DNC software breach gave Sanders campaign confidential Clinton Data

[Adam Griffin]

This is a real issue. Suspending VAN access is a tangible and direct indicator of favoritism. I don't care what Clinton supporters say or how they want to posture. I've scolded Sanders supporters chronically in the past for crying "conspiracy" about a ton of stuff, but this is structurally creating advantages and disadvantages for various campaigns. The Sanders campaign itself can likely afford to buy access to the VAN if needed, but based on the costs associated with buying access just to one congressional district (which can be thousands of dollars), purchasing national voter file access is something that could easily cost 7 figures. The Sanders campaign isn't going to be able to prove that it has deleted any data obtained during this ordeal. Logically, it makes as much sense (i.e.: none) to blame Clinton's campaign and suspend them for not keeping their data confidential.

ITT: a bunch of dips[inks]ts who have no idea how VAN works.  If you've administered VAN accounts before, then please tell me. As someone who has administered VAN at a county level for years and at various times has administered/had access to VAN on the congressional & state levels, I can tell you that Sanders' people didn't do anything wrong.

Upon observing that something was wrong, I would first need to figure out exactly what is wrong and to what extent there is a problem. That then gets reported to the statewide VAN admin or equivalent person up the chain of command, who will then either remedy a solution or continue the troubleshooting up the chain of command. Otherwise, I can't report anything ("oh I think something is wrong but I better not look to see what specifically is wrong" - the first thing higher-up VAN admin is going to ask is "what is wrong specifically?"). If you can't articulate details about the problem, then you're wasting valuable time and anyone associated with VAN higher up isn't going to take the problem as seriously. Outlining the extent of the breach helps determine the priority to which a solution is rendered.

That's exactly what the Sanders data admin did. There is no formal security protocol or whatever conveyed to VAN admins on how to handle issues like this.

[Adam Griffin]

Another important point to consider is this: fairly objectively, the Clinton campaign is going to be more organized and sophisticated than the Sanders campaign in just about every area. They have more employees, they have what is likely "better" employees, and an overall better campaign infrastructure with respect to those being paid. That should translate into more people working in each area at any given time.

If this data breach was observed by the Sanders campaign in such a short window of time, then it's very likely that the Clinton campaign also observed the issue as well - which means they saw Sanders' data. Somebody in Clinton's campaign likely made the judgement call that they had more to gain by seeing Sanders' data than to lose by Sanders' campaign potentially seeing theirs. Let's also remember that this wasn't the first time that a problem like this occurred, and it was Sanders' campaign that reported it then (and didn't leak it to the media like the DNC obviously did).

But...I don't think placing the burden at the Clinton campaign's feet to "prove" that they didn't see the data is any less ridiculous than asking the Sanders campaign to prove that they no longer have any access to the Clinton campaign's compromised data - especially considering that the Clinton campaign may very well have comparable data as well.

[Adam Griffin]

If this data breach was observed by the Sanders campaign in such a short window of time, then it's very likely that the Clinton campaign also observed the issue as well - which means they saw Sanders' data. Somebody in Clinton's campaign likely made the judgement call that they had more to gain by seeing Sanders' data than to lose by Sanders' campaign potentially seeing theirs. Let's also remember that this wasn't the first time that a problem like this occurred, and it was Sanders' campaign that reported it then (and didn't leak it to the media like the DNC obviously did).

You're falling into the same trap jfern did, getting angry at Clinton for something you made up in your mind. I don't disagree with what you said prior to this but then you fall into fanfiction land here.

It's not fanfiction. One has to make an assumption regarding the Clinton campaign's likelihood of accessing or not accessing the data since no statement has been made on the matter with regards to accessing it*. Given the obvious organizational discrepancies between the two campaigns, it makes more sense to assume that the more sophisticated and data-driven campaign with more employees discovered the very same issue than to assume that it did not.

*VAN stated that "our team removed access to the affected data, and determined that only one campaign took actions that could possibly have led to it retaining data to which it should not have had access". To anyone who has used VAN substantially, this would strike them as a potentially-purposeful distinguisher: the difference between merely accessing/seeing it and actually saving or exporting it via PDF, spreadsheet, etc.

