What the DNC Data Breach Means for Sanders' Campaign

A Bernie Sanders campaign staffer was fired on Wednesday after allegedly accessing data from the Hillary Clinton campaign, and it has created quite a problem for the Sanders campaign.

Now, it has come to light that the Sanders staffer may have downloaded and exported the Clinton campaign's data, and it may have been more than one Sanders staffer that accessed the information, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said today.

The situation has turned into a he-said-she-said debate of what happened, but here’s a breakdown of what we know so far about the DNC voter database breach:

What Kind of Information Was Accessed by the Sanders Staffer

In the database provided by the DNC, campaigns have access to basic voter ID information: name, phone number and address of a Democratic voter.

The campaigns then add details such as how likely someone is to vote for their candidate or vote at all. So the Sanders and Clinton camps could have two different voter profiles for the same voter.

In this instance, the Sanders campaign could have seen what information the other campaign might have collected on someone -- potentially valuable information for a rival campaign.

If the Clinton campaign has marked someone as a surefire Clinton supporter, then the Sanders campaign wouldn’t bother with that voter. But if the Clinton campaign marked them as "on the fence” and interested in “college tuition,” for example, or a Sanders donor, then the Sanders campaign would want to try really hard to get that person to the polls.

What the Sanders Campaign Is Saying

Michael Briggs, communications director for Sanders campaign, blamed the incident on the software vendor used by the Democratic National Committee.

"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. Our campaign months ago alerted the DNC to the fact that campaign data was being made available to other campaigns. At that time our campaign did not run to the media, relying instead on assurances from the vendor," Briggs said.

"Unfortunately, [on Wednesday], the vendor once again dropped the firewall between the campaigns for some data. After discussion with the DNC it became clear that one of our staffers accessed some modeling data from another campaign. That behavior is unacceptable and that staffer was immediately fired," Briggs said.

"We are as interested as anyone in making sure that the software flaws are corrected since mistakes by the DNC’s vendor also have made our records vulnerable. We are working with the DNC and the vendor and hope that this kind of lapse will not occur again," he added.

What the Sanders Staffer Is Saying

ABC News spoke to Josh Uretsky, the Sanders campaign staffer who was fired after viewing Clinton campaign data.

Uretsky said he was trying to investigate the data issue, to see what information was vulnerable on their end, so he could adequately report it to the software company. He said his team did not export any data. He said he intentionally left a record of what he was doing in the system and did not try to hide his actions.

“The breach was in no way our fault. I saw it and attempted to investigate and attempted to do it in a transparent manner,” he said. “To my knowledge, we did not take anything out of the system it was in and did not gain anything out of it. We saw a security breach and we tried to assess it and understand it.”

When asked why he did not simply raise his hand immediately and poked around in the system at all, he emphasized he was intentionally being "transparent."

"You see something, you investigate it first. ... I knew full well that I was creating a record that the administrators could see," Uretsky said.

Uretsky said he had been with the campaign for three months. He said he is leaving Burlington, Vermont, immediately and returning to his home in Philadelphia later today.

What the DNC Is Saying

"The DNC was notified on Wednesday by its data systems vendor NGP VAN that as a result of a software patch, all users on the system across Democratic campaigns were inadvertently able to access some data belonging to other campaigns for a brief window,” Communications Director for the Democratic National Committee Luis Miranda told ABC News in a statement.

“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.”

Wasserman Schultz, D-Florida, said Friday she was troubled by the Sanders campaign taking advantage of the software glitch to access the Clinton campaign’s voter data.

“It was a temporary glitch through a software patch that opened this window. The troubling thing is that one campaign took advantage of the opening of that window, and accessed the information of the other,” she said in an interview off the House floor.

“We want to make sure we’re not just taking our vendor’s word for it or the Sanders’ campaign,” she said.

Wasserman Schultz said she has confidence in the integrity of the DNC’s data system after the episode.

Wasserman Schultz also told MSNBC on Friday that the “Sanders campaign not only viewed the Clinton campaign's proprietary data, but from what we're being told, downloaded it, exported it and downloaded it. we have a variety of back-and-forth."

She also said they learned about the breach not from the Sanders campaign, but from the vendor and that “more than one” Sanders staffer had access to the information.

What DNC critics are saying:

A former senior Democratic Party staffer who works specifically in data and tech, told ABC News on the record: “The data breach was 100 percent NGP Van’s fault” and argued that the Sanders campaign “has a strong leg to stand on” in arguing that their access to the main voter files be reinstated.

“I’d be saying, ‘your vendor made a mistake, your tool was broken, don’t blame us,’” the former senior party staffer said.

A petition on moveon.org , which has gathered over 100,000 signatures, is demanding that Wasserman Schultz reinstate Sanders’s access to the voter file.

What NGP VAN is saying:

In a statement obtained by ABC News, Stu Trevelyan, CEO of NGP VAN says in the company’s 19 year history they have not had a problem with security and privacy of their customers’ data as it is their ‘top priority’.

“The one area that was impacted was voter file data. We are confident at this point that no campaigns have access to or have retained any voter file data of any other clients; with one possible exception, one of the presidential campaigns. NGP VAN is providing a thorough report to the DNC on what happened and conducting a review to ensure the integrity of the system.

We immediately began an audit to determine if any users had intentionally or unintentionally gained access to data they normally would not have access to. And determined that only one campaign took actions that could possibly have led to it retaining data to which it should not have had access.”

The statement concluded that at the request of the DNC Thursday, Sanders campaign access was suspended, and emphasized that the technology company played no role in making that decision, and ‘contractually’ could not.

What the Clinton Campaign Is Saying

The Clinton campaign didn’t offer any comment.

How It Could Affect the Sanders Campaign

A spokesman for Sanders said the DNC has suspended the Sanders campaign's party voter data -- a penalization that could affect the presidential hopeful’s field organizing and campaigning efforts six weeks before the first primary votes are cast in the Iowa caucuses.

What Happens Now

The DNC has ordered NGP VAN -- the technology company -- to conduct an audit.

“We have also instructed NGP VAN to conduct a full audit of the system to ensure the integrity of the data and the security of the system for the campaigns that use it, and to begin a review process with every campaign and user to ensure they understand and abide by the rules governing the use of the system,” Miranda told ABC News in a statement.

The DNC may also order an independent audit by a data security firm, in addition to the audit that NGP VAN is conducting, according to a Democratic official.

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