I haven’t written anything about the kerfuffle between the Sanders campaign, the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and the NGP VAN firm that is responsible for handling the voter files. There’s a simple reason for my silence. I’ve known the main character in this drama for about eleven years and he’s a close personal friend of mine. I can’t be objective about it and I can’t really be helpful either to him or to anyone who wants to know or understand more about this story.
I do want to say one thing, though. I hope the “top Sanders campaign adviser” who talked to Hunter Walker of Yahoo News was drunk when he made the decision to trash my friend by “exposing” his references.
I want to point out that this “top Sanders campaign adviser” didn’t actually say that Josh Uretsky was a DNC or Hillary Clinton plant. What he said was that people who work with the DNC or have worked with NGP VAN in the past were among those who provided personal references to Uretsky when he applied for the job with the Sanders campaign. It was the reporter, Hunter Walker, who painted this obnoxious talking point as something dark and conspiratorial.
Still, given what happened with the breach, the adviser suggested Brown’s recommendation of Uretsky could be evidence of a conspiracy.
“I don’t know how you can more centrally connect this thing than those two entities,” the adviser explained. “Here we are being attacked by both of those entities when, in fact, they recommended this guy to the campaign.”
At least three times in this piece of shit article, the “top Sanders campaign adviser” says the same thing. He’s annoyed that the campaign is taking criticism for employing a guy from the very organizations that recommended him. There is no hint that this was a conspiracy and there was no reason to suggest that any conspiracy was being alleged.
But, to be honest, this “top Sanders campaign adviser” is doing something so dickish that I’m forced to break my silence.
He’s not content to defend the Sanders campaign from having any responsibility for NGP VAN’s monumental fuck-up. He’s not content to explain that Bernie Sanders had no connection to what his staffers decided to do or not do during the breach. He’s not content to point out that Josh Uretsky was terminated for his role in the affair. He’s going after (by name) the people who were kind enough to serve as a personal reference for Uretsky.
It’s such an incredible dick move that it’s natural that someone would suppose that this “top Sanders campaign adviser” must be suggesting some sinister plot. Without a sinister plot, why would anyone be such an asshole as to give out the names of people who did nothing but give a positive personal reference? The assertion that “organizations” gave personal references rather than individuals is so stupid that it confused people.
I find it personally frustrating that my friend has been demonized in this whole thing and that I can’t productively defend him because I have such an obvious conflict. I’m not going to discuss this case in detail for that reason.
The one thing I’ll say is that he’s been remarkably loyal to the Sanders campaign. It’s totally gratuitous and superfluous to keep backing the bus up so he can be run over again. But we can leave him out of it entirely at this point. Who is ever going to want to give a reference again to the Sanders campaign when they know that the Sanders campaign will humiliate them if the applicant makes some big mistake?
Most people probably could care less about the circle of professionals who do campaign work at a high level for the Democratic Party, but the people who do this kind of work will certainly notice the ethical breach here. You don’t go after people for giving references.
I don’t have a dog in the Sanders vs. Clinton fight. I have close friends working for both candidates. Longtime readers of this blog probably can guess which candidate aligns better with my political views, but I honestly haven’t decided who I’ll vote for. My politics have nothing to do with this. This is personal.
The Sanders campaign needs to sober up. You don’t go after people for giving references.
Appreciate your disgust/anger at the statements from a “top Sanders’ campaign adviser.” However, it’s the spin/interpretation that other people have put on it that’s problematical. And the statement itself may be important to further the lawsuit and in getting to the bottom of this whole mess.
My initial read on this matter:
Later, while Uretsky was being pummeled by DWS, Clinton’s team, Clinton’s supporters, and a high percentage of Sanders’ supporters as a thief, I gave more weight to statements from Adam B and Atrios – Josh Uretsky is an old friend so perhaps I shouldn’t say too much about DNCHACKINGGATE or whatever we’re calling it (I will say that he is a genuinely good guy), …. The problem is that too few people don’t appreciate that someone can be fired and also be innocent.
Tha audit (although the hiring of Krull is questionable) should clear Uretsky of having stolen anything, but will it go as far as pointing out that what he did would be what would be expected of anyone with his skills to do under the circumstances of the disablement of the access keys to competitors private data? If it does, that still leaves open the question of whether he was set up or NGP-VAN/DNC exploited a serendipitous event with no wrongdoing.
Appreciate your ethics wrt your friend, and want to say that from what I’ve heard it sounds like a garden variety IT screw up – on both sides – and not a conspiracy – from either side.
That said, the courtroom is politics and the penalties are political. Had this stayed quiet the DNC and campaigns could have judged the case quietly, from an IT perspective in 24-48 hours by looking at the logs and holding a few meetings. That didn’t happen, and now that it is in the political sphere all hope for a clean resolution have disappeared.
Both the DNC and the Clinton campaign put the ball in play politically by dishing out some cheep political shots in press releases just before the Democratic debate. The echoes of those cheep shots have been reverberating in Democratic circles ever since, to Clinton’s advantage. It would be almost political malpractice for the Sanders team to not establish reasonable doubt before the political jury issues a verdict.
As far as I can tell, the objective of the Sanders team is to air out what appeared to be an IT issue. This isn’t news. Sanders called for an objective investigation during the debate, and Hillary agreed. Where is this investigation?
