Earlier this morning the Mike Honda For Congress Campaign filed a civil lawsuit against Ro Khanna For Congress, Inc. and Brian Parvizshahi, Ro Khanna’s Campaign Manager. The Honda campaign is accusing Brian Parvizshahi of violating the Federal Economic Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for illegally accessing the Honda campaign’s proprietary data and email lists. Ro Khanna has also been named as a conspirator under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
In what could be the biggest data breach by one candidate against another since Watergate the Honda campaign handed out court filings that appeared to show Parvizshahi’s electronic “fingerprints” in accessing Rep Honda’s data. The data not only included the typical information on donors: names, home addresses, occupation, employer and amounts given, but also years of notes made by the Honda campaign, phone numbers and personal email addresses. Their evidence appears to show Parvizshahi and Khanna used their personal email accounts and information gathered from the stolen data to contact and possibly harass known supporters of Rep. Honda.
At the press conference it was pointed out by Honda’s campaign manager Michael Beckendorf, that for every one of the dozens that reached out to the Honda campaign to complain about the unsolicited contact, there are probably 50 or 100 that didn’t. Just one of the lists accessed contained over 1000 people. The breach appears to have begun in 2013 and continued into this election.
Email lists have monetary values to campaigns and just those alone could be worth thousands of dollars. But the personal information collected over years by campaigns is invaluable in maintaining relationships with supporters.
According to the Honda campaign, Parvizshahi interned briefly for the Arum Group fundraising consultants hired by the Honda campaign. Yet despite signing a non-disclosure agreement with Arum he continued to access Honda’s data even after going to work for Khanna’s campaign last election. He was promoted to campaign manager for the 2016 election and it appears he and Ro Khanna used the data to contact Honda supporters using their private gmail accounts.
UPDATE: Brian Parvizshahi has resigned from the Ro Khanna campaign.
Link to Honda campaign’s lawsuit.
Editors Note:
I believe my email address was stolen by the Khanna campaign twice and thus filed an FEC complaint in May. Since then, I have been doing my own investigation independent of the Honda campaign’s that include witnesses willing to go public. I hope to report on it soon and believe the Khanna campaign’s use of software designed by the campaign chair, Steven Spinner, adds another layer to the invasion of privacy above. I also believe those affected are more wide spread than those listed in Honda’s data.
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