing Democrats, and that is to avoid drawing negative attention away from the Republicans while they continue to self-immolate within the Trump inferno. The immaturity, in-fighting and intellectual violence of the GOP was on full display during last week’s CNN debate, and so Schultz and the DNC reacted how? By unnecessarily and quite loudly yanking the Klieg lights away from the Republican shenanigans and squarely onto the Democrats for an infraction that, while questionable, was quickly buttoned-up and resolved by the Sanders campaign.

Long story short, the DNC should have kept this internal. And it should have handled the breach with kid gloves rather than with a Hellfire missile. Now, the two Democratic campaigns hate each other even more, splitting the Democrats at a time when unity is absolutely critical to winning in November, but it also showed how the Democrats are just as capable of internal poop-flinging as the Republicans. But while there’s still the odor of smoke hovering over the Democrats and before 2016 rolls onto the front pages after the holidays, perhaps now is the time, as Salon’s Bill Curry wrote, to replace Schultz with someone more disciplined and, you know, silent. There’s no room for error when “President Trump” is a possibility and Schultz’s penchant for “stupid shit” seems to be the rule rather than the exception.

read full article: http://www.salon.com/2015/12/22/the_dncs_data_gate_disaster_was_completely_avoidable_and_extremely_troubling/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

[mythology]

1. Is there some point when the people who actually broke the rules

Get held to account? Do they get held to account for lying in their initial public statements and not letting Sanders know?

Yes obviously the vendor's software had a major glitch. But it's still fundamentally the fault of the people who violated the rules.

[99th_Monkey]

2. That's not the point of the article. The point is HOW it was handled by DWS, i.e. very poorly

It could have been handled quietly and in a way that didn't gin-up more acrimony between
the Clinton & Sanders camps.

Actually i'm confident that it's going to hurt DWS and Clinton more than Bernie, so there's that;
but still, DWS massively over-reacted and didn't help any Democrats by doing so.

[Dem2]

39. Yes, we know DWS is pretty terrible at her job

I think the poster wonders if some are using her f-up as a way to distract from the actual incident that she was responding to.

[Voice for Peace]

53. I'm beginning to think the instant extreme reaction

Was bc DWS did not want Sanders' people to see what they were themselves doing.

[stillwaiting]

3. Surely you can't be serious.

The people involved were fired.

They did NOT hack the system.

What more do you think should happen to them?

And would those same repercussions apply to the Clinton team when this happened in '08?

ALL of this is the vendor's and the DNC's fault for not ensuring the safety of the data after being told by the Sander's campaign that there was an issue (on TOP of what happened in '08). It was a severe error on the part of NGP-VAN. A REPEATED error.

Should ANYONE be responsible at the DNC or NGP-VAN? Or, should Hillary's top people from '08 (and '16 if we're being honest) be completely absolved of any guilt or consequences for this very unnecessary episode.

[Dawson Leery]

19. As with the Trump/Cruz supporters, no.

For the hardliners on both sides, they are given a pass to do and say whatever they want.

[ljm2002]

50. By the "people who actually broke the rules"...

...I assume you mean the Sanders staffers who improperly looked at the data. So far, one has been fired and two have been suspended. That is how they have been held to account.

Initial public statements were bad all around. DWS couldn't wait to get out there with her charges of "theft" and "hacking" which purposely obscured the nature of the breach and how the data became available to the Sanders campaign. Not surprisingly, the Sanders campaign fired back in trying to defend their image from over the top smears regarding an incident that could easily have been handled behind the scenes. And in hindsight, it obviously should have been handled that way -- which of course was the point of the article.

Finally, you need to include DWS in that group of "people who actually broke the rules". She and the DNC decided to pull access when they were not authorized to do so. They breached the contract which has very spelled out rules for how to proceed in these situations.

Again: the article's point is that this should have never become public in the way it did. It damages the party, it deepens the animosity between the camps, and it erodes the trust of the voters on both sides.

Remind me again, why does Disloyal Debbie still have a job?

[Bread and Circus]

55. That already happened. Sanders fired or suspended them.

[rhett o rick]

56. I agree exactly. DWS should be held accountable for her actions. She has done more damage by

trying to turn this into a gain for HRC and that is breaking the rules. The rules state she is to support all Democratic candidates. There should be an investigation and she should be fired at minimum.