[Adam Griffin]

Lief's link kind of proves my point in my last reply, which I submitted less than a minute after he did. DNC is articulating that Sanders' guy actually backed up the data (which can be observed via VAN) as opposed to simply observing it or accessing it. My original point was that Clinton's team - based on its prowess and the lack thereof of Sanders' - more likely than not observed the breach all the same and inspected it, but did not report it or leave fingerprints by backing it up (based on the wording of VAN's statement).

[Adam Griffin]

Okay, so reading VAN's statement...this is small-ball. The campaigns were able to see specific scoring models for other campaigns.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Anybody who's familiar with this knows that scoring models can be proprietary - campaigns can pay outside firms to develop models that assess various criteria in the system (as well as using standard scoring models that are included in the system) and then you give a percentage chance of a voter being for you, thinking something specific, responding to a specific action, etc. So basically, Sanders' team was able to see things like "what percentage chance does a specific voter have of responding to a Clinton volunteer request?", and so forth. Most scoring models would be fairly universal: in other words, scoring models that assess the likelihood of supporting a specific candidate, turning out to vote in the primary or general, etc.

Additionally, there is a blatant contradiction here. Who's lying: DWS or VAN?

[Adam Griffin]

The DNC is just blatantly supporting the Clinton campaign at this point, it's not even subliminal anymore. I highly advise everyone to read past just the headlines, and specifically read Griffin's posts on NGP VAN (as another user of the system).

I've used VAN. I manage databases for a living. It's all bullsh**t spin.

If he thinks lists are so unimportant and this is no big deal, why was the Sanders campaign keeping theirs under lock and key, and why do they want theirs back so badly now? IOKIFABS, I guess.

Four staffers, including the data director, deliberately exploited a known vulnerability to export their opponent's data. That's inexcusable. I've fired people for ethical violations less severe, and if I did it in my job i'd lose it in short order, along with law license.   

The data breach is no big deal, especially now that I know it was just scoring models (and not actual specific voter file notes made by the campaign, and so forth).

Not having access to VAN as part of your primary campaign is a very big fycking deal.

If you've used it, then you should know the difference.

[Adam Griffin]

Just in case anybody wants to see what I mean by "scoring model", I'm sharing my voter file from VAN. It won't mean much in terms of common sense to a lot of you guys (even I fail to understand like 1/2 of the scores, because VAN doesn't proactively publish explanations for each), but it'll show you just how silly this really is overall.

Additionally and below that, I'm sharing a "counts and crosstabs" example for one scoring model (the percentage chance of a voter supporting Obama in 2012) for my county.

It's worth noting that scoring models at the individual level are pretty fycking useless. They're best used when sampling larger groups of voters - they're actually very accurate when dealing with groups of thousands or more, but again, that's not of much use unless you have access to the data for a sustained period of time and are working with it consistently.

The Sanders team gained nothing of inherent value from this. It's even less meaningful than I thought when this began, now that I know what specifically constituted the data breach.

Why doesn't the Sanders campaign put all their models online then? You know, if there's no inherent value?

You're aware that they saved the lists also, right? It wasn't just counts and crosstabs.

Because no campaign is going to do that - don't be cutesy about it. We don't know what specific scoring models were obtained, but considering an obscene number of scoring models for basic turnout and support functions - not just for parties and candidates, but for specific issues as well - are included with the software, it's likely that at best, these were scoring models designed to function with specific data inputted by the Clinton campaign from canvassing. Considering canvassing data wasn't a part of the leak...

[Adam Griffin]

They stole the lists as well. This has been reported everywhere at this point.

Griffin, they saved lists to their personal accounts. Those are very, very valuable.

I know. OK, so they have names and proprietary Clinton scoring models attached to each. At best, this might help the Sanders campaign know who not to waste time on, if that. I highly doubt any proprietary Clinton models are being sold to other campaigns or even referenced online. Depending on how the models were coded in VAN, they might not even be able to figure out what the models indicate.

Again, it's worth noting that no canvassing data or notes were directly available in the breach. If the campaign had obtained that along with these voter records and scoring models, then they'd really have some gold. Like I said, indirectly, it's pretty likely that at least one of these models are based off of that stuff, but without the specific notes for each individual voter file, its usefulness is severely hampered.

[Adam Griffin]

They stole the lists as well. This has been reported everywhere at this point.

Griffin, they saved lists to their personal accounts. Those are very, very valuable.

I know.

...