The DNC is apparently stonewalling the investigation while the echos of “Sanders’s IT guy was a thief” reverberate. That isn’t smart politically, as it will stoke the Sanders conspiracy folks, and it isn’t smart for the party either. If the DNC, through their actions, convince everyone that they have already decided Hillary should win and they are kneecapping the opposition then they should study Tonya Harding’s career post kneecapping.
The pro move here is for both camps to insist that DNC speed up the investigation and make it transparent. The only way this is going to end well is if they put ALL the facts on the table and apologize where necessary. If Clinton’s team or anyone else dug into data they should not have then that should come out too.
If they fail to do this a lot of Democrats might decide that there really is no difference between the parties and not bother to vote, or worse, vote in protest. That scenario is the most likely way a Republican gets in the White House this election cycle.
The DNC HAS already decided HRC should win. I wasnt aware there was a question about this. But as long as they played relatively fair you could swallow it, part if being anbinsurent underdog. Its taking the error by NGPVAN (a organization whose vote file program based on my personal experience, is badly designed but adequate) as a chance to spike the Sanders campaign by a poor leader and strong HRC backer like DWS that caused it.
The difference between the parties actually manifested strongly. The GOP fears its base. The Democrats loathe theirs.
They wanted a coronation for Hillary. THAT is what this is all about.
I wish that were true.
Then what is it about?
I’m really limited in what I can say because I don’t want to get sucked into litigating this controversy.
But, every side of this has equities that they’re trying to protect or has identified weaknesses that they’re trying to exploit.
The DNC wants to shift blame for hiring an incompetent and untrustworthy vendor.
The vendor is all too happy to have the discussion focused on anything other then their incompetence.
The Clinton campaign wanted to push a story on a day that Sanders had landed some big endorsements. They also want to undermine the Sanders campaign’s efforts to be cleaner and holier-than-thou.
The Sanders campaign is trying to fight back by distracting from what their staffer is alleged to have done by making this all about the DNC.
And the media just wants to feed the infighting and keep the story going.
What’s lost in all of it is the real people who are collateral damage. Note, I wasn’t inspired to speak up by the treatment of my friend. I don’t like how he’s been treated and I find it very frustrating that he’s a punching bag in all this. But what inspired my to speak up is the deliberate trashing of my friend’s references.
That crosses a line for me.
And it wasn’t the Hillary campaign that crossed it.
Also note that the private data that each campaign collects goes into the aggregate database at the conclusion of the individual primary campaigns and all of it is available to the nominee and future candidates.
You left out that the DNC blocked Sanders access to shared data in retaliation for an offense whose very status as an offense is very open to question. They backed down because they didn’t want to face a lawsuit, which would have come with discovery and could have produced all sorts of embarrassing things. That is by far the biggest consequence of any thing either side attempted in this whole affair, and where any discussion of line-crossing should start.
Because their stance was once we get a full accounting and the Sanders campaign agrees to an independent audit we will restore access. The agreement included a full accounting and an independent audit.
Now do I think the DNC over-reacted? Yes. But I also think the Sanders campaign handled it wrong as well. They got caught with their hands in the cookie jar and their story kept changing
Just one example: At first the Sanders campaign said reported this problem in October so this time we were just trying to get proof of the breach. Come to find out it was a different system that had an issue.
“It wasn’t actually within the VAN VoteBuilder system, it was another system.” – Uretsky. You can see that in this clip (5:47 mark):
http://www.msnbc.com/thomas-roberts/watch/fired-sanders-campaign-staffer-speaks-out-588356675888?cid
=sm_tw_msnbc
I don’t think so. If that were true they would drop the lawsuit and pretend nothing happened. They are doing just the opposite.
The only reasonable explanation for this behavior is that they want to know if someone else accessed their data. You know the saying, “If what you are doing isn’t working get a bigger hammer?” The discovery process is the proverbial bigger hammer.
I personally believe that this discovery process is going to help you friend, but I can’t say for sure because it hasn’t happened yet.
I hear you wrt trashing references, but as I posted elsewhere I’m not sure that A) it was deliberate, and B) that it was trashing your friend’s references. My sense is that the aide’s goal was to press for the investigation and he wasn’t thinking fast enough and went a little too far trying to make his point. The fact that we don’t know the aide’s name is my proof. If he were an actual professional spokesperson he would have gone on record with a prepared statement, one that had been carefully combed for potential sound-byte grenades. I’m certain from the way the story was written that the aide is not a professional spokesperson and the remarks were invented to make a point another way, and not scripted for a precise effect.
As for your friend’s unfortunate firing, I’m sorry that he’s out of a job, and REALLY sorry that he’s become a punching bag. It’s happened to me once or twice too.
But – he did cross the line. I know both IT and politics, and he should have known that white-hat sleuthing is kryptonite for the campaign. He wasn’t fired to be the scapegoat, he was fired because he failed to do the #1 thing that all campaign staff are expected to do – keep the campaign’s reputation from getting tarnished.
My pocket analogy is from football. Say you’re an assistant coach and you find the other team’s play book on the conference table in your office space. What do you do? A) Call security, call the other team, and guard the playbook from a distance, or B) suspiciously flip through it to see if it really is the other team’s play book or just some prank left by a fan or a team-mate?
In IT circles, the latter is an acceptable and even expected, but only in IT circles. You can’t fix what you don’t understand, so the other IT folks cut you a wide amount of slack for what would technically be prohibited behavior. But in a competitive setting the collegial nature of IT staff is nothing compared to the paranoia of the teams’ leadership.