[Progressive dog]

4. If Bernie's staffers had not saved stolen data

and then stonewalled the DNC, there would have been no scandal. The campaign blamed the theft on a "low level staffer" and also claimed no data was stolen. In fact, important Hillary data was copied into new folders on the Bernie side of the firewall, the low level staffer was Bernie's data chief, and four accounts were used by Bernie's side. Then his staff did not tell Bernie himself, DWS had to call him personally after waiting for a response.
Now, Bob Cesca advocates a cover up.

[tecelote]

6. False.

"In fact, important Hillary data was copied into new folders on the Bernie side of the firewall,..."

This is from the vendor:

"The statement reiterated that during a "brief window" of unspecified duration, a limited amount of unauthorized data was viewable. However, NGP VAN stated that the affected data was not exportable, savable, or actionable"

http://www.snopes.com/bernie-sanders-campaign-data-breach-controversy/

[Progressive dog]

7. From Time Magazine

"Beyond simply reviewing the data, the logs show the Sanders staffers took deliberate steps to harvest and store the information. According to the logs, the Sanders staff created from scratch no fewer than 24 lists—consisting entirely of data pulled down from the Clinton campaign’s database—and saved them to their personal folders."
from AmericaBlog "According to an NGP VAN audit of their recent data breach obtained by Bloomberg, multiple NGP VAN users associated with Bernie Sanders’s campaign downloaded and saved lists based on Clinton campaign data during a brief window in which the firewall between campaigns’ data was down on Wednesday."
from ABC News "Documents obtained by ABC News show at least four individual Sanders staffers accessed Clinton voter data and saved the data into folders they created. "

[azurnoir]

9. Did you forget the link or not include it for some reason?

your snip is dated from Friday hours after the news became public and before the facts were out

http://time.com/4155185/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-data/

[Progressive dog]

12. I figured you could search for yourself

The data breach was Wednesday the 16th, that article is the 18th, which is when both ABC News And Bloomberg
claim to have seen that actual NGP VAN audit, so the facts were out--the spin hadn't been decided on yet.

[azurnoir]

14. a statement directly from NGP VAN carries more weight

than political spin IMO

so once again

The one area that was impacted was voter file data. We are confident at this point that no campaigns have access to or have retained any voter file data of any other clients; with one possible exception, one of the presidential campaigns. NGP VAN is providing a thorough report to the DNC on what happened and conducting a review to ensure the integrity of the system.

The statement reiterated that during a "brief window" of unspecified duration, a limited amount of unauthorized data was viewable. However, NGP VAN stated that the affected data was not exportable, savable, or actionable

http://www.snopes.com/bernie-sanders-campaign-data-breach-controversy/

[Progressive dog]

16. The actual records from NGP VAN show what happened

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_12/an_explanation_of_what_bernie059035.php|

Even without being able to export, however, merely seeing the topline numbers of, say, how many voters the Clinton campaign had managed to bank as “strong yes” votes would be a valuable piece of oppo. While it’s not the dramatic problem that a data export would have been, it’s undeniable that the Sanders campaign gleaned valuable information from the toplines alone. It’s also quite clear that most of the statements the Sanders campaign made as the story progressed—from the claim that the staffers only did it to prove the security breach, or that only one staffer had access—were simply not true.

[mopinko]

54. a valuable piece of oppo? rly?

just knowing that hillary has strong support would help them how? they already know that.
if they had gotten a list of the "strong no" voters, w names, THAT would have been valuable. that they could have done something w.
names of the "strong yes" voters would have been useful in saving them some phone calls. but srsly, even that is not that valuable.

[JDPriestly]

25. Read the statement at NGP Van's own website on their blog.

It states exactly what happened. I would not realy on ABC or Bloomberg.

NGP Van can speak for itself. And it does.

[Progressive dog]

28. Right, both ABC and Blommberg have copies of the actual logs

from the Bernie campaign's attempted theft of data. They could not download the data but they spent as long as they could viewing it. The Bernie data chief is gone, two others apparently suspended, and somehow Bernie fans and his campaign are trying to blame it on the DNC, NGP-VAN, and Hillary.

[azurnoir]

30. Then why did the DNC backdown so quickly?

[JDPriestly]

31. Do you know how long the breach lasted?

I have read a little over 40 minutes.

