Data Breach investigation concluded: reporting clear as mud

The law suit is apparently dropped, but both sides still appear to be casting what transpired differently.

From The Hill:

The Sanders team said the investigation vindicated them and showed no evidence that they improperly accessed information belonging to Hillary Clinton's campaign.

"An independent investigation of the firewall failures in the DNC’s shared voter file database has definitively confirmed that the original claims by the DNC and the Clinton campaign were wholly inaccurate," the campaign said in a statement.

"The Sanders campaign never 'stole' any voter file data; the Sanders campaign never 'exported' any unauthorized voter file data; and the Sanders campaign certainly never had access to the Clinton campaign’s 'strategic road map.'

But then it says the Hillary people say they were correct all along, too, and it (nearly) ends with this:

Both sides acknowledge that one summary sheet with data related to New Hampshire appeared to have been saved off-site, but the Sanders campaign argued that the file did not exist on their computers and was never seen by any Sanders staffer.

Hmmm - I'm not sure I know anything more than I did before I read that.

The Wall Street Journal appears to have fewer column inches on the story and only this bit of information beyond what was told by The Hill:

In a statement released Friday, the Sanders campaign accused both the DNC and the Clinton campaign of making “wholly inaccurate” statements in December about the breach based on the results of the independent investigation. The campaign said it never had access to proprietary data on voters that the Clinton campaign was targeting, only some “scores” showing the likelihood that a voter would support the Clinton campaign.

When in doubt, go to the source:
PRESS RELEASE
Independent Investigation Confirms Sanders Campaign Told the Truth

APRIL 29, 2016

BURLINGTON, Vt. – Four months ago, in an impulsive overreaction and at a critical point in the campaign just weeks before the closest Iowa caucus results in history, the DNC shut down the Sanders campaign’s access to its own voter file data, only restoring access after the campaign filed a lawsuit in Federal court.

Now, four months later, an independent investigation of the firewall failures in the DNC’s shared voter file database has definitively confirmed that the original claims by the DNC and the Clinton campaign were wholly inaccurate – the Sanders campaign never “stole” any voter file data; the Sanders campaign never “exported” any unauthorized voter file data; and the Sanders campaign certainly never had access to the Clinton campaign’s “strategic road map.”

In fact, the independent investigation has confirmed what the Sanders campaign said from the start:

The DNC’s security failures allowed four Sanders campaign staffers – three junior-level staffers led by a manager who had been hired at the recommendation of the DNC and who was immediately terminated after the incident – to have extremely short-lived access for one hour to Hillary for America’s scoring models, but not to any of Hillary for America’s proprietary voter data.

No one else in the Sanders campaign, outside these four staffers, accessed the Hillary for America’s scoring models or had knowledge that the activity was taking place until well after the incident was over.

With one exception, all unauthorized access took place within the DNC’s own system. While there is evidence that the terminated staffer may have exported a summary data table, the independent investigation of Sanders campaign computers could not locate that file and no one in the Sanders campaign has ever seen that file.

With the investigation behind us, the campaign has withdrawn its lawsuit against the DNC today but continues to implore the DNC to address the systemic instability that remains in its voter file system. It is imperative that the DNC make it a top priority to prevent future data security failures in the voter file system, failures that only serve as unnecessary distractions to the democratic process.

Bernie Sanders Campaign Manager Jeff Weaver said “We are gratified by the results of this independent investigation.”

So, no reporting has any comment on whether the DNC has, in fact, been able to beef up security in the VAN system.

There's a Wreck List piece at TOP with a lot of hot air about the significance of all this -I'm not finding much, however. YMMV.

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detroitmechworks's picture

That Hillary wants to dredge up stuff again she couldn't smear Bernie with before. Clinton never lets a good slight go, and will hold it against Bernie even though it was her team that cooked it up in the first place.

Course, nobody is allowed to ever hold her past against her, but then, she's a sexist, lying, hypocritical bigot.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

lunachickie's picture

--and keep in mind this is my take now, and has always been my take on this--the Sanders campaign had to have demonstrated that access to that database was done by database users with incorrectly-setup user logins. Such users had been granted "read" or "read/write access" to Hillary records in the DNC database they should not have had.

What they probably didn't pursue (or did and couldn't prove without continuing the lawsuit) was that kind of access worked for Hillary people, too. And someone had access to Bernie records that they should not have had access to, because of incorrectly-setup users and their user rights.

Isn't it funny that calling Dems in Indiana to tell them that Sanders dropped out of the primary started happening around the time this lawsuit business was finally settled? Funny how that happens...

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Citizen Of Earth's picture

glitch to the Database manager months earlier -- and he did nothing to fix it. So this was the sanders team way of forcing them to fix the 'backdoor' so Clinton could not get to their data. And the Database manager is an old Clinton Crime Family associate, so this "investigation" is about as valuable as used toilet paper.

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Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.

MsGrin's picture

Only you meant 'they' (the DNC) did nothing to fix it - which is why the Sanders folks looked to see what the breach allowed since they believed their information was being stolen.

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'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

Citizen Of Earth's picture

And it was a damn shame that Bernie had to fire his IT guy b/c he only accessed the Clinton file to demonstrate the security glitch was real and forcing the DNC to fix the damn thing.

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Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.

mjsmeme's picture

wonder where he went after he was let go?

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has dropped out is right out of Ted Cruz' playbook (told caucus goers that Carson had dropped out). Perfect!! Clinton is now stealing her nasty crap from the nasty crap king!! Proves she's still a Repuke, as voter suppression is their specialty.

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