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koch data, ntbcw palantir team themis<div>--.> i360?
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</div><div><div></div><div>11/14 nb nudge your friends to vote is way diff than dark post micro-target psychometrics</div><div>
</div><div><p id="first-graph" class="inline-ad-para" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;">After the 2012 election, President Barack Obama's digital campaign director Teddy Goff <a href="http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/20/friended-how-the-obama-campaign-connected-with-young-voters/" class=" inline-paragraph-link" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">told Time magazine</a> that a tool allowing Obama for America to access the Facebook friends of its supporters "will wind up being the most groundbreaking piece of technology developed for this campaign." This is the final election year that technology will be available.<div class="crain-advertisement mobile-tablet adscount0" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-align: center;"><p class="inline-ad-para" style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;">At its F8 Developers Conference in April, Facebook introduced <a href="https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/changelog" class=" inline-paragraph-link" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">updates</a> to the feature allowing people to login to other websites using Facebook credentials. With those changes came the end of a tool that made it easy for political groups -- and any other app developer -- to tap into supporters' Facebook Friends lists.<p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;">The feature was used famously by the 2012 Obama campaign to help supporters readily connect with and contact their Facebook friends to remind them to vote. This election season the Republican National Committee, Democratic National Committee and the conservative Koch Brothers-affiliated group, Americans for Prosperity are using it to enable get-out-the-vote apps.<p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;">"It gets rid of one kind of grassroots outreach tool and one that was pretty handy to reach certain types of voters," said Colin Delany, a digital strategy consultant serving advocacy and political clients on the left. "It was good for reaching people on your voter list that you were having trouble finding through any other means, particularly people who are under 30, who move around a lot and have mobile phones."<p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;">"We made this change because we heard from people that they want more control over the information they give to apps," said a Facebook spokeswoman. "Previously, when people logged into apps with Facebook, the app received their friend list by default. With the new version of login, which we announced at F8 this April, people have the choice whether an app gets their friend list."<p class="inline-ad-para" style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;">Now, apps can only access information associated with an app user's friends if those friends have also explicitly agreed to share it with the same app. Apps that access friend lists according to Facebook's old rules will need to upgrade permissions by May 1, 2015.<div class="crain-advertisement mobile-tablet adscount2" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;">"Congratulations -- you have 4 friends in the top 10 Senate battleground states!" reads the DNC's Impact app after accessing a user's list of Facebook friends. Before downloading the app, people must approve collection of friend lists, in addition to their own Facebook profile data such as hometown and birthdate.<p class="inline-ad-para" style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;">The Americans for Prosperity app notifies users of progress as it filters through their Facebook friends and applies scores to each, intended to rate that person's likelihood to "support economic freedom" -- or vote Republican.<div class="crain-advertisement mobile-tablet adscount3" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><div id="ad-entity-I5jsr71DrXQ" class="ad-entity-container not-initialized in-scope" data-ad-entity="aa_lb_03_general_desktop" data-ad-entity-type="dfp" data-ad-entity-view="dfp_default" data-ad-entity-variant="[" desktop="desktop" narrow="narrow" data-ad-entity-targeting="{" pos="pos" lb_03="LB_03" guid="guid" author="author" kate-kaye="kate-kaye" aao_cat="aao_cat" campaign-trail="Campaign-Trail" digital="Digital" politics="Politics" social="Social" q="q" city="city" state="state" zip="zip" geo_country="geo_country" jobtitle="jobtitle" gender="gender" sales="sales" sic="sic" jobfunction="jobfunction" emp="emp" busind="busind" tier="tier" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 28px; padding: 21px 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row; -webkit-box-pack: center; justify-content: center; clear: both;"><div id="google-dfp-Hd_n7q-cgxs" class="google-dfp-ad dfp-default-view" data-dfp-network="105554924" data-dfp-unit="aao/campaign-trail/article" data-dfp-out-of-page="false" data-dfp-sizes="[[970,90],[970,250],[728,90]]" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;">The GOP's Voter to Voter app asks for permission to gather a supporter's public profile, email address, birthday, likes, friend list and friends' birthdays. "Thank you for pledging to vote in this year's elections! It looks like some of your friends would vote Republican. Select up to three friends that you will challenge to vote this year. Then share that you pledged to vote and your challenge to friends on Facebook now."