I strongly disagree. Very strongly.

Bingo. The nature of intelligence gathering is to behave like a vacuum, gathering in mass rather than discreetly. The goal is to present as comprehensive and accurate a picture of the target as possible (whatever that may happen to be at any given time). The only limitation is in the ability to process, store, analyze, and comprehend the pieces to construct a whole. The answer to who did it and what were they after is “a large, sophisticated intelligence net”, and “everything and anything”. One email between two principles established a relationship. Every single email from Obama or one of his aids tells a lot even if only the header (i.e. from, to, date/time, and IP address) was available. It’s the same goal that NSA has, and why signal gathering and analysis on a volume scale is so successful. 1000 intrusions to small, inconsequential databases and data stores of federal, state, and local entities can be as valuable and the one big hit at Los Alamos, or other secure installations, given that the resources and IT apps and infrastructure is available to process the data.

From a Counter Intel perspective, the invasion tells a lot about the invader, maybe more than the invader might learn from the specific intrusion. It means that the source has vast resources invested in ELINT, HAS the resources to process and make sense of that volume of data, and has the will to penetrate official US systems “dirty”, leaving footprints all over the furniture on the way out.

People like me then take a list of identified friendly (however, even though their answers say they agree some are too stupid to know they are supposed to vote for our party) voters and sit next to the poll workers. When voters on my list come to vote I cross them off of the list and at about 4:00-5:00 I take that list to a phone bank and those people not crossed off the list get a reminder to vote call. People in the know claim a good GOTV operation means a 5% difference (working on recall here) in results.

I am not there to corrupt the system, harass or challenge voter validity, I am there to make sure friendly voters vote.

I am still not convinced the GOTV database (i.e. Houdini, fyi, Houdini was born in the town near my residence which for the first time in 91 years is going to be represented by a dem) is of much worth to foreign enemies, most of those people are schmoes who picked up the phone at 1:38 pm on a Sunday afternoon and answered three-four questions. However, your supposition, about human network mapping Wretchard, would apply much more to contributor databases and especially VOLUNTEER databases.

As you all can probably tell “Marcus Aurelius” (actually my given name) is in a couple campaign volunteer databases, and as a little treat one spring I was allowed to drive (very very cool) in a Presidential Motorcade when President Bush visited our city sometime ago, I suppose national enemies might be able to use that data to compromise motorcade security.

The simplest explanation is that it was the Chinese or the Russians. Both have very large and well known cyberwarfare arms, including posting brigades. You will recall the large number of “posters” on this site during the Georgian War, and the large number of “Obama” respondents when I ran an informal poll during a debate.

The campaign database would be important because it can provide a “human map” of access to Obama, a database of social networking within the White House circle. The Russians or the Chinese will be looking for access to intel, influence, etc. They will work on who knows who guided by the knowledge of which persons are political more influential than others. Then they’ll look for people with big gambling debts, in danger of bankruptcy or who have deviances that would be a political liability. A map of connections is not something that you or I may know. Insiders know it, but if the Chinese or the Russians can construct a social networking map from what they get, they’ll be virtual doyens of Georgetown.