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posted by martyb on Saturday December 26 2015, @10:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the something-there-is-that-doesn't-love-a-wall dept.

As you probably already know, Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign was involved in some recent hijinks involving improper access to campaign data from the Hillary Clinton campaign, after a buggy software patch applied by the contractor maintaining the Democratic Party's voter database, NGPVAN, inadvertently opened a data firewall. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) suspended the Sanders' campaign access to Democratic voter lists (a subscription that the campaign had paid for); Sanders responded by suing the DNC; after a brief negotiation, the DNC restored the Sanders campaign access; and Sanders apologized to Clinton for the hack in Saturday night's debate. Clinton accepted the apology, and noted that most Americans don't care anyway.

Present company (possibly) excepted. Veteran Democratic campaign consultant David Atkins, who evidently has hands on experience using the software in question, pieced together what he thinks happened; including useful background on NGPVAN's software and its use by the Democratic party.

Atkins' bottom line:

As it turns out the ethical breach by Sanders operatives was massive, but the actual data discovery was limited. So it made sense and was fairly obvious that the DNC would quickly end up giving the campaign back its NGPVAN access—particularly since failing to do so would be a death sentence for the campaign and a gigantic black eye to the party.

Atkins also had some choice words for DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, agreeing with David Axelrod (Obama's former chief campaign strategist) that the DNC overreacted.

DNC CEO Amy Dacey blogged that the suspension of access to Sanders wasn't punitive:

This action was not taken to punish the Sanders campaign — it was necessary to ensure that the Sanders campaign took appropriate steps to resolve the issue and wasn't unfairly using another campaign's data.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2015, @11:42AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2015, @11:42AM (#281155)

    Then why would Sanders apologize instead of raise hellfire?
    What evidence do we have besides your speculation?

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2015, @11:56AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2015, @11:56AM (#281156)

    First off, the 'security contractor' was somebody who'd worked for Clinton in the past. Second the 'drops' in the firewall had been happening over the course of WEEKS. The Sanders guy who looked into it was following the assumption that anything on the clinton side they could see clinton's staff would have been able to see during the previous weeks and until the firewalling issue was resolved.

    Long story short, when the staff raised concerns when disclosing how major the breach was, the staff member got fired, Bernie's campaign got the penalty box, and nobody seems to inquire if any of Clintons staff had done 'similiar investigations' in the weeks prior, perhaps including copying Sanders campaign data into the clinton campaign to give them a unfair (but temporary) advantage.

    Somebody who was unrelated to the incident but on the Sanders tech staff commented further on it giving insight into what the system is actually like. Suffice it to say 'government contractor' quality of work.

    • (Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2015, @07:19PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2015, @07:19PM (#281247)

      > Suffice it to say 'government contractor' quality of work.

      FYI the DNC is not a government organization, that would be unconstitutional.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday December 26 2015, @12:51PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 26 2015, @12:51PM (#281165) Journal

    AC already responded - and I'll add that if you read TFA, it is stipulated that the software is 1990's style and quality of software.

    "The first thing to understand is that NGPVAN is a creaky voter database system that looks, and feels like it was put together in the 1990s"

    So - shit software, administered by incompetent fools - they can do anything they want, no matter how damned stupid, and claim that it's the fault of the software. The programmers won't take responsibility, the DNC won't take responsibility, and administrators certainly won't take responsibility.

    It's like they neighborhood nymph undressing in front of her open windows, and claiming that anyone who sees her is a peeping Tom.

    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday December 26 2015, @07:02PM

      by frojack (1554) on Saturday December 26 2015, @07:02PM (#281244) Journal

      In a winner take all world of party politics, allowing the party to manage your campaign contact list just seems sort of dumb.

      Trusting the other camp by hiring their ex-staffer seems even dumber.

      And that's about as specific as I can get before the _cough_ progressive troll army descends on me.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday December 26 2015, @07:11PM

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 26 2015, @07:11PM (#281246) Journal

        Mob, Frojack. It's a mob, not an army.

        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday December 26 2015, @07:25PM

          by frojack (1554) on Saturday December 26 2015, @07:25PM (#281252) Journal

          Still I'm likely to get "mobbed" to hell here on SN by laying any baskets with babies too close to certain doorsteps.

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
          • (Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday December 26 2015, @09:24PM

            by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday December 26 2015, @09:24PM (#281278) Homepage

            Let me tell you about mobbing.

            The Jews really, really want Clinton to win. The supreme ruler of the Democratic party and loyal Israeli Debbie Wasserman-schultz [squarespace.com] will stop at nothing to ensure that all candidates other than Clinton are disqualified or discredited from running.

            In short, there is no "democracy" in the Democratic party.

            • (Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Sunday December 27 2015, @04:43AM

              by Magic Oddball (3847) on Sunday December 27 2015, @04:43AM (#281373) Journal

              I'm clearly missing something — given both Clinton & Sanders are steadfastly pro-Israel, why would Jewish or loyal Israeli people favor a candidate that's Methodist over one that's proudly Jewish?

              • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday December 27 2015, @08:02AM

                by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday December 27 2015, @08:02AM (#281399) Homepage

                Good question. Maybe with the Jews, winning a Democrat candidate is a win-win situation. They control everything.

      • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday December 26 2015, @07:30PM

        by MostCynical (2589) on Saturday December 26 2015, @07:30PM (#281254) Journal

        Isn't this a result of "the party" doing the fund raising, and therefore havinf the money to collect the information?

        --
        "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday December 26 2015, @08:21PM

          by frojack (1554) on Saturday December 26 2015, @08:21PM (#281267) Journal

          Nope.

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 2) by Whoever on Saturday December 26 2015, @07:42PM

        by Whoever (4524) on Saturday December 26 2015, @07:42PM (#281255) Journal

        In a winner take all world of party politics, allowing the party to manage your campaign contact list just seems sort of dumb.

        The campaign already needs to access the contact data because most of the data is owned by the DNC and available to both sides.

        Given the lack of tech-savvy people in politics and the need to spend money carefully, it might be a dumb move to spend money re-inventing the wheel.

        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday December 26 2015, @08:24PM

          by frojack (1554) on Saturday December 26 2015, @08:24PM (#281268) Journal

          Lack of tech savvy people in politics? Seriously?

          We are talking about the DNC - Democratic National Committee here, not the DRC Democratic Republic of the Congo.

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2015, @01:01PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2015, @01:01PM (#281166)
    This is NGP VAN's CEO, [ngpvan.com] who has posted images on Facebook of himself in front of "Ready For Hillary" buses and talking about her campaign trail.

    Next, examine what Wasserman-Schultz was doing in 2008 before she became the DNC's chair. [wikipedia.org]

    And for good measure, NGP VAN's vice president is her brother. [ngpvan.com]

    Even if these are coincidences related to being in this field of work, Hillary's people are rooted in NGP VAN and the DNC pretty deep.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2015, @01:27PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2015, @01:27PM (#281175)

      Who rooted Hillary? Inquiring minds want to know, who is Chelsea's daddy?

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Saturday December 26 2015, @09:43PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Saturday December 26 2015, @09:43PM (#281282)

    The Sanders campaign did raise hellfire, in the form of public petitions and a lawsuit that is still pending. The DNC tried to stop the lawsuit by giving them their data back, but the Sander campaign continued with the suit looking for monetary damages over a breach of the contract between the DNC and the Sanders campaign by the DNC (Sanders was supposed to have 10 days to deal with the problem, was dealing with it by firing everybody involved and deleting the data, and was cut off anyways).

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.