[Forgive me if it appears that I’m wearing a bit more tin foil than usual, but I’m part of the way through The Devil’s Chessboard and realize that in the past I never put enough tin foil on my hat to correctly perceive hot “ratfucking” works.]
Bloomberg is reporting Sanders Accounts Saved Clinton Data During Breach, Audit Says
Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign exploited a temporary glitch in the Democratic National Committee’s voter database to save lists created by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, according to an audit of the breach obtained by Bloomberg.
Sanders’ campaign has sought to downplay the severity of the incident, initially saying that only a single “low-level” staffer accessed the Clinton data and that none of it was saved. But the database’s logs created by the vendor that manages the data, NGP VAN, shows that four accounts associated with the Sanders team took advantage of the Wednesday morning breach.
Staffers conducted searches that would be especially advantageous to the campaign, including lists of its likeliest supporters in 10 early voting states, including Iowa and New Hampshire.
The DNC has now suspended the Sanders’ campaign from using the DNC database.
Bad, bad Sanders. How dare he claim that he would run a totally ethical campaign and then engage in a spying operation against the Clinton campaign.
Aspects of this scandal that must be ignored:
- NGP VAN principle(s) is a Clinton supporter.
- DNC chair DWS is totally “Ready for Hillary.”
- DNC runs to WaPo and levels charges against the Sanders’ campaign before collecting the evidence. (Recall the FBI claim of pro-ISIS Facebook posts by the SB killers?)
- Yesterday was a good day for the Sanders’ campaign with the CWS and DFA endorsements, but this “scandal” will dominate in the news.
- Tomorrow is the third DEM primary debate. This “scandal” should be expected to play a prominent role.
Charlie is correctly questioning how this matter hit WaPo so quickly. But he shuns tin foil and is satisfied to accept that the DNC system glitch was merely serendipitous.
Good “ratfuckers” never leave their fingerprints on the operation. Once targets/scapegoats/fall guys have taken the hit, anything else involved that would point to additional operatives can plausibly look like accidents or human errors with no harm to others intended.(Except to suspicious or paranoid minds.) Compartmentalizing the operation details is also valuable.
If you smell a rat, consider the possible culprits and scenarios. (If you don’t, you blame Nader and not team Jeb! dirty tricks in FL 2000.)
First up, unfortunately this has to be considered, is Josh Uretsky, the former Sanders campaign’s National Data Director. On CNN he denied having engaged in anything nefarious.
Uretsky, who is experienced with the NGP-VAN system used by the DNC and has administered it before, said he first noticed the data breach on Wednesday morning.
“We investigated it for a short period of time to see the scope of the Sanders campaign’s exposure and then the breach was shut down presumably by the vendor,” he said. “We did not gain any material benefit.”
NGP-Van has acknowledged that they created the system glitch that dropped the firewalls between the campaigns. Therefore, Uretsky and other Sanders’ IT people did not hack the system to Clinton data or voter models. [Sidenote: NGP-VAN purchased the Obama 2012 voter model system.] Did Uretsky attempt to gain a “material benefit” but failed when the system was quickly shut down? Is there any evidence that Uretsky isn’t how he’s claimed to be, an IT professional not employed or affiliated with any other faction or candidate?
From his Linkendin page it’s a stretch to speculate that Uretsky isn’t who he was thought to be. Or that he didn’t fit within a national campaign for Bernie. Whether or not he would be above some independent dirty tricks to benefit Sanders cannot be assessed from the limited information currently available.
More from Uretsky:
“This wasn’t the first time we identified a bad breach,” he said, confirming to CNN that the Sanders campaign reported another breach to the DNC in October. “We reported it to them. They thanked us for reporting it and they told us the breach had been closed.”
“In retrospect, I got a little panicky because our data was totally exposed, too,” Uretsky said of how he handled the latest breach. ” We had to have an assessment, and understand of how broad the exposure was and I had to document it so that I could try to calm down and think about what actually happened so that I could figure out how to protect our stuff.
Note that Uretsky was hired in September and he/Sanders’ team identified and reported a breach in the DNC system in October and had been thanked by the system vendor for finding it. Had no inadvertent firewall breaches occured before then? Have the Clinton and/or DNC IT folks ever seen and reported any breaches? Was the October glitch noticed by anyone outside Sanders’ team?
Reportedly, the glitch on Wednesday resulted from a system patch entered mid-morning. It’s my understanding the such patches are done in off-hours and not during peak user time. When was the October patch entered? Note:
the database’s logs created by the vendor that manages the data, NGP VAN, shows that four accounts associated with the Sanders team took advantage of the Wednesday morning breach.
