Stupid Questions: Bernie’s DNC Lockout

I am sure the DNC’s decision to mess with the Sanders Campaign once again will be part of the news of the day.

Officials with the Democratic National Committee have accused the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders of improperly accessing confidential voter information gathered by the rival campaign of Hillary Clinton, according to several party officials.

Some Stupid Questions:

• Sanders’ people have been inputting into the VAN system as part of the grassroots campaign by the tens of thousands. This may be an issue where the individuals who are gathering and creating the data for the campaign are being locked out of their own work product. Could the individuals sue the DNC?
• Even more sinister is the fact this data may be used against the Sanders campaign. What guarantees are there the Clinton Campaign, being directed by Wasserman-Shultz, is not also looking at the immense amount of data being put into the system by the Sanders people?
• The low-hanging fruit of this issue directly relates back to Hillary’s inability to set up an email server properly. There were no DNC flacks to stop other countries from snooping on the State Department email server and cut off access. Why on earth would the DNC be stupid enough to bring back the email server issue, even tangentially?
• Why is the Sanders Campaign being blamed for the lack of security on the part of the DNC?
• What personal information accessed by the staffer is confidential? (Donations made to campaigns residing in these datasets should be reported in the public record anyway.)
• Could this have been a setup? Could there have been a trap set by the DNC – once a particular query with keywords is generated a trigger executes to flag, “Someone is looking for Clinton data”?

Back in the 70’s, one of my computer teachers once said, “If a program can be taken down by a user, it deserves to be taken down.” You cannot blame a user (read – staffer or their organization) for the inability of a well-compensated contractor to properly defend the data it collects.

NGP Van needs to disregard the whining of the Clinton Campaign and turn the database access on immediately.