From NGP Van's website -- blog on security by the vendor that controlled the databases.

http://blog.ngpvan.com/data-security-and-privacy

On Wednesday morning, there was a release of VAN code. Unfortunately, it contained a bug. For a brief window, the voter data that is always searchable across campaigns in VoteBuilder included client scores it should not have, on a specific part of the VAN system. So for voters that a user already had access to, that user was able to search by and view (but not export or save or act on) some attributes that came from another campaign.

. . . .

First, a one page-style report containing summary data on a list was saved out of VoteBuilder by one Sanders user. This is what some people have referred to as the “export” from VoteBuilder. As noted below, users were unable to export lists of people.

. . . .

Again, this bug was a brief isolated issue, and we are not aware of any previous reports of such data being inappropriately available.

I assume that NGP Van, the vendor chosen by Wasserman-Schultz and the DNC is a reliable authority on this situation.

The breach did not last very long. I have read 40 some minutes. The longest estimate I have read was a couple of hours. NGP Van describes it as brief so I suspect the 40 some minutes is more accurate.

The Hillary campaign and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz have blown this up out of proportion.

Bernie fired a staffer to make sure no information that was VIEWED would contaminate the integrity of his campaign. I don't know that for a fact, but I suspect it very strongly.

[Progressive dog]

33. How much data can be accessed in 40 minutes by four people would

be a good question to ask. How valuable summary data is would be is another. How your head of data and three assistants becomes a low level staffer is another. There are lots of questions that need to be answered and how Hillary or the DNC framed Bernie's campaign isn't one.

[eridani]

36. And they underhandedly put "bernie" on all the temp accounts

How fucking stupid can anyone be to see that as anything other than letting the vendor know that they were looking into why the firewall was leaky.

[ljm2002]

51. Yes that does tend to get lost...

...in all the stamping and shouting.

It indicates they were not trying to hide their tracks.

Anyway I still get upset that people use terms like "theft" and "hacking" for this incident. They first NOTICED that data from another campaign was available to them. THEN they queried it explicitly in order to determine the extent of the breach.

Yes they were wrong in the way they proceeded and they have been held accountable for that. But they neither stole nor hacked.

[stonecutter357]

5. .

it's Bernie Sanders “data-gate” disaster .

[JDPriestly]

27. Have you read NGP Van's blog on its website?

It takes the blame for having released the database while it had a "bug." Go there. No damage was done. It assures us.

The NGP Van vendor was picked by the DNC.

[Dems to Win]

8. A data breach was handled behind closed doors in '08, this should have been the same

Apparently the Clinton campaign got data in a breach in '08, but we never heard about it. It was not made public, and did not tarnish the Clinton campaign.

IMHO, this is why David Axelrod came out so fast with a statement in support of Bernie. He knew the Clinton '08 campaign had done something similar, and it was handled quietly.

I agree with the article, this hurts all Democrats. It shows the DNC vendor to be incompetent and untrustworthy, and it increases animosity between the two campaigns. It doesn't help us win in November.

[Duval]

13. Exactly! eom

[whereisjustice]

10. pay attention, this is how Hillary and her minions will govern, 24/7 Clusterfuck, we

can't go 24 hours without some sort of authoritarian, right wing trick from Clinton campaign. Expect her style to be no different as President.

She's hung her economic policies on Larry Summers for god's sake! That should be enough of a warning!

[JDPriestly]

21. Absolutely. And never taking responsibility for anything.

I wonder what an independent investigation will turn up.

[George II]

11. Yes, it was entirely avoidable. I guess that's why one staffer was fired and two suspended.

[JDPriestly]

20. There have been accusations that Bernie's campaign hacked into Hillary's database.

The vendor NPG Van states in its blog on its website that is not the case.

Apologies are in order.

Sanders fired an employee and suspended others because he maintains a very high standard of ethics in his office. They looked at data from Hillary's portion of the website. That's their "malfeasance."

The DNC has magnified what was actually a bug in the data release by the DNC's own vendor thousands and thousands of times its importance. The vendor has taken responsibility for its error and has also defined the very limited amount of information that was accessed and not used or downloaded. Please go to the NPG Van website and read what happened.

I have linked to it so many times on DU that I am tired of linking to it. This was a computer glitch. IT is very likely that Hillary's campaign saw Bernie's information too.

