BATON
THURSDAY, JUNE 22, 2017
Registered To Vote? If So, A GOP Firm Probably Exposed Your Personal Data A Republican data analysis company called Deep Root Analytics left exposed an online database containing the personal information of almost all of America’s 200 million registered voters, the cyber security firm UpGuard has found. The data contained in the breach includes an unsettling amount of personal information, including voters’ first and last names, birth dates, home and mailing addresses, phone numbers, registered party, selfreported racial demographic and voter registration status. A Deep Root spokesman confirmed the breach in an email to HuffPost, saying, “We take full responsibility for this situation.” The company added it is undertaking a full review of the lapse, which is believed to have begun June 1 and lasted through June 14. UpGuard Cyber Risky Analyst Chris Vickery, who found the files, notified federal authorities of the exposure. Deep Root said it believes only Vickery accessed the database during that time. Vickery was able to download 1.1 terabytes of “entirely unsecured” data, which uses 9.5 billion data points to describe 198 million potential U.S. voters’ likely political preferences across 48 different categories. Those categories span nearly every major political debate, including a voter’s likely stance on abortion, gun control, stem cell research and environmental issues. The exposure of such personal data for so many voters is the largest breach of its sort. It is a testament both to their talents, and to the real danger of this exposure, that the results were astoundingly accurate. Vickery’s colleague, UpGuard reporter and analyst Dan O’Sullivan, looked himself up in the database and was taken aback by the RNC’s analyses. “It is a testament both to their talents, and to the real danger of this exposure, that the results were astoundingly accurate,” he wrote. Most of the data appears to have originated from Republican super-Political Action Committees and other external collection firms, and not with Deep Root itself. Large caches of text appear to have been scraped from Reddit, while other folders seem to have been named to track the origin of the data each contains. UpGuard reported that American Crossroads, the super-PAC Republican strategist Karl Rove helped start, likely contributed data, as did a company called Data Trust, which boasts a mission of “continually develop[ing] a Republican and conservative data ecosystem
ROUGE,
LOUISIANA
VOL. 41 • NO. 33 • FREE
PEOPLE’S PUBLICATION
Congressional Black Caucus Turns Down Trump Invitation
Gov. Edwards Declares State Of Emergency For Tropical Storm Cindy
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency Wednesday as Tropical Storm Cindy.
Representative Cedric Richmond, a Democrat from Louisiana and chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for Senator Jeff Sessions in Washington, DC, Jan. 11, 2017.
“The CBC, and the millions of people we represent, have a lot to lose under your administration,” Richmond wrote. “I fail to see how a social gathering would benefit the policies we advocate for.”
The Congressional Black Caucus turned down an invitation to meet with President Donald Trump, telling him Wednesday they believe their concerns are falling on “deaf ears” at the White House and his policies are devastating to the millions of Americans in the nation’s black communities. A White House spokeswoman said the development was “pretty disappointing” and pledged to arrange for individual members to meet one-on-one with Trump. Caucus Chairman Cedric Richmond told Trump in a letter that his proposed budget, his efforts to dismantle Democrat
Barack Obama’s health care law and actions by Attorney General Jeff Sessions are detrimental to many African-Americans. Richmond said the caucus had expressed its concern several times, including in eight letters and a document, but the administration has failed to respond. “The CBC, and the millions of people we represent, have a lot to lose under your administration,” Richmond wrote. “I fail to see how a social gathering would benefit the policies we advocate for.” Trump and top members of the caucus met in March, but See INVITATION, on page 2
BATON ROUGE, LA Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency Wednesday as Tropical Storm Cindy turned deadly and roared through the Gulf of Mexico toward the coast, slashing the region with heavy rains and flooding. A 10-year-old boy died in Alabama, parts of Louisiana had five inches of rain by early afternoon, and Pensacola was slammed by more than 8 inches of rain in 36 hours. And more was on the way. Cindy, armed with sustained winds of 50 mph, was expected to generate up to 15 inches of rain over southeastern Louisiana, southern Mississippi, southern Alabama and parts of the Florida Panhandle through Thursday night, and a few tornadoes also were possible through Wednesday night, according to the National Weather Service. The storm could produce “life-threatening flash floods along the central Gulf Coast,” the agency said. By late Wednesday afternoon, Cindy was about 135 miles south of Lake Charles, La., and
about 125 miles southeast of Galveston, Texas, the weather service said. Cindy was expected to move inland toward southeastern Texas or southwestern Louisiana Wednesday night or early Thursday then move near or across eastern Texas, western and northern Louisiana and southeastern Arkansas on Thursday, the weather service said. Flooding and power outages were already reported early Wednesday, almost a full day before the storm was forecast to make landfall along the Texas-Louisiana border early Thursday. A tropical storm warning was in effect from San Luis Pass, Texas, to the mouth of the Mississippi River. The White House said President Trump was briefed Wednesday on the storm. There was some good news Wednesday when the National Weather Service lifted the tropical storm warning for metropolitan New Orleans. But Mayor Mitch Landrieu urged residents not to be complacent as parts of the city were hit with five inches of rain by midday.
Louisiana Colleges Keeping Authority to Raise Student Fees Gov. John Bel Edwards has agreed to let Louisiana’s public colleges and universities continue to increase student fees without approval from the Legislature. The schools have the authority to raise fees now, but they would have lost it June 30 had not Edwards signed a new law Tuesday (June 20). Act 293 extends the fee-raising authority for three years. The schools must issue reports by Feb. 15 in 2018, 2019 and 2020 on how they are using the revenue. The law also caps the size of fee increases. Tuition and fees together may not exceed the national average for higher education institutions. Nevertheless, fees can total into the thousands of dollars for a single semester at some institutions.
The new law was passed in the Legislature’s 2017 regular session. The sponsor was Rep. Chris Broadwater, R-Hammond, whose district includes Southeastern Louisiana University. Some Louisiana universities previously had permission to raise tuition, too, if they met certain academic benchmarks. But the laws allowing this expired in 2016 and were not renewed. Legislators might be more comfortable letting colleges raise fees because fees See FEES, on page 3
Louisiana universities and colleges will still be able to raise fees without having to get approval from the Louisiana Legislature first.
See VOTE, on page 2
LEBRON JAMES CONGRATULATES KEVIN DURANT
STATE & LOCAL
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INDEX
PANHANDLING PROTECTED It’s only June, and we’ve already got a candidate for understatement of the year.See Page 6
Panhandling is protected by the First Amendment right to free speech, and a New Orleans suburb’s ordinance requiring a panhandling license “offends the United States Constitution,” a federal judge has ruled....Page 2
GARDEN CLUB SCHOLARSHIP
The Baton Rouge Garden Club has selected Southern University College of Agricultural, Family and Consumer Sciences student Brittany Benjamin, as the recipient of the 2017 Elaine Humphries Memorial Scholarship. .See Page 3
IMPACT OF HEALTH CARE LAW
The Louisiana Budget Project, a indepedent nonprofit that studies budget policy in the state, released a report Tuesday detailing how the American Health Care Act could impact Louisiana..See Page 5
State & Local............................2 Religion....................................4 Business....................................5 Classifieds.................................5 Sports.......................................6
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