Your friend has hopefully learned a valuable lesson – stay off the dance floor when the elephants are dancing.
Thanks for sharing what you can on this stupid story. To be honest, I didn’t get it. Still don’t. I’m supposed to wonder about motives of the DNC because someone with some connection to the organization gave Josh Utresky a reference to the Sanders campaign? Ridiculous.
This really is one of those little (as in microscopic) stories about the Sanders campaign that’s just a(nother) distraction. FWIW, I thought Utresky’s explanations of what happened that were published on the Friday a week ago when the story broke were the most logical. He said he ran some sample queries to verify that the DNC database’s firewall was down and the extent to which it could be breached. No datasets were stored nor retrieved and he volunteered his findings to the campaign and the DNC more or less in real time (as he had once or twice over the previous two months). I’d have done the same thing, possibly with some disbelief at the extent of the problem, but from what I know of databases, shared systems, security, and the analysts that work with them, there was nothing nefarious on either the part of the DNC, Utresky, the Sanders IT / analysts, nor NGP VAN. Like most of the sensible commentary at the time, a serious system problem was uncovered and honestly, quickly reported to the vendor and the DNC. It all sounded to be on the up-and-up to me and not surprising that the DNC had failed to offer a better solution than the single-source data resource vendor they use for the purpose.
Whether the quoted Sanders advisor is a dick or not, it seems to me the larger failure in this silly little report (the Yahoo story and I think I saw it repeated on one other site, can’t remember which one) is journalistic because it’s an incoherent story. Talk about clickbait; the headline contained the word EXPLOSIVE in all caps so you’d be sure to wonder what the fuss was about.
Also, I don’t know the guy, but I hate the idea that Utresky, their chief DBA, was made the fall guy in this when it was obvious from the start that there was never any attempt to hide what was going on. My initial impression of him, and it stands, is that he was doing everyone involved a service, and that wasn’t just the outcome, it was his intent in doing what he did. The biggest irritation to me as a Sanders supporter was concern that he was a highly valuable resource for the Sanders campaign and losing him, and the many months experience he’d gained working for the campaign. was a serious blow to their operations.
From early voting states. If he was trying to show evidence of a breach he would have searched states where the data isn’t near as sensitive. Iowa Starting Line, a very reliable source, posted a snapshot of the user logs
http://twitter.com/IAStartingLine/status/678011156791877632
You can see the full logs at this site:
http://docs.google.com/document/d/1PSBeQvNakGxuty36ACPFNaNLNeoqgz2Pn7e2x0VMYds/edit
Also it is semantics to argue whether the data was stolen. It was accessed improperly and top line info like number of voters who fall into certain categories were saved into personal folders WITHIN the NGP-VAN system. Folders that are generally used to access that data later.
Booman Tribune ~ Comments ~ You Don’t Go After People for Giving References
I agree.
A tangential issue is how breaches of computer security is seen and regulated.
Amelia Andersdotter, former Member of the European Parliament for the Swedish Pirates, has repeatedly argued that data trespassing should be re-regulated with focus on the persons the data is about, rather then the owner of the data. So in this case, that people who should have standing to argue that their privacy has been breached is the persons described in the database whose exchanges with either campaign has been stored unsafely, and the party who is at fault would be the owner (DNC) and provider (NGP VAN). I think such regulation then todays, where it is often the one who shows that databases are unsecure that gets punished.
Most rank-and-file democrats appear not to be that bothered with that data about them might have been exposed to the other campaign. So no harm (from DNC and/or NGP VAN towards the persons in the database), no foul.
Personally I was surprised both campains didnt just get a ‘master dem voter file.’ In my opinion this kind of data hoarding hurts the party and cause as a whole. If you as a person give your data to a national democatic campaign, I think its reasonable to assume you are givng it to the national party.
Besides it forces campaigns to cover the same ground more than once, a waste of resources and an annoyance to voters.
Both campaigns did get ‘master dem voter file.’
That was what they each began with.
Then they applied models to that data based on going out and gathering information on the voters and other data about how people vote.
In addition to this, they each canvass extensively, gathering data that they input into the master file.
If one side knows how the other side is modeling the electorate they can improve their own models. If they know who they are targeting, they can take countermeasures. They can gain an advantage if they can benefit from the canvassing of the other side because it saves them labor.
None of this really amounts to a hill of beans, but it’s essential that all sides can rely on their data being secure from their opponents. This breach was a fuckup because it exposed that data. The vendor had one job, and that was to keep all the campaign data sequestered from the main master Dem file. They failed.
Once they failed, each campaign had to be concerned first and foremost with protecting their own data and with understanding what kind of data was exposed. I doubt stealing the data was a priority for anyone, but if it was done it was done without deliberately leaving a trace of every query.
But, in response to your comment, it’s not a waste of resources for competing campaigns to each do their own work. No one expects the RNC to share their data with the DNC, and no one should expect the Hillary campaign to share their data with the Sanders campaign, or vice-versa. They are opponents.
One could argue for data-sharing within the party. Done on both sides, it is still fair, and helps to neutralize money advantages, to which the Democratic Party, at least, generally represents itself as opposed. But I agree that the only evident wrongdoing here was the attempt by the Clinton campaign to kneecap the Sanders campaign over this.
