RNC Contractor Leaked Data of 198M Voters, Class Action Says

Deep Root Analytics, a contractor hired by the Republican National Committee, has been hit with a class action lawsuit accusing it of failing to safeguard the personally identifiable information of more than 198 million U.S. voters.

“This is not a case in which nefarious hackers ‘breached the mainframe’ and stole sensitive information,” plaintiffs Dr. James McAleer and Linda McAleer of Florida stress in their data leak class action lawsuit. “This is a case in which Deep Root, the custodian of the Private Information of nearly 200 million Americans put that Private Information online without a password.”

According to the voter data leak class action lawsuit, the RNC hired Deep Root as an analytics contractor to obtain information about U.S. voters prior to the 2016 election. Deep Root allegedly collected sensitive information of U.S. citizens to analyze how they may vote on certain issues, such as abortion and gun rights.

“To win in politics, it is vital to understand the target constituency,” the McAleers assert in the Deep Root data breach class action lawsuit. “Today, it is easier than ever to do so due to the sheer amount of information citizens knowingly and unknowingly disseminate about themselves to the Internet.”

Deep Root has only existed since 2013, but the contractor reportedly had access to information collected by the RNC’s other data analytics contractors for the 2008 and 2012 elections.

Cybersecurity expert Chris Vickery recently discovered the trove of U.S. voter information, which was stored on a cloud server without password protection or other security precautions to safeguard the data. Therefore, anyone could have accessed the data during the time it was posted online.

“Deep Root’s goal in collecting the Private Information in the first place was to assemble a complete political profile of nearly every American voter,” the McAleers say in their U.S. voter data leak class action lawsuit. “As such, the Private Information includes not only raw data, but also includes personal information about each American’s beliefs.”

The voter information that was compromised may have included personally identifiable information such as names, addresses, email addresses, dates of birth, telephone numbers, voter ID numbers and reddit.com browsing history, according to the Deep Root data breach class action lawsuit. The McAleers claim Deep Root has failed to provide the affected U.S. voters with adequate notice about exactly what type of private information may have been disclosed.

The McAleers filed the U.S. voter data leak class action lawsuit on behalf of themselves and a nationwide Class of U.S. residents whose private information was disclosed in the 2017 Deep Root data breach. They also seek to represent a Florida Class of Florida residents whose information was disclosed in the voter data breach.

The RNC contractor class action lawsuit seeks compensation for the losses each plaintiff and Class Member suffered due to the wrongful disclosure of their private information, injunctive relief, exemplary and punitive damages, and attorneys’ fees.

The McAleers are represented by David S. Oliver, Jason A. Zimmerman and Trace H. Jackson of GrayRobinson PA.

The RNC Contractor Voter Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit is Dr. James A. McAleer, et al. v. Deep Root Analytics LLC, Case No. 6:17-cv-01142, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

UPDATE: The RNC Contractor Voter Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit was dismissed on November 7, 2017.