<p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;">When it comes to determining who among someone's Facebook friends is likely to vote one way or another, these systems have varying degrees of success.<p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;">"It is a little creepy, but it's certainly data that people like me are interested in especially for [Get Out The Vote]," said Steve <a class="directory_entry inline-paragraph-link" href="http://lookbook.adage.com/Agencies/Olson" title="Ad Age LookBook" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">Olson</a>, senior strategist at progressive digital shop Trilogy Interactive, regarding the Facebook technology. The agency has built tools for Facebook that access friend lists. Facebook has "been hit so much over the last few years on privacy," he said, suggesting Facebook's decision to kill the feature is understandable.<p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;">American Crossroads, the conservative advocacy group backed by Karl Rove, no longer needs to tap Facebook friend data to enable its GOTV app, which was built by <a class="directory_entry inline-paragraph-link" href="http://lookbook.adage.com/Digital-Technology/Targeted-Victory" title="Ad Age LookBook" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">Targeted Victory</a>, the consulting and ad tech firm that ran digital operations for Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign. Rather than asking to retrieve Facebook friend lists, the system connects with voter data supplied by Data Trust, the firm that partners with the RNC to manage its data operations.<p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;">Kelly Nallen, digital director for American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, said Crossroads doesn't focus on list-building, so connecting to friend lists is not as important as having better integration with actual voter data through Data Trust. "It was certainly a great tool that Facebook had, and I'm sure a lot of people will be sad to see it go," she said.<p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;">"We're just using [Data Trust's] base voter file to try to speed up the process for people," said Michael Beach, co-founder of Targeted Victory.<p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;">NGP VAN, which operates the <a href="http://adage.com/article/campaign-trail/democratic-tech-gathering-hypes-data-unification-goal/294673/" class=" inline-paragraph-link" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">most pervasive tech platforms used by Democrats</a>, has developed new tools that should help political groups on the left circumvent the Facebook fallout. The firm's Recruiter technology, for instance, uses Democratic voter data to help organizations including Ready for Hillary make connections among supporters and predict their likelihood to donate or take other actions.<p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;">"Because we've developed all these other features of the Action Center like Recruiter and Social Fundraising, the Facebook API change won't impact NGP VAN or our clients in any critical way," said Stu Trevelyan, CEO and president of NGP VAN.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">=</div></div></div></div></div></div>919<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/republicans-hate-the-rncs-new-mandatory-shady-fundraising-tool-heres-who-profits-off-it/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/republicans-hate-the-rncs-new-mandatory-shady-fundraising-tool-heres-who-profits-off-it/</a>no lnx
Republicans hate the RNC’s new mandatory, shady fundraising tool. Here’s who profits off itWritten by Daily Kos Staff / Daily Kos September 15, 2019Thursday kicked off the House Republicans’ annual retreat, and featured a compulsory presentation on the GOP’s answer to ActBlue, the grassroots, small-donor platform that Democrats have been using for well over a decade. It did not go well at all, according to POLITICO. House Republicans openly argued with Trump/RNC political operatives over the Jared Kushner-pushed initiative.
The new tool is called WinRed, and it was initially released in June. To say that it is problem-plagued would be an understatement.  Suffice it to say that it is the antithesis of ActBlue—in more ways than one. Despite the obvious, that it’s a tool designed to help conservative candidates, the GOP’s new tool is: convoluted to use,for-profit (whereas ActBlue is nonprofit),secretive about plans for donors’ data,being forced upon candidates to use through “veiled threats”,and can take quite a large percentage of whatever donation is given.According to the Daily Kos’ own David Nir:
For starters, there’s the grifty fee structure: While ActBlue charges a flat 3.95% per contribution, WinRed takes a 3.8% cut plus 30 cents per transaction. That might not sound like a big difference, but it’s huge. On a $5 contribution, ActBlue will net 20 cents. WinRed, however, will take 49 cents, which in percentage terms is a giant 9.8%.
What’s more, on a contribution page that lists multiple campaigns, it sounds like WinRed will get 30 cents per donation. (From the site itself: “There is a 3.8% + 30 cents per transaction fee with each donation made.”) In other words, if you split $25 across five candidates, that’s a cool $2.45 for WinRed. ActBlue would take less than a buck.
But that’s not all.