I keep reading there was nothing nefarious, but I have a link that says this …
” … “The information obtained so far shows that the D.N.C.’s concern to have a full, thorough inquiry was fully justified,” Ms. Dacey wrote. “As confirmed by the Sanders campaign in the account given the D.N.C. 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.” …
” … Three other aides to the Sanders team were seen on audit logs making more than 25 targeted searches of Mrs. Clinton’s data pertaining to early-voting states. … “
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/12/19/democratic-party-lays-out-its-case-for-punish
ing-sanders-campaign-over-data/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=
Politics&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs®ion=Body
Just reading that quote…
What was in the notes? Did they succeed in deleting them? Were they incriminating? This report is so full of holes, it’s clearly a lie.
That’s a bit of a stretch Neal. You don’t believe the New York Times, you’ll need better reasoning than that. It’s pretty clear some of sanders people overstepped the bounds, and the campaign has been deflecting and trying to make the story about the DNC ever since.
Ok. Calling it a lie, outright, may be a bit of a stretch. But not much.
Also another link to an account that does not put the Sanders campaign in such a good light …
https:/medium.com@AmyKDacey/here-s-what-happened-with-ngp-van-the-sanders-campaign-and-the-clinton
-campaign-d75dd1d2edbf#.ibnokc3x8
.”
https:/medium.com@AmyKDacey/…
2
Link seems to not be working, but it worked when I found it here…
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_12/an_explanation_of_what_bernie059035.php
(In the Sheila Cummings comment from seven days ago)
Not enough information to assess NGP-VAN’s actions in response to whatever they suspected happened at Sanders IT end, but the way DWS and the Clinton team ran with it to the media puts their actions in the nefarious category for me.
(no one seems very interested in what the DNC or DWS were up to, so it would be good to find out)
If Debbie Wasserman Schultz hadn’t jumped on this so quickly it wouldn’t have been the mess it’s become.
This is the problem with the simple “Sanders/Sanders campaign did it” theory:
Nathaniel Goss Pearlman was the chief tech officer in Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2008 when a similar data breach occurred (according the lawsuit filed), giving the Clinton campaign access to Obama’s information; Debbie Wasserman Schultz, current head of the DNC, was Clinton’s campaign manager.
The DNC’s computer program is run by NGP-VAN (the NGP = Nathaniel Goss Pearlman), the same people who ran Clinton’s technology in 2008. Stu Trevelyan, the CEO of NGP-VAN, has been a Clinton political operative since at least 1992 and Bill’s first presidential run. That’s a 23-year history.
Josh Uretsky, who was put in charge of the Sanders campaign’s computers, was recommended by Andrew Brown, head of the DNC computers, and Bryan Whitaker, the COO of NGP-VAN. That means that the DNC helped to put Uretsky in place in the Sanders campaign, and since he is the proximate cause of the Sanders campaign improperly looking at Clinton’s files, whether in good conscience or bad, he owns the mess. I haven’t yet come across Uretsky’s employment record, but somehow Brown and Whitaker both knew him well enough to recommend him.
I’m not sure what Uretsky was doing in 2008 but Trevelyan, Pearlman, and Wasserman Schultz were all in the Clinton camp in 2008. We have not seen much even-handedness out of the DNC this cycle.
I cannot say with any certainty what exactly happened, but as I understand it, instead of shutting down the program’s access while putting in a software upgrade to the program, NGP-VAN’s representatives merely took down the firewall, thus allowing anyone using the program (for ex, Sanders’ campaign) access.
Sanders’ campaign has repeatedly told the DNC of previous firewall failures. There are reports that it was in another computer program. Josh Uretsky has said he was gathering up information to prove how bad the DNC security was. Whether true or not, Sanders fired the man responsible, who had been recommended to the Sanders campaign by both the DNC and the third-party vender.
The IT guy who was present for Clinton’s access to Obama’s files in 2008 is now in charge of the DNC computers and his company has allegedly been responsible for repeated firewall failures, including the most recent. Wasserman Schultz, who had been the beneficiary of Obama’s information going to the Clinton campaign in 2008 as her campaign manager, apparently decided that what happened in 2008 is now a crime in 2015.
I can guess that the Sanders campaign is pretty ticked off with DWS’s performance as party chair. By going public with this DWS made this a campaign issue. Cutting off the Sanders campaign was also a violation of the contract that they signed.
Before I’d blame Sanders’ spokespeople for sharing “ownership” of Uretsky with NGP-VAN and Wasserman Schultz, I’d put the blame where it belongs, on the DNC for their quick and heavyhanded gotcha. I’m not sure why Uretsky didn’t contact the DNC before diving into Clinton’s files, but that’s fatal in his self-defense.
I’ll go a step further. Without Uretsky’s full explanation and why we should consider him innocent, he’s stuck with this. It’s not so much throwing him under the bus as Uretsky crawling under the bus on his own and giving the bus driver a thumbs up.
Plus this:
http://hammy64000.com/tag/josh-uretsky/
While none of us yet knows exactly what happened and I agree with much of what you have written, your understanding of a couple of points isn’t correct.
Whatever did or didn’t happen in 2008 is close to being at the level of a rumor. There could be some “there there,” but if there is, nobody is talking.