I can't wait to read the e-mails that Debbie Wasserman-Schultz will have to produce if there is a fair and impartial investigation in this matter.

[George II]

22. The logs have been posted more than once on this site - evidence that the Sanders people....

.....created new accounts, made specific searches for Clinton data in early primary states, downloaded that data and saved it into folders created just for that data. There's no way around it, they attempted to steal Clinton data and got caught.

If what they did was so innocent and all they wanted to do was "test" the breach, they could just as well have accessed Sanders data with those new accounts and saved it. But no, they went right to Clinton data.

You are right, it was a computer glitch, and four of Sanders' people took advantage of that to get Clinton's data.

[JDPriestly]

24. Did you read the statement by the vendor. They say nothing was saved.

They should know.

If the information from that website could be downloaded on Bernie's own site, he would not have been so anxious about getting his access to the website back. The database contains the information.

Please provide a link to the logs that are posted. I looked at one list of queries and thought it was quite reasonably aimed to determine the extent of Hillary information that Sanders' campaign could see.

The NPG Van blog on that company's website says that the information could only be viewed, not saved. Read it.

[eridani]

37. Yes--and they put the tag "bernie" on all the new accounts. How underhanded

[pnwmom]

26. They are in CYA mode and haven't updated their website. And Sanders fired Uretsky

because Uretsky deserved it.

[JDPriestly]

29. OK. Now here is how you analyze situations like this.

We know what Uretsky did. He ran a bunch of queries or searches that identified the extent of Hillary data and types of Hillary data that were a) sensitive, that is highly proprietary to Hillary's campaign and b) important in terms of content that could be used and should not be shared.

Now let's think of what was happening. NPG Van, the vendor explains on its website under "blog" that it released data and that in the release there was a "bug."

(I've linked to their website so many times, I just don't want to do it again. You can Google it and find it easily.)

The bug released all the data or at least all the Clinton and Sanders data on the website mixed up. It was only certain kinds of data. I gather from the NGP Van website that there is a database of voter information that is open to all campaigns and that, then, each campaign can add its own notations or information into the database. It is this latter, campaign-specific information that, ideally (and probably contractually) is supposed to be kept as proprietary to a specific campaign and not shared.

So we have a large database that is campaign-neutral and which is shared by all subscribers, both the Hillary and Bernie campaigns. Then each campaign has its on information which it puts into that larger database. Normally each campaign can see the large database and its own information -- but not the entire database including other candidates' information.

The bug in the NGP Van release permitted Sanders to see Hillary's proprietary input -- Hillary's added information in the database. Presumably but we do not know, Hillary's campaign was able to see Sanders' proprietary information also.

The period in which the entire database including information input by other campaigns was readable by Sanders campaign and possibly by Hillary's was not very long. I have heard the number 40 some minutes but also I have read allegations of a couple of hours. Not very long.

What Uretsky did was run searches. The purpose of the searches is know to him and maybe some of his assistants. But they could have had several purposes. They could have merely been intended to verify the fact and the extent of the mixing of Hillary's data with Sanders data in the entire database that had, due to the bug in the vendor's software, been made available to Sanders' campaign.

There is also the possibility that the searches may have been intended to explore and obtain information from Hillary's input data. The vendor assures us that the Sanders campaign could not have saved the Hillary data. That needs to be investigated by an outside independent auditor.

The reason that I think that Uretsky was searching to find out merely the extent and kind of mixing of the databases that happened is that his searches name Hillary. If he had wanted to sneak out information from Hilary's data, he would have done a general search of all the information for a specific kind of data AND THEN SEARCHED FOR BERNIE'S DATA. The difference between the two searches would have identified the content of Hillary's data.

So that is why I reason out that Uretsky's motive was not to obtain Hillary's data but to determine that her data was there and to define what kind of data it was.

The vendor assures us that the damage was extremely limited and that the data could not be saved by the Bernie campaign.

In fact if it were possible to save the data, Bernie would have saved his own data to a separate computer system, duplicated it from time to time and would not have been so anxious to get back access to the NGP Van computer system.

An independent, truly neutral investigation is needed -- not one with an investigator chosen by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

I for one have completely lost any trust I ever had in Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's leadership ability, judgment, maturity, strength, fairness. I want her to resign.

And I don't think that Hillary has shown the kind of strength and judgment needed by a president in this kind of crisis either.