WinRed has quite a few privacy and security concerns as well. Members of Congress ”can’t get straight answers about what’s going to happen with their data.” That’s not something donors want to hear. However, GOP lawmakers at the retreat seemed less concerned about their donors’ information ending up in criminal hands as they were worried that their primary opponent might scoop that info, since all the data goes to the RNC’s clearinghouse firm, Data Trust.
By the way, if you thought you heard of Data Trust before, it’s because their records were involved in that massive data leak in 2017, where the personal information of millions of people—including birthdates, cell numbers, and addresses—was exposed when it was accidentally put on a publicly accessible Amazon server.
Bottom line: WinRed sucks. The candidates don’t trust it. The donors don’t like using it. The only reason it’s being used is because everyone is being coerced, which is slightly ironic given how much lip service the GOP gives to their supposed belief in the free market.
Several GOP candidates have complained that that there was a competitor that actually did work, wasn’t secretive, and had lower fees. Give.GOP was gaining traction with a lot of candidates, but it’s parent company was recently given a cease and desist letter by the RNC, which forbade them from using any kind of GOP branding.
So the big question….. why would the RNC pick sides in a fight between for-profit competitors?
Since the RNC and the Trump 2020 campaign officially merged last year, Donald Trump has been calling the shots, and he made it clear that he wants everyone using WinRed. The platform is being forced upon the National Republican Senate Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee as well. Trump actually shilled for WinRed when it went live.Donald J. Trump?@realDonaldTrumpI am pleased to announce the launch of http://tmagac.winred.com . This new platform will allow my campaign and other Republicans to compete with the Democrats money machine. This has been a priority of mine and I’m pleased to share that it is up and running! #KeepAmericaGreatTrump Make America Great Again CommitteeSTAND WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP!
secure.winred.com
So, the short answer is that Trump wants it., and what Trump wants, Trump gets in his new GOP.But why does Trump want to force everyone to use such a crappy fundraising tool that no one likes?
Well …What Trump’s announcement did not mention was that the decision to use “WinRed” will potentially funnel millions of extra dollars to a firm owned by Gerrit Lansing, a former RNC staffer who left his White House job only three weeks into the administration after reportedly failing his FBI background screening.What’s more, about two-thirds of the total processing fee is used to pay Stripe, the credit-card processing company that saw a $30 million investment from Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital in 2014.Joshua Kushner is presidential son-in-law and White House aide Jared Kushner’s younger brother.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
See, that’s how it always works in Trumpland.
The victor is always the Trump family and their immediate friends.
—Rick Wilson, Republican political consultant
Duh.
Since 2004, ActBlue has brought in 3.5 billion dollars for progressive candidates. Just imagine the money to be made by Kushner the younger if WinRed manages to gain a foothold and get even a small percentage of that kind of success.
Everyday I learn about a new grift from this president. At least this one only hurts his supporters, for whom I have zero sympathy.
ref<a href="https://gizmodo.com/gop-data-firm-accidentally-leaks-personal-details-of-ne-1796211612">https://gizmodo.com/gop-data-firm-accidentally-leaks-personal-details-of-ne-1796211612</a>no lnx many docs
James Whitbrook2 hours ago
GOP Data Firm Accidentally Leaks Personal Details of Nearly 200 Million American Voters6/19/17 8:00AMFiled to:RNC DATA LEAKPolitical data gathered on more than 198 million US citizens was exposed this month after a marketing firm contracted by the Republican National Committee stored internal documents on a publicly accessible Amazon server.The data leak contains a wealth of personal information on roughly 61 percent of the US population. Along with home addresses, birthdates, and phone numbers, the records include advanced sentiment analyses used by political groups to predict where individual voters fall on hot-button issues such as gun ownership, stem cell research, and the right to abortion, as well as suspected religious affiliation and ethnicity. The data was amassed from a variety of sources—from the banned subreddit r/fatpeoplehate to American Crossroads, the super PAC co-founded by former White House strategist Karl Rove.
Deep Root Analytics, a conservative data firm that identifies audiences for political ads, confirmed ownership of the data to Gizmodo on Friday.
UpGuard cyber risk analyst Chris Vickery discovered Deep Root’s data online last week. More than a terabyte was stored on the cloud server without the protection of a password and could be accessed by anyone who found the URL. Many of the files did not originate at Deep Root, but are instead the aggregate of outside data firms and Republican super PACs, shedding light onto the increasingly advanced data ecosystem that helped propel President Donald Trump’s slim margins in key swing states.