NGP-VAN did what was considered a routine upgrade to the DNC system on Wednesday, Dec 16, in the morning. (The precise times of the events has still not been disclosed.) According to NGP-VAN that upgrade had a “bug” that dropped the access keys to the private data of all the campaigns. (There are no “firewalls” and there were no previous access problems with The Van reported by Sanders’ IT team.) That “bug” was live for at least two hours without any campaign exploiting (or even noticing?) that competitors private data could be accessed. It was then detected by Sanders’ IT team and is alleged that they took advantage of the access to peek/snoop at Clinton’s data. NGP-VAN claims to have discovered the “bug” on their own and a team immediately went to work in correcting it and which was completed forty minutes after Sanders’ IT team began running queries on Clinton data.
What seems a bit hinky to me about the NGP-VAN narrative is that after detecting the “bug,” a team to correct it was assembled but they didn’t shut down the system as they worked on it. Why no shutdown? If they had recognized that the “bug” had disabled the inter-candidate access keys, why wasn’t that perceived as serious enough to shut down the system? Or did they even know that the “bug” had done that? What and when had NGP-VAN reported the incident to the DNC? From NGP-VAN’s perspective, when was the “bug” identified as a serious incident and what did they do after that? How long before team Sanders’ was locked out of the system?
It’s slightly odd that Clinton’s (presumably larger IT team) didn’t detect the issue. Perhaps her team wasn’t pulling voter lists to use in canvassing over the coming weekend which to me seems like the most likely way the issue surfaced in Sanders’ shop. Not probable that Uretsky or anyone in a similar position at any campaign would spontaneously decide to try to run a query using an opponent’s campaign acronym (which is what has been alleged that Uretsky did).
Seems to be consensus out there that others in Uretsky’s position that morning would have immediately reported the issue to the DNC. Not done any queries on HRC. I’m a reasonably honest (too honest by most people’s standards) person, and I’m not sure that’s what I would have done. I would have been concerned about a breach in Sanders’ private data. What could have been accessed and taken, and no trust that the DNC and NGP-VAN would reveal that to me once the issue was reported to them. What was the extent of the breach and how significant of a problem did that potentially pose for Sanders? Uretsky had to assume that anything he could access in HRC’s files that others could access in Sanders’ files and he had no way to determine how long this access had been open, minutes or hours. I’d want to satisfy myself as the possible, and worst, scenarios as what could have been seen, saved, and exported by an opponent and there was only one way to check that out by doing queries, etc. on HRC.
Well, I certainly can’t speak with any certainty about firewalls, passwords and other computer stuff, so my apologies for any misinformation.
Also, the only thing I’ve seen about the incident that occurred in 2008 was the reference in the lawsuit. I suspect that, since it was used as a comparative, that something comparable happened. Judges tend to frown on bullshitting in lawsuits:
“Upon information and belief, a similar security incident arose with the NGP VAN software during the 2008 national presidential primaries, resulting in the unintentional transmission of Confidential Information to the campaign of Democratic primary candidate Hillary Clinton (the “Prior Incident”).
WaSchu needs to resign right now. However, since resigning might be prejudicial against Clinton, I can understand why she won’t.
I’m sure initial filings contain plenty of “Upon information and belief” statements that later get dropped, but serve to preserve the right to explore some area in the early stages. We’ll have to wait and see on this point.
DWS isn’t going anywhere unless or until she does something that hurts Clinton or until Clinton wins or loses. If she wins, DWS gets a big promotion.
Leftish bloggers would agree, but DEM elites would beg to differ as they prefer to blame the DFHs for not voting and the GOP for being dastardly clever. Thus, from the perspective of DEM elites (and this does include those at the state level), DWS is doing a great job.
This is a Yahoo! News article. Do you know Yahoo! as a company? They skimp on everything.
I have no idea what happened with the data breach. I have no idea what this Sanders representative actually said, or what he meant. I’m not taking any position on those things. But I am saying don’t jump to the conclusion that what you read in this article is even remotely accurate.
There have been a number of times when I’ve read news articles about an item/topic about which I knew a lot – in every case the news articles got a lot of details wrong. I don’t even trust the quotes – I’ve seen writers lift quotes from another published source and make mistakes in the process. Certain sources are known to have solid editing staffs, but even those have made whopping errors. But Yahoo! News isn’t even one of those.
By the way, this is true of most things. Sometimes we’ll read articles about a criminal complaint – unfortunately in recent years a lot of those have involved shootings. We want to know what happened in every detail so we parse every word of the news articles and – if available – police reports. Ok, if you understand that anything you read in those is possibly wrong, but too often people treat them as proven fact.
I know from years of solving complex problems that the least reliable source of information is a verbal description of what happened. You start with them, but then you carefully investigate and verify each one.
I couldn’t agree more.
I was interviewed for four hours once by the Washington Post. I saw the reporter’s notepad as she was writing and corrected everything as we went. She had me review all of her notes at the end of the interview. When the article came out 7 out of the 9 facts and quotes she used were wrong, including some no-brainers like my name and the organization I worked for. And this was the Washington Post.
That’s why I always – ALWAYS – get the bigger context before I get all judgmental. In most cases the offensive sound byte isn’t that offensive in context. How many times, and in how many ways, had the journalist asked the aide about Uretsky’s connections to the DNC before he got the click-bait sound byte that he needed? Even professional politicians slip up when grilled long enough. Amateurs can always be counted on to say something they regret.
How does the aide feel about his comment? What would he say after Booman points out the chilling effect on references? We don’t know. So I’m keeping my passion in neutral until I hear more.
