To the point, everyone who has followed this story should read this (by Amy Dacey, CEO of the DNC):
Here’s what happened with NGP VAN, the Sanders Campaign, and the Clinton CampaignAnd here are the steps we are taking to address the problem
The Democratic National Committee, through its software partner NGP VAN, provides tools for Democratic campaigns that are invaluable and second to none. This week, there was error with that system, however, which led to an incident involving the Sanders campaign.
We want to lay out exactly what happened so that people better understand why the DNC needed to suspend the Sanders campaign’s access to our system and how we’ve been working to fully resolve a serious problem — and get everyone back to work electing a Democrat to the White House in 2016.
There is much more at the link, but here are a few key excerpts:
Once NGP VAN had taken steps to contain the glitch, the DNC directed NGP VAN to conduct a thorough analysis to:
Identify any users who may have accessed information from another campaign inappropriately, Pinpoint exactly what actions any such users took in the system, and Report these findings to the DNC so we would know what, if any, data was actually acquired.As a result of this analysis, NGP VAN found that campaign staff on the Sanders campaign, including the campaign’s national data director, had accessed proprietary information about which voters were being targeted by the Clinton campaign — and in doing so violated their agreements with the DNC.
These staffers then saved this information in their personal folders on the system, and over the course of the next day, we learned that at least one staffer appeared to have generated reports and exported them from the system.
None of this is in dispute. It’s fully documented in the system logs. And these details reveal nothing less than a serious violation of the agreements governing the use of this data. Underscoring that fact is the point that the Sanders campaign has fired their national data director and indicated further disciplinary actions may be taken pending the results of their own investigation.
As to why the Sanders campaign was shut out of the system for a while:
On Thursday, further NGP VAN analysis revealed that it was very likely that a user had taken data out of the system during the breach. Upon learning that, the DNC had to suspend the Sanders campaign’s access to the voter file to ensure the integrity of the system. 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. This temporary suspension was well within the DNC’s authority. Moreover, the DNC was left with little choice in the matter when the Sanders campaign declined to respond in a timely manner to the requests for assistance with an investigation.
On Thursday, the Sanders campaign did move to fire its national data director. But we still weren’t provided the information we needed from the campaign until late in the evening on Friday. Once they complied with our prior request and provided documentation that we were then able to review, we immediately restored the Sanders campaign’s access to the voter file — as was always our intention and as we had advised well before they sued the Committee.
And the information obtained so far shows that the DNC’s concern to have a full, thorough inquiry was fully justified: As confirmed by the Sanders campaign in the account given the DNC Friday evening, one of the employees of the campaign involved in the misconduct tried to delete the notes they made recording their accessing of Clinton campaign data to hide his activities.
(All bolding above is mine.)
The last bit completely contradicts the fired dude’s story that, shucks, they were just trying to be helpful and show the DNC and NGP VAN what snoopish things a person with less integrity could do!
This morning, I read that two more Sanders aides have been suspended over this.
DWS is a controversial figure but she said something on MSNBC the other night that, I think, sounds right: Sanders himself is a really good guy who has been ill served by his campaign. She said when she spoke with him on Thursday or Friday ( I can’t recall which ), he was shocked. No one on his staff had told him about the data breach. And since Bernie IS apparently a person to whom integrity means something, he was pissed.
Bernie Sanders personally has done nothing wrong and everything right regarding this kerfuffle. But his data people did indeed do something pretty shady and at least one tried to cover his tracks. This is why one is fired and now two are currently suspended.
Two additional employees of Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign have been suspended during an ongoing investigation into a software breach that revealed members of his staff accessed Hillary Clinton's private voter data, Sanders' campaign manager Jeff Weaver said Saturday night.
Sanders apologized to Clinton and to his supporters during Saturday night's Democratic presidential debate, hosted by ABC News.
"Not only do I apologize [to Clinton], I want to apologize to my supporters," he said. "This is not the kind of campaign that we run. If I find anybody else involved in this, they will be fired."
Well done, sir.