Although files possessed by Deep Root would be typical in any campaign, Republican or Democratic, experts say its exposure in a single open database raises significant privacy concerns. “This is valuable for people who have nefarious purposes,” Joseph Lorenzo Hall, the chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said of the data.
“This is valuable for people who have nefarious purposes.”The RNC paid Deep Root $983,000 last year, according to Federal Election Commission reports, but its server contained records from a variety of other conservative sources paid millions more, including The Data Trust (also known as GOP Data Trust), the Republican party’s primary voter file provider. Data Trust received over $6.7 million from the RNC during the 2016 cycle, according to OpenSecrets.org, and its president, Johnny DeStefano, now serves as Trump’s director of presidential personnel.
The Koch brothers’ political group Americans for Prosperity, which had a data-swapping agreement with Data Trust during the 2016 election cycle, contributed heavily to the exposed files, as did the market research firm TargetPoint, whose co-founder previously served as director of Mitt Romney’s strategy team. (The Koch brothers also subsidized a data company known as i360, which began exchanging voter files with Data Trust in 2014.) Furthermore, the files provided by Rove’s American Crossroads contain strategic voter data used to target, among others, disaffected Democrats and undecideds in Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, and other key battleground states.
Deep Root further obtained hundreds of files (at least) from The Kantar Group, a leading media and market research company with offices in New York, Beijing, Moscow, and more than a hundred other cities on six continents. Each file offers rich details about political ads—estimated cost, audience demographics, reach, and more—by and about figures and groups spanning the political spectrum. There are files on the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Planned Parenthood, and the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as files on every 2016 presidential candidate, Republicans included.
What’s more, the Kantar files each contain video links to related political ads stored on Kantar’s servers.
Kantar files on political ads involving US officials, candidates, and political organizations. (UpGuard)Kantar files on political ads involving US officials, candidates, and political organizations. (UpGuard)Spreadsheets acquired from TargetPoint, which partnered with Deep Root and GOP Data Trust during the 2016 election, include the home addresses, birthdates, and party affiliations of nearly 200 million registered voters in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, as well as some 2016 voters. TargetPoint’s data seeks to resolve questions about where individual voters stand on dozens of political issues. For example: Is the voter eco-friendly? Do they favor lowering taxes? Do they believe the Democrats should stand up to Trump? Do they agree with Trump’s “America First” economic stance? Pharmaceutical companies do great damage: Agree or Disagree?
The details of voters’ likely preferences for issues like stem cell research and gun control were likely drawn from a variety of sources according to a Democratic strategist who spoke with Gizmodo.
“Data like that would be a combination of polling data, real world data from door-knocking and phone-calling and other canvassing activities, coupled with modeling using the data we already have to extrapolate what the voters we don’t know about would think,” the strategist said. “The campaigns that do it right combine all the available data together to make the most robust model for every single voter in the target universe.”
“We take full responsibility for this situation.”In a statement, Deep Root founder Alex Lundry told Gizmodo, “We take full responsibility for this situation.” He said the data included proprietary information as well as publicly available voter data provided by state government officials. “Since this event has come to our attention, we have updated the access settings and put protocols in place to prevent further access,” Lundry said.
Deep Root’s data was exposed after the company updated its security settings on June 1, Lundry said. Deep Root has retained Stroz Friedberg, a cybersecurity and digital forensics firm, to investigate. “Based on the information we have gathered thus far, we do not believe that our systems have been hacked,” Lundry added.
So far, Deep Root doesn’t believe its proprietary data was accessed by any malicious third parties during the 12 days that the data was exposed on the open web.
Deep Root’s server was discovered by UpGuard’s Vickery on the night of June 12 as he was searching for data publicly accessible on Amazon’s cloud service. He used the same process last month to detect sensitive files tied to a US Defense Department project and exposed by an employee of a top defense contractor.
This is not the first leak of voter files uncovered by Vickery, who told Gizmodo that he was alarmed over how the data was apparently being used—some states, for instance, prohibit the commercial use of voter records. Moreover, it was not immediately clear to whom the data belonged. “It was decided that law enforcement should be contacted before attempting any contact with the entity responsible,” said Vickery, who reported that the server was secured two days later on June 14.