I’m still not entirely certain who I will vote for, so I was able to look at this story without a desire to protect my own candidate over the other. I’m more than willing to believe that Bernie’s staff didn’t mean to do anything terrible, and that the whole story has been blown out of proportion. But the reaction of the Bernie campaign since it became public has not shown Bernie in a positive light, and has not reassured me that he can run the country. Firing your friend before an investigation could be done wasn’t appropriate, continuing the lawsuit seems excessive, and attacking people for giving references is unacceptable. Whether or not it’s true, it comes across as someone in Bernie’s campaign trying to hide something by blaming others, instead of just apologizing and moving on. Bernie’s too good a man to be playing these games. Somebody in his campaign is not serving him well.
Odd sort of “objectivity” there.
The DNC had Sanders by the short hairs. His campaign couldn’t function by being locked out of of the DNC system. Every day from now until the voting in IA and NH is precious. If the DNC had any intention of being reasonable (well within its power), it wouldn’t have locked out Sanders AFTER the “bug” had been corrected and run off to the media screaming about a theft by team Sanders. Any thorough and honest investigation that could possibly exonerate Sanders operation and Uretsky would have taken time. If dishonest, months. As NGP-VAN, DNC, and team Clinton had already pointed the finger at Uretsky by the time the public became aware of this issue, Sanders had no choice but to let Uretsky go as part of his team’s effort to get its access restored.
Why? Without it, the chances of an authentic and honest audit by the DNC aren’t high. Without it, the chances of it being determined that Uretsky did nothing untoward are even lower.
Bernie apologized and is willing to move on, but does have a right to all the facts about this matter.
Sorry — if his campaign had something to hide, they would have dropped the lawsuit as part of the agreement for the restoration of access. In lawsuits discovery works both ways, and it seems quite implausible that Sanders would risk trashing his almost forty year public record by continuing this if he had something to hide.
Bernie knows his people did something so wrong that he needed to fire someone, but he needs a lawsuit to get all the facts? Do you hear how that sounds? It sounds like his campaign is desperately looking for someone else to blame for their own mistakes. Whether or not they did anything worth note is irrelevant. Bernie’s strength lies in being honest and straight forward. This ridiculous situation has taken a some of that image from him. It was poorly handled.
Let’s try this again. Say you’re fired for some seemingly minor reason. You file a wrongful termination lawsuit. The employer offers a settlement, three month severance and changing the record from fired to laid off. Most would accept that and try to move on even though they’re confident that they didn’t do anything wrong. Some would choose to have a day in court because they want all the facts to come out and believe they are entitled to restitution.(Juries don’t always see it from the plaintiff’s perspective– see Ellen Pao — but that the chance they all take. However, if not for the many individuals that had standing to pursue a wrongful termination or discrimination lawsuit that ended up disclosing that such wrongs were systemic, we’d still be back near the dark ages wrt to sexual and racial discrimination.)
Closer to the subject at hand, how many individuals would reject a small settlement in favor of pursuing a lawsuit, if the individual knew that she/he were guilty of something far more egregious than what the employer had used to fire him/her? Something that is unlikely to surface if she drops the lawsuit at this point? (Contrary to CW, embezzlement isn’t easily or quickly detected if it’s not being looked for.) That’s what you’re claiming Sanders campaign is doing in not withdrawing the lawsuit. That his team is so stupid that they would continue a lawsuit to hide serious malfeasance on their part. That is frankly ridiculous.
I doesn’t sound like that to me. It sounds like Sanders is genuinely concerned about the failures of the database he, and hundreds of other Democrats around the country, are relying on to win elections in less than a year. There’s a lot more going on here than we know, of course, but Sanders objective is clear; he takes it seriously and wants to get the facts.
Offering a sacrificial lamb is standard. Was it fired or “asked to resign”. Was the data breach, which seems to be accident or a “honeypot” the cause? or was it for investigating the security lapse without informing the candidate? The latter would be an error in jugement resulting in a loss of confidence by the candidate.
I’m not defending Sanders or Uretsky. I’m saying those types of positions are delicate. If you run to the boss about every little think, you are making the boss do your job and should be fired. If you keep your boss in the dark and he steps in a minefield, you should be fired. Where is the line drawn? It’s hard to say and depends on the people and situation.
The NSA was bugging Angela Merkel’s phone and she found out. if the President had not been informed that they were doing that, the NSA director should be fired. If the NSA was bugging my phone, there is no need to inform the President. If a mail carrier sees a door open and looks inside and sees an unconcious person on the floor, and calls 911, she’s a heroine (actual case, one of many). If that mail carrier ignores the person on the floor and goes away, she should be fired. If the mail carrier sees the door open, shrugs, doesn’t look inside and goes about her rounds, she shouldn’t be praised or fired.
Sad to see that this issue is still alive. Someone in the Democratic Party is seeking political seppuku by keeping this alive. It was bad enough to air it in public where the fan-boys would seize on it.
The failure of the system is unconscionable during a primary campaign; it is just crappy software no matter how indispensable it has become because there is nothing better out there and the DNC has shoved a shitload of dough into a database that is shoved into its data model. Not the time to fix it now.
IMHO, more bad judgement from the Clinton camp, topping 23 years of bad judgement. Like the e-mails. Not a nefarious plot like the Republicans claim. Just reckless bad judgement, putting personal convenience over duty.
I can’t agree with your take here.
