This debacle reflects so badly on the DNC and their (apparently) amateur-hour database service provider, that Clinton (and the DNC) should want this scandal to disappear as quickly as possible.
The important thing here is to now allow it to become a circus sideshow. Get it over with quickly to the satisfaction of both sides. Even though it's backpedaling, it's the right move. It would have been better to have dealt with it directly between the parties and DNC and let the media find out "we're acting like adults. " Instead, Hillary tried to get some milage and it's about to blow up in her face.
Kenneth Rothey You mean the legacy of welfare deform, financializing the economy, a disastrous healthcare plan, the overturning of Glass-Steagall, the deregulation of communications, NAFTA and the other AFTAs, and the invasion of Bosnia? Good luck spoiling that barrel of rotten apples.
Jeanne Hannigan I'm sure Clinton and the DNC would like this to be over. But I think the incident reflects more on the lax ethics of the Sanders Campaign, which reflects the quasi-religious, hyper-tribal win-at-any-cost ends-justify-the-means behavior of many of his followers.
Brandon Mouser You are confused. I think Sanders is as fine a human being as I have ever seen in public office, bar none, and he states positions that I almost entirely agree with -- more than I agree with Hillary. His only flaw (and in hindsight it is a serious one) is that he can instill his followers with his intensity and passion, but so sadly, not his integrity.
For example, while Bernie won't (at least not yet) do attack ads, some of his followers attack incessantly. While Bernie says that Hillary is infinitely better than any republican candidate, some of his followers sign juvenile "Bernie or Bust" pledges, or "loyalty" pledges.
So indeed, some of his followers are exactly as I described them. They are afflicted with a messianic fervor that hurts Sanders' cause more than it helps.
This is not tribalism on my part, and for you to say that strongly suggests that you don't actually know what the word means.
Brandon Mouser It's funny -- I actually didn't like Hillary much, either, for a long time -- I was a "hold my nose and vote" person. But the behavior of the extreme anti-Clinton-pro-Sanders supporters, jumping up and down throwing any excrement they can find, regardless of source, has been changing my mind, and Hillary is starting to look a lot better.
The bottom line is that the republican party is dangerously out of touch with reality; both Hillary and Bernie are infinitely better, and I would vote for either of them, and I am following both of them. But Hillary is starting to look better, and Bernie worse, for reasons I would be happy to discuss, but probably not here.
Kent Crispin I have read that the Sanders campaign notified the software vendor, NGP VAN, of concerns about the security a month or more ago. Rather than raising a public stink about their less-than-professional standards, Sanders' campaign notified them directly (and possibly the DNC). Clearly NGP VAN did not address those concerns and failed to make fixes necessary to protect security when applying patches. I am not knowledgeable about the technical aspects, but two of my sons are. They both said that it was unacceptable to drop firewalls while updating software (applying patches), and that there were ways to address and prevent this type of breach (or leaving doors or windows open). So, rather than blaming Sanders' campaign, I think the blame rests on the DNC, and on their amateur-hour software vendor. Is anyone asking if other campaigns may have noticed and exploited this, or previous, opportunities? And, Kent, remember that Sanders' campaign immediately dismissed the staffer who went exploring.
Jeanne Hannigan In all honesty, I could have predicted that you would blame the DNC :-)
But the facts are actually pretty clear. Apparently several medial outlets (I know, I know, you will say it's the obviously corrupt media in Hillary's pocket, or the other way around) have seen the database audits, and they show the Sanders campaign staffer doing specific searches for data that would be obviously useful to the Sanders campaign, and downloading that data into his personal account. That is not innocent behavior. If you just wanted to demonstrate there was a vulnerability you could have done innocuous searches that would yield data that would not be so damning.
It is more reasonable to think that the guy had reported a problem previously, saw no action taken, and then decided that they weren't paying attention. Personally I think he planned it, knowing the vulnerabilities existed. Those kind of specific directed queries take time to think up, and he only had 40 minutes to come up with them and do a bunch of other stuff to save the data in his own account. He probably planned to claim that he was "just investigating", if he happened to get caught. It was an incredibly stupid thing to do, and did tremendous damage to the credibility of the Sanders campaign.
The fact that Sanders fired him immediately is very telling. Sanders knew right off that bad stuff had happened.
It might have been an overreaction for the DNC to close off all access, but not by much. I've been involved in serious security breaches before -- shutting things down is the obviously correct thing to do. Also, I found a link to the announcement from the DNC, and it explicitly said the closure was temporary while they fixed things, and that access would be restored quickly. I believe the announcement was before the Sanders campaign went ballistic with the threatened lawsuit.
There's been a lot of stuff about how the event actually was a victory for Sanders because of the 400000 signatures on a petition. But the DNC just did what it was going to do anyway, Clinton got to look magnanimous by saying access should be restored, and the Sanders campaign is in chaos and has to reorganize quickly. That staffer caused it a lot of damage.
Kent Crispin Of course the staffer had to be terminated since he's committed an illegal act in the course of his duties. And, yes, he and probably thousands of Sanders supporters are ardent and passionate in their efforts on Sanders' behalf. And, yes, probably many of them would push boundaries doing what they believe will benefit Sanders, even if their actions will have negative impacts. I did not mean to imply that the DNC orchestrated the entire debacle and engineered the scandal. What I meant was that their use of a clearly inept vendor/contractor to manage this database is their responsibility. Payment of NGP VAN's fees ought to be suspended until the flaws are corrected, especially since the flaws were made known to them and they failed to address them. Probably they ought to be terminated as well, but that is not as easily done.
This debacle reflects so badly on the DNC and their (apparently) amateur-hour database service provider, that Clinton (and the DNC) should want this scandal to disappear as quickly as possible.