A web of data firms funnel research into campaignsDeep Root’s data sheds light onto the increasingly sophisticated data operation that has fed recent Republican campaigns and lays bare the intricate network of political organizations, PACs, and analysis firms that trade in bulk voter data. In an email to Gizmodo, Deep Root said that its voter models are used to enhance the understanding of TV viewership for political ad buyers. “The data accessed was not built for or used by any specific client,” Lundry said. “It is our proprietary analysis to help inform local television ad buying.”
However, the presence of data on the server from several political organizations, including TargetPoint and Data Trust, suggests that it was used for Republican political campaigns. Deep Root also works primarily with GOP customers (although similar vendors, such as NationBuilder, service the Democrats as well).
Deep Root is one of three data firms hired by the Republican National Committee in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Founded by Lundry, a data scientist on the Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney campaigns, the firm was one of three analytics teams that worked on the Trump campaign following the party’s national convention in the summer of 2016.
Lundry’s work brought him into Trump’s campaign war room, according to a post-election AdAge article that charted the GOP’s 2016 data efforts. Deep Root was hand-picked by the RNC’s then-chief of staff, Katie Walsh, in September of last year and joined two other data shops—TargetPoint Consulting and Causeway Solutions—in the effort to win Trump the presidency.
Walsh, who now works for the nonprofit America First Policies after a brief stint in the White House, oversaw Trump’s data operation in partnership with Brad Parscale, Trump’s digital director. (Parscale did not respond to a request for comment before press time. Attempts to reach Walsh for comment were also unsuccessful.) Walsh and Parscale focused their efforts on three categories of voters, AdAge reports: voters who might be predisposed to support Trump, Republican voters who were uncertain about Trump, and voters that were leaning toward Hillary Clinton but could be persuaded by Trump’s message of changing up government-as-usual.
A spreadsheet forecasting specific voters’ likely opinions on various issues weighed using a 0-to-1 scale. (UpGuard)A spreadsheet forecasting specific voters’ likely opinions on various issues weighed using a 0-to-1 scale. (UpGuard)To appeal to the three crucial categories, it appears that Trump’s team relied on voter data provided by Data Trust. Complete voter rolls for 2008 and 2012, as well as partial 2016 voter rolls for Florida and Ohio, apparently compiled by Data Trust are contained in the dataset exposed by Deep Root.
Data Trust acquires voter rolls from state officials and then standardizes the voter data to create a clean, manageable record of all registered US voters, a source familiar with the firm’s operations told Gizmodo. Voter data itself is public record and therefore not particularly sensitive, the source added, but the tools Data Trust uses to standardize that data are considered proprietary. That data is then provided to political clients, including analytics firms like Deep Root. While Data Trust requires its clients to protect the data, it has to take clients at their word that industry-standard encryption and security protocols are in place.
TargetPoint and Causeway, the two firms employed by the RNC in addition to Deep Root, apparently layered their own analytics atop the information provided by Data Trust. TargetPoint conducted thousands of surveys per week in 22 states, according to AdAge, gauging voter sentiment on a variety of topics. While Causeway helped manage the data, Deep Root used it to perfect its TV advertising targets—producing voter turnout estimates by county and using that intelligence to target its ad buys.
A source with years of experience working on political campaign data operations told Gizmodo that the data exposed by Deep Root appeared to be customized for the RNC and had apparently been used to create models for turnout and voter preferences. Metadata in the files suggested that the database wasn’t Deep Root’s working copy, but rather a post-election version of its data, the source said, adding that it was somewhat surprising the files hadn’t been discarded.
Because the data from the 2008 and 2012 elections is outdated—the source compared it to the kind of address and phone data one could find on a “lousy internet lookup site”—it’s not very valuable. Even the 2016 data is quickly becoming stale. “This is a proprietary dataset based on a mix of public records, data from commercial providers, and a variety of predictive models of uncertain provenance and quality,” the source said, adding: “Undoubtedly it took millions of dollars to produce.”
Although basic voter information is public record, Deep Root’s dataset contains a swirl of proprietary information from the RNC’s data firms. Many of the filenames indicate that they potentially contain market research on Democratic candidates and the independent expenditure committees that support them. (Up to two terabytes of data contained on the server was protected by permission settings.)
