DNC software breach gave Sanders campaign confidential Clinton Data

[YPestis25]

Well guess it's time to start jumping ship.

[Craigo]

https://twitter.com/mmurraypolitics/status/677893182907138048

People who are trying to spin this as no big deal have their heads in the sand. This is a huge scandal and a betrayal of the party's trust.

Again, one staffer was involved, no one else. I fail to see why this effects the entire campaign, or why it's okay for Hillary to stay in with emailgate but this is supposed to end Sanders' campaign.

And the fact that it was downloaded rejects the notion I've read elsewhere that it is "impossible" to prove it has been deleted.

If DWS doesn't regrant access soon, Sanders needs to make a serious threat to mount a third party run.

There were four staffers stealing data. The Sanders campaign lied.

My favorite tidbit - one of them tried to hide his personal folder after they found out they'd been caught. Audit logs, wad. You can't hide.

"Another person familiar with the investigation also told NBC News that a total of four individuals affiliated with the Sanders campaign appear to have accessed the data, including national data Director Josh Uretsky, who has since been dismissed by the Sanders campaign, and Deputy National Data Director Russell Drapkin.

A series of documents outlining an audit trail maintained by the database company, obtained and reviewed by NBC News, shows that the four individuals spent a total of about 40 minutes conducting searches of the Clinton data. Those searches included terms that point to Sanders' team gaining access to proprietary lists from more than 10 early voting states of Clinton's likely supporters as well as lists for Sanders backers. That data was saved to personal folders.

It also appears that Drapkin "suppressed" two folders after the database company became aware of the breach."

Sanders hired a crew of dumb ing crooks.

[Beezer]

Sanders staffer should be happy he didn't end up like Vince Foster.

[The Other Castro]

Sanders campaign threatening to sue the DNC.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/sanders-campaign-threatens-to-sue-dnc-216942

[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?

[Asian Nazi]

As usual the coverup is even worse than the crime.  What a total disaster for Bernieland.  Though it makes you wonder what else the Sanders campaign is hiding from the public too!

[Lief 🗽]

Rather than just admit they screwed up, Sanders is acting like a petulant crybaby victim.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Rather than just admit they screwed up, Sanders is acting like a petulant crybaby victim.

Admitting they screwed up would just make things worse. Suing the DNC is a good decision.

[RI]

Rather than just admit they screwed up, Sanders is acting like a petulant crybaby victim.

Just taking after his base.

[hurricanehink]

Cue talks of Sanders independent bid.

[The Other Castro]

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).

[Lief 🗽]

Cue talks of Sanders independent bid.

Yes I can see his announcement speech now: "The DNC would not allow me to steal millions of dollars of data from rival campaigns, so today I am announcing my candidacy as an independent!"

[RI]

Cue talks of Sanders independent bid.

Cruz v Clinton v Sanders v Trump pls

[Craigo]

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.  

[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.

[Craigo]

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.

[Craigo]

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.

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

[Ebsy]

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

[Suburbia]

Sanders will not drop out, but Hillary may lose to Rubio or Christie or Trump because the Sanders supporters either went to Jill Stein, Cynthia McKinney, or even Amy Goodman.

[Lief 🗽]

ABC confirms that four Sanders staffers accessed and downloaded data:

https://twitter.com/abc/status/677920456918228992

But Bernie is the true victim here

[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...

[Trapsy]

DWS just reignited Bernie's campaign with this BS. She is literally the worst thing ever.

[Lief 🗽]

DWS just reignited Bernie's campaign with this BS. She is literally the worst thing ever.

How dare she punish a thief for stealing! What a monster!!

[Ebsy]

I love how you guys are acting like DWS literally went over to the Sanders campaign headquarters, held the National Data Director at gunpoint, and forced him to save lists made from Clinton's data from multiple states, and then escaped with Lois Frankel in a minivan.

Sanders is not the victim here.

[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.