And that's being charitable.

Do you mean that there is an allegation that someone said, oooh, I can see this and this is good stuff so let me grab it?

I can kind of see where that could be an issue, IF you can show a coordinated attempt to maximize benefit from the software glitch, before reporting it. But my understanding is that the Sanders campaign reported it relatively promptly. If a couple staffers decided to grab some data, that is not necessarily a conspiracy. Also, did Clinton's campaign report the issue as well?

Oh, the database was screwed up and gave people results to queries that shouldn't have been included? Well then, let's make it look intentional and screw the bastards.

That seems like a plausible explanation to me.

I really, really wish the DNC were not so fucking incompetent / treacherous. Sigh.

"Turns out that Nathaniel Pearlman, the CEO of NGP-VAN, the company that is responsible for the data leak that got Sander's campaign banned by the DNC from seeing Democratic party voter roles, was the chief technology officer of the Clinton 2008 campaign."


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Pearlman

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i continue to be surprised at how surprised i am at the unethical behavior

Without a juicy 'post hoc ergo promper hoc' fallacy to get us through the day, most of us would be more rational.

known better.

Sorry I am not up on the details here, just heard about this today.

I am confused why this would be considered a crime, but if it is, there must be some formal charges against someone, right?

Maybe the DNC needs to fire their software vendor for fucking it up in the first place.

Even if Team Hillary was the guilty party?

Pppppfffffttttt!

There was a person claiming to be a Hillary supporter, on MSNBC just now. She accurately pointed out that a lot of the data in VAN is publicly accessible data anyway (normally for a cost - the value of systems like VAN is they make it easy to read). She incorrectly - for PA at least - stated that the collation of a person's record over time is something that the campaigns do in VAN. No, actually that part is public record as well. But again, the tool helps make it easier to use. What the tool DOES do is allow field staff to mark voters as for or against their candidate and make other notes specific to the campaign.

About the only value I see to that data for an opposing campaign is to not waste time on voters who are strongly pro the other side. Yes, in a political campaign every edge matters and they add up. So it could be considered unethical.

There is the question of whether if I as a voter give my email address to the Hillary campaign, then the Bernie campaign gets it and uses it with the Hillary campaign's permission, has my privacy been violated? Sorry this doesn't move the meter needle hardly at all because to my knowledge, anything I give to one Dem campaign will end up with the nominee's campaign eventually anyway. At least that's how it's worked in the past.

I wouldn't have a different opinion about this if it were the Hillary campaign or the O'Malley campaign or the Webb campaign (if he were still in it), or if the GOPers were doing it to each other. I don't see the crime. I'm not saying there isn't one but am asking what it is.

Also, how do we know the Hillary campaign didn't grab data too? Just because tracks haven't been found (that I have heard of) doesnt' mean it didn't happen. I can take data from a computer without leaving any sign that I did any more than open the file. It's not hard.

The lid was off the cookie jar. Everyone knew mama said no hands in the cookie jar.

Someone broke mama's rule.

If everyone knew the lid was off, why didn't "mama" just fix the lid?

would notice the lid was off and start investigating what cookies were there and if they only appeared to be in reach or really were.

Worry not, Mamma already got all the cookies she wanted before blaming the one checking out why the lid was opened by her.

should not be in charge of the cookies and should retain her cookie protection fees already accepted.

It's so much easier to rely on pinkie swears

interesting that such malfunctions would be allowed to continue for so long and was only reported by one campaign.
Less interesting when you know the history of the vendor's ties to Clinton campaigns.

One more thing interests me, since only one candidates set of data has been locked, it might make it easier to "lose" access information stored regarding that specific set of data while no one but the Admin can look around in it and perhaps monkey around with it.

I have never been a huge believer in coincidence but I am well aware of political games that are often played in this country, many of them questionable - Or dirty as we used to say back in the day when dirty political gamesmanship still was considered shocking and notable rather than wide spread and hence boring.

It's gonna be tough to convince me that no one on the Clinton campaign saw any data that belonged to other campaigns. But Bernie's campaign reports it, and now that campaign is the one punished? GMAFB.

I don't think they should have fired him unless there is more to it than they are saying.