One exposed folder is labeled “Exxon-Mobile” [sic] and contains spreadsheets apparently used to predict which voters support the oil and gas industry. Divided by state, the files include the voters’ names and addresses, along with a unique RNC identification number assigned to every US citizen registered to vote. Each row indicates where voters likely fall on issues of interest to ExxonMobil, the country’s biggest natural gas producer.
The data evaluates, for example, whether or not a specific voter believes drilling for fossil fuels is vital to US security. It also predicts if the voter thinks the US should be moving away from fossil-fuel use. The ExxonMobil “national score” document alone contains data on 182,746,897 Americans spread across 19 fields.
The “Exxon-Mobile” file contains unique RNC codes and sentiment analyses for more than 182 million US voters. (UpGuard)The “Exxon-Mobile” file contains unique RNC codes and sentiment analyses for more than 182 million US voters. (UpGuard)Reddit analysisSome of the data included in Deep Root’s dataset veers into downright bizarre territory. A folder titled simply ‘reddit’ houses 170 GBs of data apparently scraped from several subreddits, including the controversial r/fatpeoplehate that was home to a community of people who posted pictures of people and mocked them for their weight before it was banned from Reddit’s platform in 2015. Other subreddits that appear to have been scraped by Deep Root or a partner organization focused on more benign topics, like mountain biking and the Spanish language.[insert lnx  TargetPoint and Causeway, the two firms employed by the RNC in addition to Deep Root, apparently layered their own analytics atop the information provided by Data Trust. TargetPoint conducted thousands of surveys per week in 22 states, according to AdAge, gauging voter sentiment on a variety of topics. While Causeway helped manage the data, Deep Root used it to perfect its TV advertising targets—producing voter turnout estimates by county and using that intelligence to target its ad buys.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px auto 1.25rem; word-break: break-word; padding: 0px; font-family: ElizabethSerif, Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 32px; max-width: 636px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A source with years of experience working on political campaign data operations told Gizmodo that the data exposed by Deep Root appeared to be customized for the RNC and had apparently been used to create models for turnout and voter preferences. Metadata in the files suggested that the database wasn’t Deep Root’s working copy, but rather a post-election version of its data, the source said, adding that it was somewhat surprising the files hadn’t been discarded.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px auto 1.25rem; word-break: break-word; padding: 0px; font-family: ElizabethSerif, Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 32px; max-width: 636px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Because the data from the 2008 and 2012 elections is outdated—the source compared it to the kind of address and phone data one could find on a “lousy internet lookup site”—it’s not very valuable. Even the 2016 data is quickly becoming stale. “This is a proprietary dataset based on a mix of public records, data from commercial providers, and a variety of predictive models of uncertain provenance and quality,” the source said, adding: “Undoubtedly it took millions of dollars to produce.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px auto 1.25rem; word-break: break-word; padding: 0px; font-family: ElizabethSerif, Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 32px; max-width: 636px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Although basic voter information is public record, Deep Root’s dataset contains a swirl of proprietary information from the RNC’s data firms. Many of the filenames indicate that they potentially contain market research on Democratic candidates and the independent expenditure committees that support them. (Up to two terabytes of data contained on the server was protected by permission settings.)<p style="box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px auto 1.25rem; word-break: break-word; padding: 0px; font-family: ElizabethSerif, Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 32px; max-width: 636px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">One exposed folder is labeled “Exxon-Mobile” [sic] and contains spreadsheets apparently used to predict which voters support the oil and gas industry. Divided by state, the files include the voters’ names and addresses, along with a unique RNC identification number assigned to every US citizen registered to vote. Each row indicates where voters likely fall on issues of interest to ExxonMobil, the country’s biggest natural gas producer.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px auto 1.25rem; word-break: break-word; padding: 0px; font-family: ElizabethSerif, Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 32px; max-width: 636px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">The data evaluates, for example, whether or not a specific voter believes drilling for fossil fuels is vital to US security. It also predicts if the voter thinks the US should be moving away from fossil-fuel use. The ExxonMobil “national score” document alone contains data on 182,746,897 Americans spread across 19 fields.]The Reddit data could’ve been used as training data for an artificial intelligence algorithm focused on natural language processing, or it might have been harvested as part of an effort to match up Reddit users with their voter registration records. During the 2012 election cycle, Barack Obama’s campaign data team relied on information gleaned from Facebook profiles and matched profiles to voter records.