Actually, no - I take that back. None of us know, because of the post I made that no one seemed to notice:

Additionally, there is a blatant contradiction here. Who's lying: DWS or VAN?

So again: who's lying? There is plenty of motivation for both to do so. So far, VAN has made two contradictory claims:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

On the other hand, DWS is a huge shill for Hillary and has plenty of motivation to cover her tracks after acting so hastily to disenfranchise the Sanders campaign from the system.

Who is lying?

[Adam Griffin]

Honestly would it surprise you if NGP VAN was fudging to cover it's obvious incompetence that allowed this to happen?

No. It also wouldn't surprise me if DWS was doing the same thing. She made a very specific set of claims that in neither of VAN's contradictory statements did it make.

[Adam Griffin]

So DWS is saying that the "temporary" suspension will remain in effect until an "independent audit" is conducted and the findings are released. Have you ever seen the speed at which any Democratic Party has "audits" and "studies" conducted? What she is actually saying is "we're suspending the Sanders campaign's access to new data *and all of their data they have already collected* until after the primaries have begun".

This s[inks]t-head needs to go. Now. I don't care about any breach of data. I don't care about what people think of Sanders or his bat-s[inks]t crazy supporters. I don't care about some non-legally binding "memorandum of understanding". The DNC is obviously not firing the incompetent company that made it possible (which is how it works in practically every other circumstance), nor are they willing to restore access to the system for a campaign whose already fired the chief architect of the data access and after the vulnerability itself has clearly been corrected.

Other than thinking she hasn't been a good Chair whatsoever, I haven't been on the "fire DWS" bandwagon, but I am now.

[Adam Griffin]

Petitions are useless, of course, but they can sometimes be a good measure of how much intensity there is around a given subject. The "Debbie Wasserman Schultz: Give the voter file back to Bernie Sanders' campaign" petition is collecting 1,000 signatures every 2 to 3 minutes. Go figure.

[Adam Griffin]

So DWS is saying that the "temporary" suspension will remain in effect until an "independent audit" is conducted and the findings are released. Have you ever seen the speed at which any Democratic Party has "audits" and "studies" conducted? What she is actually saying is "we're suspending the Sanders campaign's access to new data *and all of their data they have already collected* until after the primaries have begun".

This s[inks]t-head needs to go. Now. I don't care about any breach of data. I don't care about what people think of Sanders or his bat-s[inks]t crazy supporters. I don't care about some non-legally binding "memorandum of understanding". The DNC is obviously not firing the incompetent company that made it possible (which is how it works in practically every other circumstance), nor are they willing to restore access to the system for a campaign whose already fired the chief architect of the data access and after the vulnerability itself has clearly been corrected.

Other than thinking she hasn't been a good Chair whatsoever, I haven't been on the "fire DWS" bandwagon, but I am now.

I do agree with this.  The company needs to be fired, and DWS I expect will be out
if Hillary is elected.  I think Hillary and about every other person in the Democratic Party hates her.  But only if a women does it can the anti women argument not be used.  

Obama wanted to get rid of her years ago, but didn't. She started posturing and planning to say "he got rid of me because I'm a woman and I'm a Jew". What does he have to be concerned with at this point? He should can her pronto, and let her whine about "waaah my female body parts are kosher" while he replaces her with Sheila Silverstein or somebody. Nobody's going to buy it at this point, especially now that media outlets have already covered her original "plans".

[Adam Griffin]

Griffin, no one likes DWS but she isn't the evil villain you are making her out to be.

Right - evil villains tend to be competent at what they do. Instead, she's a mediocre, status quo hack who is way over her head when it comes to the position she holds and is only good at serving up one advantage after another - whether intended or otherwise - for the candidate she supports.

From debate scheduling to alienating executive committee members who don't support her candidate from the party itself, she is either completely incompetent at performing basic managerial tasks or completely biased in terms of motive. Quite frankly, I really don't give a s[inks]t which one it is: the outcome is one and the same. Nail her up!

[Adam Griffin]

There's no evidence his campaign intentionally sought the data. If they did why report it?

This is part of a very important point. I listened to the interview with the guy and while he did sound a bit sketchy, one thing he's not lying about is that he obviously knew any actions in VAN could be tracked. This is something anybody who has used and has even basic understanding of the system knows. He's been a VAN admin on various campaigns, so it's pretty obvious that he was fully aware anything they were doing could ultimately be tracked click-by-click. Bug reports, user logs, and access histories all blatantly make this a pretty easy point to understand.