ReplyDeleteThe important thing here is to now allow it to become a circus sideshow. Get it over with quickly to the satisfaction of both sides. Even though it's backpedaling, it's the right move. It would have been better to have dealt with it directly between the parties and DNC and let the media find out "we're acting like adults. " Instead, Hillary tried to get some milage and it's about to blow up in her face.
ReplyDeleteKenneth Rothey You mean the legacy of welfare deform, financializing the economy, a disastrous healthcare plan, the overturning of Glass-Steagall, the deregulation of communications, NAFTA and the other AFTAs, and the invasion of Bosnia? Good luck spoiling that barrel of rotten apples.
ReplyDeleteJeanne Hannigan I'm sure Clinton and the DNC would like this to be over. But I think the incident reflects more on the lax ethics of the Sanders Campaign, which reflects the quasi-religious, hyper-tribal win-at-any-cost ends-justify-the-means behavior of many of his followers.
ReplyDeleteKent Crispin Bullshit. This was engineered by the DNC
ReplyDeleteBrandon Mouser You are confused. I think Sanders is as fine a human being as I have ever seen in public office, bar none, and he states positions that I almost entirely agree with -- more than I agree with Hillary. His only flaw (and in hindsight it is a serious one) is that he can instill his followers with his intensity and passion, but so sadly, not his integrity.
ReplyDeleteFor example, while Bernie won't (at least not yet) do attack ads, some of his followers attack incessantly. While Bernie says that Hillary is infinitely better than any republican candidate, some of his followers sign juvenile "Bernie or Bust" pledges, or "loyalty" pledges.
So indeed, some of his followers are exactly as I described them. They are afflicted with a messianic fervor that hurts Sanders' cause more than it helps.
This is not tribalism on my part, and for you to say that strongly suggests that you don't actually know what the word means.
Brandon Mouser It's funny -- I actually didn't like Hillary much, either, for a long time -- I was a "hold my nose and vote" person. But the behavior of the extreme anti-Clinton-pro-Sanders supporters, jumping up and down throwing any excrement they can find, regardless of source, has been changing my mind, and Hillary is starting to look a lot better.
ReplyDeleteThe bottom line is that the republican party is dangerously out of touch with reality; both Hillary and Bernie are infinitely better, and I would vote for either of them, and I am following both of them. But Hillary is starting to look better, and Bernie worse, for reasons I would be happy to discuss, but probably not here.
Kent Crispin I have read that the Sanders campaign notified the software vendor, NGP VAN, of concerns about the security a month or more ago. Rather than raising a public stink about their less-than-professional standards, Sanders' campaign notified them directly (and possibly the DNC). Clearly NGP VAN did not address those concerns and failed to make fixes necessary to protect security when applying patches. I am not knowledgeable about the technical aspects, but two of my sons are. They both said that it was unacceptable to drop firewalls while updating software (applying patches), and that there were ways to address and prevent this type of breach (or leaving doors or windows open). So, rather than blaming Sanders' campaign, I think the blame rests on the DNC, and on their amateur-hour software vendor. Is anyone asking if other campaigns may have noticed and exploited this, or previous, opportunities? And, Kent, remember that Sanders' campaign immediately dismissed the staffer who went exploring.
ReplyDeleteJeanne Hannigan In all honesty, I could have predicted that you would blame the DNC :-)
ReplyDeleteBut the facts are actually pretty clear. Apparently several medial outlets (I know, I know, you will say it's the obviously corrupt media in Hillary's pocket, or the other way around) have seen the database audits, and they show the Sanders campaign staffer doing specific searches for data that would be obviously useful to the Sanders campaign, and downloading that data into his personal account. That is not innocent behavior. If you just wanted to demonstrate there was a vulnerability you could have done innocuous searches that would yield data that would not be so damning.
It is more reasonable to think that the guy had reported a problem previously, saw no action taken, and then decided that they weren't paying attention. Personally I think he planned it, knowing the vulnerabilities existed. Those kind of specific directed queries take time to think up, and he only had 40 minutes to come up with them and do a bunch of other stuff to save the data in his own account. He probably planned to claim that he was "just investigating", if he happened to get caught. It was an incredibly stupid thing to do, and did tremendous damage to the credibility of the Sanders campaign.
The fact that Sanders fired him immediately is very telling. Sanders knew right off that bad stuff had happened.
It might have been an overreaction for the DNC to close off all access, but not by much. I've been involved in serious security breaches before -- shutting things down is the obviously correct thing to do. Also, I found a link to the announcement from the DNC, and it explicitly said the closure was temporary while they fixed things, and that access would be restored quickly. I believe the announcement was before the Sanders campaign went ballistic with the threatened lawsuit.
There's been a lot of stuff about how the event actually was a victory for Sanders because of the 400000 signatures on a petition. But the DNC just did what it was going to do anyway, Clinton got to look magnanimous by saying access should be restored, and the Sanders campaign is in chaos and has to reorganize quickly. That staffer caused it a lot of damage.
Kent Crispin Of course the staffer had to be terminated since he's committed an illegal act in the course of his duties. And, yes, he and probably thousands of Sanders supporters are ardent and passionate in their efforts on Sanders' behalf. And, yes, probably many of them would push boundaries doing what they believe will benefit Sanders, even if their actions will have negative impacts. I did not mean to imply that the DNC orchestrated the entire debacle and engineered the scandal. What I meant was that their use of a clearly inept vendor/contractor to manage this database is their responsibility. Payment of NGP VAN's fees ought to be suspended until the flaws are corrected, especially since the flaws were made known to them and they failed to address them. Probably they ought to be terminated as well, but that is not as easily done.
ReplyDeleteBrandon Mouser Couldn't agree more! Progressive first Democrat second. Definitely haven't liked Clinton for a long time. Can't blame you there!
ReplyDelete