New Information Shows DNC Violated Its Own Rules When It Shut Down Sanders Campaign Data Access
Author:
Christian Drake December 19, 2015 9:16 am
The DNC appears to have been in such a rush to shut down Bernie Sanders’ campaign, that they violated a few of their own laws
according to a lawsuit filed by the campaign against the DNC.
The shutdown came about because of a DNC software security error that allowed one campaign to view another campaign’s proprietary voter data.
This is an error that had been reported to the DNC for months by the Sanders campaign but continued to occur. A few Sanders staffers allegedly accessed private data from the Hillary Clinton campaign during a period where the error had been occurring again, and when this was found the DNC immediately locked the Sanders campaign out of their data.
While no one is blameless in this mess, the DNC has handled things extremely poorly, and may have even broke their own guidelines. Here is where the DNC’s problems start. Notes in the lawsuit indicate the DNC violated some of its own rules in its haste to “fix” the problem of the data breach.
It stated that under a contract between the DNC and the Sanders campaign, pertaining to the data system’s use, formal notice in writing is required if either side believes the other has violated the rules on privacy. Additionally, each side is supposed to be allowed 10 days to address any concerns.
“The DNC may not suspend the Campaign’s access to critical Voter Data out of haste or desperation to clean up after the DNC’s own mistakes,” the suit says.
Source:
Washington Post
An agreement was reached the same day, very soon after the Sanders campaign announced they filed the lawsuit, for Bernie’s team to regain access to the data on the following morning. As of now, it seems like the massive publicity of this mess has resolved the issue of whether or not Bernie will be able to continue his presidential campaign.
What’s important to know is this: Whether you are for Bernie or Hillary, the fault ultimately is with the DNC and their chosen vendor for not resolving the issue when it was first reported. To make matters worse, the DNC rushed to apply a draconian punishment for the resulting breach. It’s also important to know that the DNC cut off Sanders from his own data, not just from a generic DNC list, essentially taking his campaign’s private data hostage.
The DNC wanted to have people held accountable for misconduct, and while that is fair, will they be applying the same level of punishment to their leadership for the mishandling of this whole fiasco?