So, wouldn’t NGP-VAN also have such records from October and could construct the process the Sanders’ IT went through to verify the existence of a breach before reporting it?
Allen Dulles once said that he enjoyed watching mice nibble on planted cheese. Or past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior in similar situations.
So far, Sanders’ supporters are doing their best to dismiss this as a minor mistake and blaming the vendor for creating the glitch and DNC for suspending Sanders’ access to the system and unknown actors for running off to the media. Also applauding Sanders’ quick action in firing Uretsky and turning off the computers of others suspected of having done something wrong.
Clinton supporters are screaming as loudly as possible that what Sanders’ employees did is on the level of the Watergate break-in.
While that second faction has good reasons for promulgating any possible negative against Sanders, the other faction seems as naive about ratfucking as ACORN and PP employees were. (Recall the rush to judgment (one measure of the effectiveness of a ratfuck operation): In immediate response to the 2009 video controversy, the United States House and Senate, by wide margins, attached amendments to pending spending legislation that would temporarily prohibit the federal government from funding ACORN, or any agency that had been involved in similar scandals — including money authorized by previous legislation. President Obama signed the bill into law on October 1.) If this DNC database breach is a ratfuck, it’s conceptually high-tech and sophisticated. So far, working as good as, if not better than expected.
Sanders’ team is working with what they have and also pointing a big finger at the DNC according to this AP report.
The presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders angrily accused the Democratic National Committee of trying to “undermine our campaign” by barring it from a voter database Friday after a breach enabled his staff to improperly access information compiled by rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
“Clearly, in this case, they are trying to help the Clinton campaign,” Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said.
DWS is doubling down:
…once the committee became aware “that the Sanders campaign had inappropriately and systematically accessed Clinton campaign data,” it directed its vendor to suspend Sanders’ campaign access to the information.
No evidence of “systematically accessed Clinton campaign data.” But why bother with facts when sliming an opponent is so much easier?
From the following, Billmon”s nose is twitching:
A summary of computer logs shows that four aides to Sanders’ presidential campaign accessed proprietary voter data compiled by Clinton’s campaign and some of the aides saved the voter information, according to a person familiar with the data logs and the breach.
The person said the data represented millions of dollars invested by the Clinton campaign. The person was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
(A note of caution, it didn’t need a conspircacy to promulgate it. OTOH, it evolved so quickly that it’s unlikely to have been a low-level, independent rat that did it. Stick a piece of cheese in front of DWS and she’ll do the expected.)
Clinton’s campaign declined comment on the incident.
Isn’t that special? Or familiar.
I’m sure this will all get sorted out at some future date. When it no longer matters how history was changed and the meese are dead.
UPDATE: Petition Bernie, 2016 Inc. vs. DNC
Impressive fast action on the part of Sanders’ attorneys. Interesting read. A key point is made at the top of page 4 — the contract between the DNC and campaigns includes termination procedures for either party in the event one of them breaches the contract. Upon notification of a breach by the non-breaching party, the breaching party is allowed ten days to cure the breach before any action can be taken by the other party. It has yet to be determined if the Sanders’ campaign breached the contract, but the DNC most definitely breached it.
In a statement, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz refused to rule out permanently denying the Sanders campaign access to its data. She said she personally reached out to the senator “to make sure that he is aware of the situation”, and that once the DNC receives a full report from his campaign, “we will make a determination on re-enabling the campaign’s access to the system”.
And for the record,
The Clinton campaign manager also hesitated when asked if any of his staff had access to Sanders’ records, saying he was sure no one had “reached into Bernie Sanders’ data and extracted it in the way that the Bernie Sanders campaign did this week”.
A very lawyerly type of statement. Interesting that the Clinton campaign manager is more informed about whatever Sanders’ data guy did than Sanders’ campaign manager.
While many are running with anonymous quotes at to what Sanders’ staffers did and also accepting the firing of two of his staffers as an admission of guilt (anyone remember the Obama administration rush to judgment and firing of Shirley Sherrod?), NGP-VAN has issued an official statement and included in it is:
On Wednesday morning, there was a release of VAN code. Unfortunately, it contained a bug. For a brief window, the voter data that is always searchable across campaigns in VoteBuilder included client scores it should not have, on a specific part of the VAN system. So for voters that a user already had access to, that user was able to search by and view (but not export or save or act on) some attributes that came from another campaign.
So, what could Sanders’ staffers have saved during the 30-40 minute breach that they didn’t already have full access to?
UPDATE #2 – breaking
JUST IN: From Sanders campaign: access to voter files will be restored Saturday morning.
Perhaps that lawsuit woke a few people up to potentially larger problems.