Clinton must choose how to address data breach in Dem debate

The DNC suspended Sanders’ access to the party’s voter database after four of the Vermont senator’s staffers accessed data belonging to rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

On the eve of the party’s next presidential debate, it also thrust into the open longstanding suspicions among Sanders and his supporters that the national party is unfairly working to support Clinton’s candidacy. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley will square-off Saturday in a prime time debate sponsored by ABC News in Partnership with the New Hampshire Union Leader.

In the first debate of the Democratic presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders dismissed concerns about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account and server while she was secretary of state. “Sanders’ data. The information we provided tonight is essentially the same information we already sent them by email on Thursday”, said Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ campaign manager.

Early Saturday, the DNC said the Sanders campaign had complied with its information request. Sander’s campaign acknowledged the breach, but swiftly moved to sue in federal court and launched a media blitz opposing the DNC’s decision.

“We need our data, which has been stolen by the DNC”.

The incident set off a powder keg of resentment from Bernie Sanders and liberal Democrats toward the party’s establishment with a barrage of accusations and insults.

The database includes information such as demographic and geographic data for registered voters and voter history and is vital to the Sanders campaign because it “has been financed primarily with contributions from individual donors rather than Political Action Committees”, the suit says.

DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz defended the punishment against Sanders in a CNN interview, saying his campaign had acted in an “inappropriate, unacceptable” manner and had downloaded the information. “We believe this audit should proceed immediately, and, pending its findings, we expect further disciplinary action to be taken as appropriate”. Sanders’ marketing crusade cried foul on Friday., calling the suspension of its access to voter knowledge “a death sentence” in that may value it $600,000 a day in lost donations.

Josh Uretsky, the Sanders campaign staffer fired for accessing the voter file, told MSNBC that his intent was to document and understand the scope of the problem so it could be reported.

Firewalls are put in place to prevent campaigns from looking at data maintained by their rivals. The Sanders campaign responded by accusing the DNC, which plays the referee in presidential primaries, of favoring Clinton’s campaign.

Weaver argued the firewall used by the vendor had previously failed, and he railed against the party for not taking the steps required to keep the information secure. The Sanders digital director has since been fired by the campaign.

Some of these voter lists were saved into a folder named “Targets”, according to the logs.

“This is information that we have worked hard to obtain”, he said.

The Sanders campaign employees who accessed the Clinton voter information without authorization appear to have run afoul of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, said Jason Weinstein, a former supervisor of the Justice Department’s computer crimes section.