A staffer on the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign has been fired over improperly accessing Hillary Clinton's voter data made possible by a software glitch in the Democratic National Committee's system. Although the Sanders camp took action against the staffer, the DNC has suspended the campaign from accessing the database, reports CNN.
“After discussion with the DNC it became clear that one of our staffers accessed some modeling data from another campaign," Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said in a statement, reported the New York Times. "That behavior is unacceptable and that staffer was immediately fired."
The disciplinary measures the DNC took in suspending the Sanders campaign is considered a serious setback because the valuable information about voters helps campaigns in strategic decision-making in campaigns, especially at the national level.
"The DNC places a high priority on maintaining the security of our system and protecting the data on it. We are working with our campaigns and the vendor to have full clarity on the extent of the breach," said DNC communications director Luis Miranda, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The Sanders campaign, however, says the company who runs the database has been known to make errors.
“Sadly, the vendor who runs the DNC’s voter file program continues to make serious errors. On more than one occasion, the vendor has dropped the firewall between the data of different Democratic campaigns,” said Briggs. “We are working with the DNC and the vendor and hope that this kind of lapse will not occur again.”
For its part, the DNC said it directed the company responsible for the database to investigate the matter further.
“The DNC immediately directed NGP VAN to conduct a thorough analysis to identify any users who accessed the data, what actions they took in the system, and to report on the findings to the Party and any affected campaign,” said Miranda, ABC reported.
