It also almost certainly was not the right thing to do, when the few staff of Bernie's apparently may have taken advantage (accidentally or intentionally, unclear) of the latest firewall outage at NGP VAN to view data apparently belonging to the Hillary campaign. Our understanding is that those few individuals have been questioned and fired, presumably for unethical behavior and unauthorized data access. I'm quite certain it won't ever happen again, rest assured. It's important to note that this never COULD have happened had the vendor NGP VAN's firewall(s) not gone down repeatedly and had the vendor had their relational database secured to known data-security standards. Since the contractual agreement for Bernie's campaign's use of the data in question is with the DNC, and apparently not with NGP VAN directly, it also is the DNC's responsibility to ensure that their data vendor follows known and well-accepted protocols and procedures for data security. Neither Bernie nor his campaign staff can be faulted, legally or otherwise, for a system that they pay the DNC handsomely for each month, and then DNC presumably pays NGP VAN monthly or annually in an IT Services Contract between the DNC and NGP VAN for storing, maintaining, and SECURING data owned by the DNC.
Another interesting aspect of this story is that the DNC, and Hillary's campaign, despite clamoring about "damages" from having their data supposedly accessed by unauthorized persons inside the Bernie campaign, have not filed any type of legal complaint or countersuit in response to Bernie's campaign lawsuit filed in DC Federal Court on Friday, December 18, 2015. One would think that if the DNC and/or Hillary campaign had indeed suffered "damages", as they seem to be claiming, that either or both parties would sue or countersue Bernie's campaign, right? Standard legal response and strategy? Perhaps the DNC and Hillary campaign are refraining from filing suit or countersuit in order to avoid bad publicity, or, as I actually suspect, to avoid any lawsuit requiring and initiating formal legal discovery on both or all sides of the lawsuit (plaintiff(s) and defendant(s)). A legal discovery process would presumably reveal countless interesting tidbits of information, such as, but not limited to, email communications between the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schulz, and Hillary Clinton and/or her campaign staff, direct phone calls between the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schulz, and Hillary Clinton and staff, stored voicemails, SMS messages (texts) between various parties, including communications between NGP VAN, the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schulz, and Hillary Clinton and/or her staff members.
There seems to be a remarkably suspicious "triangle of collaboration" between the DNC/Debbie Wasserman Schulz, Hillary Clinton and staff, and NGP VAN executives, CEO, Stu Trevelyan, and Vice President, Aharon Wasserman (who, despite rumors to the contrary, apparently is not related to Debbie Wasserman Schulz in any way).
Stu Trevelyan has worked in the past directly for former President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore in their campaigns, as well as for Bill Clinton in the White House, and has supposedly contributed very large sums of money to Hillary's 2008 and 2016 presidential campaign, as well as apparently sponsoring or paying for her campaign bus, upon which NGP VAN's name and logo can clearly be seen in multiple available photographs. So, is this some form of nepotism gone awry? This seems more than just sheer coincidence.
Consequently, if we look at the way in which Bernie and his campaign have, in our opinion, been unfairly treated by the DNC, we may see that the DNC via Debbie Wasserman Schulz has blatantly favored Hillary and her campaign in at least the following ways, if not more:
Authoritarian decision by DNC Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schulz, apparently with no discussion or consultation with her DNC vice-chairs or other DNC members, set a Democratic presidential candidate debate schedule including only 6 debates, when in 2008 there were ell over 20 Democratic presidential candidate debates approved or allowed the DNC (under former DNC Chairman Howard Dean), with additional suspicious decisions about Ms. Wasserman Schulz scheduling the televised debates to take place at odd and inconvenient dates and times, coinciding with major sports/football games, etc. DNC vice chair, Ms. Tulsi Gabbard, was quite vocal about what she felt were poor and authoritarian decisions by Ms. Wasserman Schulz on limiting the total number of debates to only 6, and at strange dates and times, in some apparent effort to favor Hillary, who historically, in 2008, did not fare well in debates against then rival presidential candidate Barack Obama.
The DNC finance chief has evidently organized and attended Hillary Clinton campaign-fundraising events, which is strictly against internal DNC rules and by-laws. His boss, Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schulz, has apparently refused to reprimand or question him in any way whatsoever for these actions known to her.
Debbie Wasserman Schulz was the campaign manager for Hillary during her 2007/8 run for President, and the fact that she is currently Chairwoman of the DNC, who is supposed to treat all Democratic Party presidential candidates equally and fairly, with no favoritism, at least until after the nomination of course, and seems to be acting as Hillary's "proxy" campaign manager, is all VERY suspicious, and seems to most of us to be a clear conflict of interest, and possibly egregious breach of Democratic Party rules and ethics.
The aforementioned DNC-gate scandal, where there seems to be suspicious collusion between Debbie Wasserman Schulz, Hillary Clinton and her campaign staff, and NGP VAN executives, in how they have been handling Bernie Sanders' campaign data, and shutting off Bernie's campaign staff's access to his data, without adhering to the 10-day written notice-to-repair period supposedly required by the legally binding contractual-services agreement between the DNC and Bernie Sanders' campaign. A technical overview of the problem from NGP VAN CEO, Stu Trevelyan, is available here: http://blog.ngpvan.com/data-security-and-privacy.
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