It doesn't make an entire organization corrupt. In fact holding people accountable for ethical lapses is a sign of less institutionalized corruption in the organization.

The staffer says that he was documenting the problem. The campaign said that they have high standards, etc. But I don't think the campaign has been asked if they think the staffer was just documenting the issue? Do they think he was doing something else?

that he shouldn't have documented it, and, in order to protect the campaign, should have simply left it to the vendor to find the bug on it's own, no matter how many months and years that was apparently going to take.

They are selling a defective product and damaging our political process for their own profit, a screw up that goes on for weeks is not really a screw up so much as a regular practice.

"the logs show that the Vermont senator’s team created at least 24 lists during the 40-minute breach"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=1291833

might know.
http://www.digplanet.com/wiki/Nathaniel_Pearlman

Please, let us go to Court and Please Do a Damned Audit of the DNC

"personal folders" doesn't mean anyone downloaded data. According to VAN, that isn't possible. Of course, given that the whole discussion is about VAN not doing what they are supposed to in terms of data security, we can't really take anything they say as accurate. But "personal folders" is something a user can create within VAN. So it doesn't mean much except that the data was parked in a way that it was easy to get to.

Say you are shopping at Macy's perfume counter at Christmas, and the salesperson steps aside for another task, leaving the three bottles of $100 perfume she was showing you on the counter. Does that mean you can walk away with them? That it was her fault, not yours?

No, you'd be arrested for theft, whether or not the salesperson should have left. Valuable, unauthorized data was apparently downloaded, not just looked at (it shouldn't even be looked at). The person responsible was fired. You can't fire someone for something and then say they didn't do anything wrong.

Until it is established that the data has been destroyed or fully returned (don't know how that will happen), it seems appropriate to stop everything temporarily.

Sanders has handled this very badly. His staff went rogue, and he fired someone. Now he's trying to say nothing happened. It doesn't even compute.

walk away with it, the bottle is no longer on the counter, and can no longer be sold by the store.

Data is completely different. The data is still there. The Hillary campaign has not "lost" any data. What they might have lost is some small advantage they would have of the other campaigns not also being able to see that data. But, that loss existed regardless of what the Sanders staffer did. The fact that the other campaigns could SEE the perfume bottle was the "theft" in this case. And it was not the fault of the campaigns.

Oh and as I mentioned above, a big part of the brouhaha seems to be about this "personal folders" bit. "Personal folders" are something I can create WITHIN VAN. It has nothing to do with "downloading data". It is just a way to park a report so that it is easy to get to. This is perfectly plausible within the context of the explanation the Sanders staffer gave (that they were trying to prove the problem existed so VAN would get off their asses and fix it). Of course, it also does NOT prove that this is the reason the staffer did that.

It's theft. Perhaps you've never worked on a presidential campaign, but that data is the be-all and end-all of campaign strategies. Each phone call or door knock made by thousands of volunteers is carefully coded, and these codings are repeated over and over again in early primary states, along a number of various parameters. Stealing another candidate's codes for "leaners" or "undecideds" that you haven't found yourself, or rankings of individual voters' issue preferences, gives you a HUGE amount of information that you neither earned, nor worked for, nor paid for.

I feel shocked that people don't see what a wreck this stupid move was. It's like the freaking Plumbers.

and that they just happend to go public the day before the debate?

really?

Has NOTHING on DWS and the Clinton machine.

PEACE
LOVE
BERNIE

Reported it to the corrupt DNC and apparently, they didn't fix it. The CEO of NGP VAN, Stu Trevelyan, worked for The CLINTON WAR ROOM IN 1992 AND THEN WORKED IN THE CLINTON WHITE HOUSE! The the head of technology at NGP VAN, worked on HRH's 2008 campaign! Nothing nefarious going on here! Pay no attention to your lying eyes.


PEACE
LOVE
BERNIE

and yesterday again found it unlocked, that wouldn't give you the right to walk in and help yourself to other people's assets.

Your job would be to report it again.

And you wouldn't have a defense in saying you did it because you were so worried about your own assets.

to improperly take advantage of the software vulnerability -- according to the vendor.