Because Sanders immediately responded to the scandal by firing the person responsible and because all parties agree that Sanders had no knowledge of the data breach beforehand, the line of attack the Clinton & DNC people are using is that Sanders exercised bad judgement in hiring Uretsky. “The fish rots from the head”, “The buck stops here”, etc. Both lines I’ve actually seen used by Clinton supporters to attack Sanders.
So given that, responding “hey, the people attacking me for the actions of this guy are the same people who recommended him to me” seems eminently fair.
For who they surround themselves with and how well their campaign is run. That was the main reason I didn’t support Secretary Clinton in 2008 and it is a big reason I am not supporting Senator Sanders this campaign. Usually campaigns are the biggest organizations candidates have run to date. If they don’t seem to have control of that organization, in my opinion, them being able to lead the administrative branch of the federal government is in question.
I feel Tad Devine is the Mark Penn of this election cycle. Incompetent at his job and therefore dragging the candidate down.
How well a campaign is run is a measure of a candidate’s administrative abilities. However, several factors come into play.
One: money. The most experienced campaign operatives, generally assumed to have the highest level skills, sign on early with the campaign that appears to have the highest potential for fundraising.
Two: luck. Getting the right operatives for the right campaign in the right election cycle. Few end up with more than one election cycle at the top of the heap. Rove did better than most with 2000, 2002, and 2004. All winners for his guy/party and his guy did better in 2004 than he did in 2000. (Doubt you went with GWB because his campaign operation was superior to that of Gore’s or Kerry’s.) Whereas, team Obama/DNC fell apart in 2010 and while winning in 2012, it wasn’t as strong of a win as it had been in 2008.
To date, considering that all the big money and DNC planned to coronate Clinton as the nominee before the election cycle began, Sanders has operated an excellent campaign. He also, unlike Clinton, has a day job. Weaver has been with Sanders’ for decades and Fiermonte has been his state director for sixteen years. Tad Devine may have been the best that was available — does have experience with winning nominees, Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry; so, might be too soon to dismiss him during the primary campaign. Let’s also recall that over a month before the 2008 Iowa caucuses, Clinton was leading nationally by double digits (12/3, LATimes/Bloomberg by 24 points) and essentially tied with Obama while Edwards was a strong third. (What happened in Iowa 2004 in the last month?) And she had a strong lead in NH.
Penn did seem crappy to those not inclined to vote for Clinton, but he wasn’t the sum total of her operation. The weaknesses in her operation compared with that of Obama’s weren’t visible from the outside until a very few days before the IA caucuses and the caucuses themselves. How do you know at this point how strong or weak Sanders’ field operations in IA and NH are?
Seems to me you’re taking one incident involving Sanders’ IT team where the facts are far from clear or public (and that DWS and team Clinton rushed in to smear Sanders) to evaluate his whole campaign. One incident. One at worst, oops. Clinton hasn’t had any oops this time? Obama didn’t have any in 2008? Gore had about a hundred “oops,” but Kerry had plenty as well. All candidates do.
Whereas, team Obama/DNC fell apart in 2010 and while winning in 2012, it wasn’t as strong of a win as it had been in 2008.
I put that to one main reason,
Dean and his 50 state strategy vs the kaine-was/shulz ignore the red-state, DC centric strategy
Devine has been a disaster from the get go.
Using Cornel West, a very vocal critic of President Obama’s as a surrogate to try and reach African-americans, a demo who is very supportive of President Obama, was a dumb move.
The whole we will consider Hillary for VP was stupid.
The initial response to Black Lives Matter was inept.
I think we fail to see the forest for the trees so let me offer my offer my view through my clearly biased lens. First, both Marie and Martin say Josh Uretsky is one of the good guys and that is good enough for me to believe him. When this issue first broke Josh defended himself saying security issues with this database were detected last October with the problems being reported to the DNC and the NGP VAN firm. He said this time he was once again trying to document the problem. Like I said, I believe him.
Since this is a Democratic primary it only makes sense if the names in the database are registered Democrats and those names and contact information are made available to any Democratic candidate who has paid their monthly fee to NGP VAN. The candidate can then add additional information about each voter with that added information remaining proprietary. Models can then be run on that information to produce voter lists for the candidate’s specific campaign strategy. All the database really can do is to compile lists.
In the October incident a Sanders contractor had noticed that their searches were pulling other candidates data. The immediate worry was that other candidates were pulling Sanders information, a serious problem for the Sanders campaign. I have worked during my long electronics career in micro circuits with some very expensive software tools that contain databases. If a problem is discovered the first thing the vendor wants to know is what came out of the tool and how did you get it to do that. This kind of information is often critical for a prompt resolution of the problem.
If you’re working with this software you probably generate a lot of lists, some good, others not so good so you adjust the model and run it again until it looks right. Where do you suppose the technician keeps all those lists? It has already come out that they were stored in personal folders that reside on an NGP VAN server with no permission to copy, export or print the list. You could see it on the screen and they would let you delete it but nothing more. It requires a higher level password to export the list plus keep in mind that NGP VAN is monitoring who is on, making searches, what is searched and who is exporting those lists. It has already come out that none of the lists in question were exported.
The last time this happened the Sanders campaign made their complaints to the proper people plus did that as quietly as is appropriate with this kind of inside baseball. I don’t think anyone thinks the Sanders campaign went running to the media. The question is now who did run or shall we say leak this to the media. Can you see this has nothing to do with the data or even the faulty software but everything to do with hard ball politics?
