Most Americans would likely be disturbed that this kind of information was generated about them in the first place, to say nothing of the fact that it was accidentally made public by the very companies being paid by the Republican Party to make it, with essentially zero security precautions of any kind taken with how it was stored in the cloud.

Update: June 19th, 2017

Bill Daddi, apparently handling public relations for Deep Root Analytics, provided the following message to The Intercept:

As you can understand, we can’t comment on much here as we are not at liberty to discuss the details of work on behalf of any entity that might be a client, nor provide specifics of our proprietary data and analysis.

There is a general statement that has been released, which is below. This hopefully addresses some of your questions.

To help you understand what Deep Root Analytics does, we inform local television ad buys for advertisers. We don’t make the buys, nor engage in any digital marketing or targeting outreach. We help entities understand what local TV ad buys to make.

As indicated in the below, we have engaged Stroz Freidberg to conduct a thorough review, and that process is underway. Based upon this review we have determined that the access that was made without our knowledge happened because of a change that was made in the files’ asset access protocols. We are in the process of determining how that change was made and take full responsibility for the change, but suffice to say we have updated the settings to prevent further access. We believe the change that was made happened post June 1 2017, which was when we last evaluated and updated our security settings. We do not believe that our systems have been hacked. To date, the only entity that we are aware of that had access to the data was Chris Vickery.

Thanks,

Bill

“Deep Root Analytics has become aware that a number of files within our online storage system were accessed without our knowledge.

Deep Root Analytics builds voter models to help enhance advertiser understanding of TV viewership. The data accessed was not built for or used by any specific client. It is our proprietary analysis to help inform local television ad buying.

The data that was accessed was, to the best of our knowledge this proprietary information as well as voter data that is publicly available and readily provided by state government offices. Since this event has come to our attention, we have updated the access settings and put protocols in place to prevent further access. We take full responsibility for this situation.

Deep Root Analytics maintains industry standard security protocols. We built our systems in keeping with these protocols and had last evaluated and updated our security settings on June 1, 2017.

We are conducting an internal review and have retained cyber security firm Stroz Friedberg to conduct a thorough investigation. Through this process, which is currently underway, we have learned that access was gained through a recent change in asset access settings since June 1, 2017. We accept full responsibility, will continue with our investigation, and based on the information we have gathered thus far, we do not believe that our systems have been hacked. To date, the only entity that we are aware of that had access to the data was Chris Vickery. “