Bernie has. He took charge of his campaign. He took charge. He filed for an injunction.. He did everything swiftly, calmly, with mature judgment -- as usual for Bernie.

I am a woman. I would love to see a woman president in my lifetime.

Hillary is not that woman. She is not wise, calm and as capable as Bernie. It's a shame. But Hillary would make a lousy president. She just does not have that kind of cool that is needed.

Obama is good at this. He stays calm when there is a stressful situation. Hillary over-reacts. We do not need that in a president of the United States.

[pnwmom]

32. There is where your analysis went wrong -- very early on.

"The bug released all the data or at least all the Clinton and Sanders data on the website mixed up."

No, the bug didn't release mixed-up data.

The bug made it possible for Uretsky to take multiple purposeful STEPS to view HRC data. Which he did. And he saved it to his own file within the system -- also on purpose.

All of this is viewable on the logs that have been publicly made available.

And this woman writer does a great job of explaining why I appreciate Hillary more and more every day. And think she would make a great President. She's been tested by fire.

http://sadydoyle.tumblr.com/post/135664586198/likable

[eridani]

38. Only if you want endless war and banksters running loose.

And health care costs continuing to go through the roof with private insurers fucking us over.

[randome]

41. But deliberately misleading readers only turns the undecideds against Sanders.

It does not help to make believe that the Sanders campaign are innocent lambs.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Everything is a satellite to some other thing.[/center][/font][hr]

[Karma13612]

47. Outstanding comment. Love your sentiment as well.

May your holidays be truly special.

[zentrum]

15. DDSS.

Great acronym.

Call the DNC and raise hell about both issues. The stupidity of the scandal and the terrible politics of preventing great numbers of viewers from seeing our wonderful Democratic debates.

DNC: 202 863 8000.

[JDPriestly]

17. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz should resign as DNC head and focus on keeping her seat in Congress.

She has damaged her own reputation among many, many Democrats.

I would not be able to vote for her if I lived in Florida. She is overly emotional and just not very smart. Not wise. Not even emotionally balanced.

What a pity that she has been in charge of the DNC at this crucial moment in our history when we face the rise of fascism and extremism in the Republican ranks.

[Douglas Carpenter]

18. I am afraid you are all to right about that

She is overly emotional and just not very smart. Not wise. Not even emotionally balanced.

[pnwmom]

23. Yeah, it WAS completely avoidable -- Uretsky and his staffers should have kept their paws

off the other campaign's data and not taken the deliberate steps to view it, download it, and export it.

Their only responsibility was to REPORT it. And that's why Uretsky got fired and the other two suspended. Because they deserved it.

[eridani]

40. Clinton deliberately had Obama's data hacked in 2008, and that's just fine n/t

[pnwmom]

42. That's what Weaver is saying. And he's given no evidence for it.

And he's the same guy that said Uretsky was a low-level staffer.

So I'll wait for some actual proof.

[eridani]

43. Hacker Redirects Barack Obama’s site to hillaryclinton.com

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2008/04/21/hacker_redirects_barack_obamas_site_to_hillaryclintoncom.html

[pnwmom]

44. So? It was "some hacker." Not anyone identified with the HRC campaign.

As the article said:

The author speculates that "Senator Clinton's staffers possibly hired someone to hack into the Barack Obama website system." No evidence is offered to back up this statement.

[eridani]

45. Apparently the Clinton campaign didn't want the lawsuit with more detqiled info to go forward

Sanders certainly isn't using the state department email "scandal" at all

[pnwmom]

46. Why would she want the disruption of a lawsuit even if her campaign had done nothing wrong?

[leftofcool]

49. Exactly!

[WillyT]

34. HUGE K & R !!! - THANK YOU !!!

[randr]

35. Under DWS's leadership the Democratic Party has tumbled

from holding both Congressional Houses and 37 Governorships to the lowest percentage of representation of any party in my memory. This is no leadership, it is an example of complete incompetence.
The DNC is no different than the RNC and the voters of each party will have the final say come election day.

[ViseGrip]

48. Remove DWS, or way too many will not vote. Just the way it is. She declared war on her own people

[Scuba]

52. Under DWS Democrats have lost 900+ state legislature seats, 12 governors, 69 House seats, 13 Senate

... seats and she still has her job.