Did NGP VAN leak the data to the media or did they report to their best customer, Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, who had given them and their shitty software a monopoly with the Democratic Party. Since their customers pay a fee, would NGP VAN prefer their security problems remain out of public view, same as last time? Only one person comes to mind with the motivation plus be in a position to attempt a ratfuck on Bernie with this information: Debbie Wasserman-Shultz.
Now we have Debbie going on both CNN and MSNBC to say Bernie is no better than a common house thief who uses unlocked doors to go in and `take things’. Did Debbie ask NGP VAN if anyone `took things’ such as exports of the password protected lists in question before making those accusations in the national media? That is a question that needs asked and answered under oath in discovery. Keep in mind that Bernie may be getting the Judith Miller treatment by the New York Times and that Yahoo News is mostly a dull tabloid. This is nothing more than mudslinging by corporate media.
If you want to look for a plant, the obvious one is Hillary’s 2008 campaign co-chair as DNC Chair. I would prefer using a legal means to pin the tail on the donkey to clear Josh’s name. Maybe alienating 30% of her base presents enough of a risk in the general for Hillary to ask Debbie to resign. This train is leaving the station.
the problems in October. He said it was actually a different database than NGP-VAN
“It wasn’t actually within the VAN VoteBuilder system, it was another system.” Said at the 5:47 mark in the below video
http://www.msnbc.com/thomas-roberts/watch/fired-sanders-campaign-staffer-speaks-out-588356675888?cid
=sm_tw_msnbc
You’re really grasping at straws here. Are you not aware that NGP-VAN was given a monopoly with the DNC who has established rules that no candidate can use any other system? Josh said VoteBuilder, a view or tool. These kinds of systems would always have multiple tools for access to the same database. There is no alternative database as mandated by DNC rules; Period.
As this issue progresses, the stink from Hillary gets even stronger as it is revealed that the formation of NGP-VAN was nothing more than an arm of the Clinton Machine formed by Clinton operatives. It then should come as no surprise that NGP-VAN would give (leak) log files of the incident directly to the Hillary campaign and certainly not to the Sanders campaign after they had just locked the Sanders campaign out of the system. Hillary is even more corrupt and more of a danger to democracy than I gave her credit for being.
Democracy is compromised when the politician sells out to big money interests instead of representing the interests of the people who put them in office. Here we have the Democratic Party who, above all else, was supposed to be fair in the primary but instead selling out to the Clinton Machine by providing that machine not only control of the Chair of the DNC but administration of the Democratic voter database using a software vendor that was part of the Clinton Machine plus giving them a monopoly.
Now we have Bernie calling for an investigation into this with Hillary agreeing in a national debate to do so but with the DNC continuing to resist. I now think this has backfired on Hillary’s machine because it is starting to become widely known just how extensive the corrosive reach of the Clinton Machine has become. The Democratic Establishment bears the ultimate responsible for this because they sold out to let it happen.
Bernie proved himself to be a master politician by first apologizing to Hillary then getting her to agree to a full transparent investigation by an independent party in a national debate. Maybe keeping DWS as chair of the DNC is good because either the investigation or Debbie’s continued resistance will reveal to the voters what it means to keep the Clinton Machine in power. Debbie may have been right when she said, “There are other ways to reach the voters.” Debbie certainly continues to help. Please precede, Mrs. Clinton.
You said “When this issue first broke Josh defended himself saying security issues with this database were detected last October with the problems being reported to the DNC and the NGP VAN firm. He said this time he was once again trying to document the problem. Like I said, I believe him”
Well come to find out he retracted that not a day later. It was a DIFFERENT system that was having issues so what problem in Van votebuilder was he trying to document “this time”?
Those are HIS words. Not MINE. It wasn’t votebuilder having issues back in October according to Uretsky himself.
As for Sanders being a master politician I think this whole incident made him campaign look inept. They changed their story more than once on Friday. The DNC was calling for an independent audit and part of the agreement for the Sanders campaign to get their data back was finally agreeing to that.
By the way the Clinton campaign was not a party to the agreement. The agreement was between the DNC the Sanders campaign.
Don’t get me wrong It didn’t bath the DNC in glory either though because they overreacted by shutting the Sanders campaign out their own data.
As for NGP-Van giving the Clinton campaign the logs of what data of theirs had been viewed that is standard operating procedure. They had every right to know exactly what data of theirs had been breached.
Finally the DNC working with NGP Van predates the Clinton 2008 campaign by 11 years.
Josh didn’t retract anything, he clarified it was a different NGP-VAN application running on the same NGP-VAN database. What part of monopoly don’t you understand?
If the DNC was so hot for an investigation, why is Debbie resisting that investigation now?
Maybe inside the Clinton Machine it is standard operating procedure for NGP-VAN to leak to Hillary (not the DNC) the log information while denying that same information to the Sanders campaign while they were still trying to figure out just what had happened. That delay looks like straight up ratfuck to me.
You are right that the Clinton Machine predates Hillary’s 2008 campaign by 11 years. Bill Clinton, founder of that machine, with his DLC and Republican-lite ideas that did hurt and continues to hurt a lot of people, something Bill admits. The survival of that machine is directly responsible for the loss of both houses of congress. The defeat of that machine is critical for the survival of the Democratic Party.