During the 2016 election season, Reddit played host to a legion of Trump supporters who gathered in subreddits like r/The_Donald to comb through leaked Democratic National Committee emails and craft pro-Trump memes. Trump himself participated in an “Ask Me Anything” session on r/The_Donald during his campaign.
Given how active some Trump supporters are on Reddit—r/The_Donald currently boasts more than 430,000 members—it makes sense that Trump’s data team might be interested in analyzing data from the site.
A FiveThirtyEight analysis that looked at where r/The_Donald members spend their time when they’re not talking politics might shed some light onto why Deep Root collected r/fatpeoplehate data. FiveThirtyEight found that, when Redditors weren’t commenting in political subreddits, they most often frequented r/fatpeoplehate.
Recent Videos from GizmodoVIEW MORE >Watch a Giant Army of Lego Droids Play the Star Wars Theme on Real Instruments9/02/19 8:00AMIt’s possible that Deep Root intended to use data from r/fatpeoplehate to build a more comprehensive profile of Trump voters. (Lundry declined to comment beyond his initial statement on any of information included in the Deep Root dataset.)
A raw excerpt of the scraped Reddit data stored on Deep Root’s server. (UpGuard)A raw excerpt of the scraped Reddit data stored on Deep Root’s server. (UpGuard)However, FiveThirtyEight’s investigation doesn’t account for Deep Root’s collection of data from mountain-biking and Spanish-speaking subreddits that weren’t as popular with r/The_Donald members—and data from these subreddits that are not so closely linked to Trump’s diehard supporters might be more useful for his campaign’s goal of pursuing swing voters.
“My guess is that they were scraping Reddit posts to match to the voter file as another input for individual modeling,” a source familiar with campaign data operations told Gizmodo. “Given the number of random forums, my guess is they started with a list of accounts to scrape from, rather than scraping from all forums then trying to match from there (in which case you’d start with the political ones).”
Matching voter records with Reddit usernames would be complicated and any large-scale effort would likely result in many inaccuracies, the source said. However, campaigns have attempted to match voter files with social media profiles in the past. Such an effort by Deep Root wouldn’t be entirely surprising, and would likely yield rich data on the small portion of users it was able to match with their voter profiles, the source explained.
Data exposes sensitive voter infoThe Deep Root incident represents the largest known leak of Americans’ voter records, outstripping past exposures by several million records. Five voter-file leaks over the past 18 months exposed between 350,000 and 191 million files, some of which paired voter data—name, race, gender, birthdate, address, phone number, party affiliation, etc.—with email accounts, social media profiles, and records of gun ownership.
“I can think of no avenues for punishing political data breaches or otherwise properly aligning the incentives.”Campaigns and the data analysis firms they employ are a particularly weak point for data exposure, security experts say. Corporations that don’t properly secure customer data can face significant financial repercussions—just ask Target or Yahoo. But because campaigns are short-term operations, there’s not much incentive for them to take data security seriously, and valuable data is often left out to rust after an election.
“Campaigns are very narrowly focused. They are shoestring operations, even presidential campaigns. So they don’t think of this as an asset they need to protect,” the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Hall told Gizmodo.
Even though voter rolls are public record and are easy to access—Ohio, for instance, makes its voter rolls available to download online—their exposure can still be harmful.
Voter registration records include ZIP codes, birthdates, and other personal information that have been crucial in research efforts to re-identify anonymous medical data. Latanya Sweeney, a professor of government and technology at Harvard University, famously used voter data to re-identify Massachusetts Governor William Weld from information in anonymous hospital discharge records.
Because of the personal information they contain, voter registration databases can also be useful in identity theft schemes.
Even though exposure of Deep Root’s data has the potential to harm voters, it’s exactly the kind of data that campaigns lust after and will spend millions of dollars to obtain. Campaigns are motivated to accumulate as much deeply personal information about voters as possible, so they can spend their ad dollars in the right swing districts where they’re likely to sway the greatest number of voters. But voter data rapidly goes stale and campaigns close up shop quickly, so data is seen as disposable and often isn’t well-protected.
“I can think of no avenues for punishing political data breaches or otherwise properly aligning the incentives. I worry that if there’s no way to punish campaigns for leaking this stuff, it’s going to continue to happen until something bad happens,” Hall said. The data left behind by campaigns can pose a lingering security issue, he added. “None of these motherfuckers were ever Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, they don’t pack out what they pack in.”
[UpGuard]
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