[Adam Griffin]

Another thing I'm still trying to piece together is, perhaps VAN's seemingly contradictory statements about "campaigns possibly retaining data" and "nobody being able to export or save" scoring models might not in fact be contradictory. Something I heard in the interview + these statements made me think that possibly, the Sanders guy did download the lists of voters but that the scoring model info wasn't saved.

If that's the case and VAN is telling the truth about nothing else being visible during the breach, then this would mean that all the Sanders campaign actually downloaded was a list of voters with the standard public information/consumer-level data that comes with every basic VAN subscription. In other words, they wouldn't have received anything they didn't already have themselves.

Maybe someone else can clarify whether or not the actual scoring model data was in the exported files (rather than just being visible from the VAN interface).

[Adam Griffin]

Right but I don't believe there was any intentional attempt to access the data here. If the guy copied it he should be fired but he still didn't break any laws and there's no reason to keep the Sanders campaign's access suspended after correcting the error.

Yes there is; the data was downloaded by at least 4 Sanders accounts on to their computers. Until it's clear that it had been deleted they shouldn't have access.

Unless I missed something, I thought it was said that the data was accessed by 4 accounts; downloaded by 1.

[Adam Griffin]

I think one of the reasons that this is bigger than it really should be is because Sanders supporters are making a big sh**t out of it, especially when the evidence is so damning. Don't prop up this guy's campaign as being clean and honest before the facts even come out, because it's looking some of his staffers screwed up and y'all look really silly right now.

Irrespective of any of that, it's not about looking "silly". I don't like Sanders because I think he or his campaign is "clean and honest" (even though campaign actions like these have nothing to do with a candidate; Atlas Forum should know better and it's just Hillary hacks trying to draw that correlation). I like him because of his ideology. Personally, I also like campaigns and candidates that will rat-fyck anyone and anything in order to win. I wish I could really have both with Sanders. Sadly, Clinton meets one of those criteria and Sanders meets the other criteria.

The new angle and the new outrage has nothing to do with that. It's becoming "bigger than it really should be" because the Chair of one of the two major parties is holding hostage one of the two major candidates' access to their data for an indefinite period of time.

I have no idea about your personal experience with campaigns, but this literally incapacitates a campaign. All of the data they have collected on voters for the past seven months might as well not exist right now as far as their campaign is concerned. Additionally, they can conduct virtually no outreach with voters. Sophisticated use of the VAN also includes management of volunteer scheduling, donation records, email marketing and a variety of other elements.

Short of airing TV ads, a campaign that relies upon VAN can do nothing without it.

[Adam Griffin]

This, rather obviously, has left a very sour taste in my mouth today. For anyone who thinks I'm just your standard Bernie hack, you can ask jfern above about what I've had to say in the past about both Sanders and his weak supporters.

If Sanders' data is held hostage for any amount of time that reasonably approaches the primaries - let alone until the commencement of the primaries - then Sanders needs to drop out of contesting the Democratic primary, declare third-party, and royally rat-fyck the Democratic Party into oblivion next year. All it'll take is a couple of points; he'll have the necessary support. After all, what other choice is the Democratic Party giving him? He has enough money and support to continue running a third-party challenge and to buy independent access to the voter file.

If this continues and results in Sanders doing the above, then I will resign my formal position with the Democratic Party and work my ass off to ensure I divert as much of the vote as possible to Sanders as I can. If this is the part where you tell me "but Adam, don't you know that doing that will"-- yes, a generation of continued conservative Supreme Court rule? A solidly-Republican Senate? Repeal of any recent progressive legislation? A new dark age of conservatism? Yes, I know. It's been my role for years now to tell people the very same thing and to prevent fracturing while selling them on a party that's spineless and offers them pretty much nothing other than "but they're worse!". I just don't give a fyck anymore - I've had it.

If that s[inks]t-head at the top of the party gets her way on this and there isn't a massive backlash in response, then the incompetent, bickering, impotent "left" in this country deserves to get its ass pounded into the sand.

[Adam Griffin]

That time AdamGriffin became a PUMA.

The first two letters of that acronym can't apply when an actual primary wasn't allowed to happen in the first place*.

*"But they let him run fair and square for the first half of it, at least!"

[Adam Griffin]

That time AdamGriffin became a PUMA.

The first two letters of that acronym can't apply when an actual primary wasn't allowed to happen in the first place*.

*"But they let him run fair and square for the first half of it, at least!"

The 2008 primary wasn't democratic at all either. The candidate who got the most votes lost due to delegates from Michigan and Florida being barred from the convention. It's naive to think that the Democratic primary process was designed to produce a Democratic outcome as opposed to produce who the party wants as the nominee for the general election.

Yes, I remember: I supported/voted for Hillary then. However, one campaign didn't have its entire ability to reach out to voters, manage volunteers and do virtually all of the day-to-day campaign tasks taken away from it and put on completely unequal footing. This is above and beyond that. Not a single vote has been cast yet, but the Sanders campaign has been placed in a far worse situation in December 2015 than Clinton was in in December 2007.  The DNC has single-handedly neutered the Sanders campaign in all 50 states.

At the end of the day, the establishment did endorse who won the most delegates, and contrary to what you're suggesting, the establishment was much more in Clinton's pocket even in December 2007 when the disqualification occurred. They ultimately moved to Obama as the inevitable math suggested he would win.

[Adam Griffin]

If the DNC wants Sanders to run as an independent, its strategy is working. Gross overreactions like this only serve to stain the image of the Democratic party. Yes the workers from the Sanders campaign involved should be held responsible, and the right people should be fired if found to be involved in any deliberate breach, but to suspend the entire group access to crucial campaign tools is verging on a subversion of democracy. I understand Lief's trolling on this topic, but the reactions of many of you are surprising and disappointing.

Meh, there's actually some pretty good overlap between that in this thread and the ones who begin to show their racism when confronted with racial concepts that pierce their white upper-middle class bubbles of privilege. Both tend to shock quite a bit given the otherwise perceived balance of the forum.

[Adam Griffin]

My position on this has evolved considerably over the course of the day. What I'm incensed about now is the fact that the DNC is holding an entire campaign hostage. However, it appears significantly that the Sanders team was doing more than merely "collecting information to report". This just came across my feed; I am not sure if it was just updated or what:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

What these lists essentially translate to is the following:

• HFA Turnout 60-100 - People (probably Hillary supporters) who have a 60-100% chance of turning out in the primary if engaged
• HFA Support 50-100 - People who have a 50-100% chance of supporting Hillary in the primary
• HFA Support <30 - People who have less than a 30% chance of supporting Hillary in IA
• HFA Turnout 30-70 - People who have a 30-70% chance of turnout out in the primary if engaged in NH

These were not lists being collected in preparation of showing evidence for a bug...

[Adam Griffin]

Well tomorrow is bound to have the most entertaining debate for the Democrats this cycle.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/clintons-offense-will-be-personal-216962?cmpid=sf

Bad idea. She already has the nomination won. She's just going to turn Sanders people off from her for good if she goes at him hard over this.

Does Hillary Clinton really want to stoop so low as to attack a candidate for misuse of data that wasn't direct activity of the candidate...when that candidate defended her over a misuse of data that directly involved her?

Is Hillary Clinton really the right person to be talking about data breaches? Does she really want to attempt to draw that contrast and bring this issue up? If she does this, then anything is fair game.

[Adam Griffin]

Welp, this is an overall depressing development. Going forward, the main goal of the Clinton campaign for the rest of the primary season should be to win over as many Sanders supporters as possible, and not to turn off too many of them. She doesn't need to attack; the nomination is hers and Sanders attacks will only serve to turn away would-be general election voters. For Sanders, his goal should be to run a clean issue based campaign for the next few months (until around March/April or so), and then fully and wholeheartedly endorse Clinton for President against Republican nominee Trump/Cruz/Rubio/Other.

She's never been very bright with respect to picking the right advisors with which to surround herself (best obvious example is 2008, when she snatched defeat from the jaws of victory after a series of mind-numbingly bad strategic decisions). It's likely for the same reasons she probably maintained her own private email server - with so many people out to get her, she values loyalty and trustworthiness over competence when assistance is absolutely necessary; any other time, things are done "in-house" to prevent the vast right-wing conspiracy from being able to get to her.

Honestly, it's genuinely kind of sad when you think about it. Legitimate paranoia constantly resulting in self-sabotage.