Dear County Election Supervisor: We've Got To Talk About Konnech
Dear County Election Supervisor: We've Got To Talk About Konnech
US County Election Data Is Part of the Country's National Security Infrastructure. So Foreign Penetration Of It By China Is A Very Bad Thing
True The Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips held an event referred to as “The Pit” in Scottsdale Arizona back on Saturday, August 13. That event quickly became controversial even before it was held, and sparked even more controversy once it was over.
I was one of the attendees at The Pit, where I took the following pictures:
Six Points To Ponder
There are six main points that I want to make in this column in light of the fact that Konnech CEO Eugene Yu was just arrested in Michigan based on an indictment returned by a grand jury in Los Angeles County, California.
1. County election systems are part of the nation’s national security infrastructure.
Many people are not aware of this, but when he was President, Donald J. Trump melded the nation’s 3,152 separate county election systems into the country’s national security infrastructure. This makes an attack, infiltration or compromise of US election systems at the county level a national security matter.
2. Any breach of these election systems by a foreign power - especially a hostile foreign power like the CCP- is a direct national security threat.
Elections are serious business because that’s how civilian leadership is appointed at every level in the country, from county to state to federal.
3. Whether it happens deliberately or through negligence, any company allowing 1.8 million American citizen’s PII to be downloaded and stored inside China has engaged in blatantly illegal activity.
And this is exactly what Konnech appears to have done, tricking county election officials into signing fraudulent EMS contracts that gave the company access to sensitive information, which it then sent off to China.
4. When the 1.8 million Americans who’s PII is now Chinese hands are also election workers in hundreds of counties across the United States, a massive potential breach of the U.S. election system and networks has occurred.
While no smoking gun has yet emerged as to any overt act to directly affect or attempt to affect the outcome of any American election, the potential for abuse is readily evident. It’s hard to surmise a benign reason for all of this US citizen PII collection.
5. Law enforcement action is necessary to determine whether or not this historical breach of U.S. national security infrastructure happened as a result of negligence or espionage, and whichever is the case, who to hold accountable for it.
With Eugene Yu’s arrest, the question as to whether this massive breach of U.S. national security infrastructure was accidental negligence or criminal espionage appears to have been answered.
Eugene Yu got indicted and arrested because he and his company’s negotiators successfully tricked the election officials of at least ONE county into signing a fraudulent contract for Election Management Systems service.
The contract signed between Los Angles county and Konnech clearly stated that the county’s election data would be kept safe, stored on secure servers inside the United States.
If Eugene Yu knew that wasn’t the case, if he knew at the time or after the contract was signed that this PII data would be going to be sent to China, he committed a serious security breach.
6. To explore what forms of legal relief are available to affected counties and individuals in the form of court actions (damages, blocking the continued use of vulnerable/compromised systems in upcoming elections, etc.)
Apparently a grand jury in LA County was shown pretty solid and convincing evidence that Yu and Konnech deliberately deceived the county’s negotiators about where this national security election data was actually going to end up.
Yu and the Konnech people involved never breathed a word during contract negotiations that they’d be schlepping all the personal identification information collected and transmitted on their EMS platform and apps to China.
That brings up a key question: how many other US counties did Yu and his Konnech representatives mislead in this same fashion?
Tarrant County EMS Contract Negotiators Catch Konnech Lying To Them
Part of what these citizen researchers found was that at least one county managed to discover that Konnech was not being truthful about where exactly the company would be hosting county’s election data if a contract was agreed to.
Crack negotiators for Tarrant County, Texas managed to pry a most reluctant admission from Konnech’s representatives. See the screenshot below from The Authority’s excellent Substack article you can read for yourself here.
It appears that the negotiators for Tarrant County were more tech-savvy than Konnech’s representatives were used to dealing with. Looking over the tech company’s EMS proposal, the Tarrant team saw several discrepancies in relation to the claim Konnech would host the EMS services in the Microsoft Azure cloud, and began asking a few pointed questions.
Questions which led to Konnech’s team being forced into an awkward admission. Actually, the company would **not** be hosting the county’s election data in the Azure cloud but their own datacenter.
And exactly where that datacenter was located appeared to be a mystery.
The Tarrant County negotiators appear to have broken off talks once they found out Konnech was lying about hosting their data in the cloud; I wonder what answer they might have got if they had demanded to know exactly where Konnech’s 'datacenter/co-location facility’ was located?
So to sum up: Tarrant county in Texas did their due diligence. When they caught Konnech lying about utilizing the Microsoft Azure cloud as the host for the county's election data, Tarrant county immediately terminated EMS contract negotiations with them.
All US Counties Must Immediately Cease Using Konnech EMS Platforms & Apps
In the earlier series of pictures from The Pit in Arizona, I included one showing a graphic with the title of “Pre-Election Checklist Top 10”. Here it is again:
These are ten things that a county election board is required to do by state and federal law in order to have an election certified.
Due to recent developments, it’s become apparent Konnech’s platforms and apps fail to meet the following qualifications:
#1 - qualified equipment for a county, state or federal election, since data is being taken from this software and transferred to China
#2 - compliance with state and federal election laws, since I’m pretty sure the taking of poll worker’s PII and sending it outside the United States to a foreign country like China violates all kinds of election security regulations and laws
And most especially Konnech’s EMS platform & apps fail to meet #5:
#5 - Konnech has violated operational security rules by stealing US citizen’s PII stored or transmitted through their software EMS platforms and apps and sending the data to China
If an elections board or supervisor becomes aware that an EMS platform with related apps being used by the county are unsecure and that poll worker’s PII stored or streamed through this software is being stolen and sent to a foreign country, they are **required by law** to remove this unsecure platform from the county’s election system.
If an EMS platform or app has been found to be unsecure and the CEO of the company has been **arrested** and is headed for a criminal trial for facilitating the sending of over 1.8 million American citizen’s PII to to the Chinese mainland, I’m pretty sure that means there isn’t a single county inside the United States where Konnech’s EMS platforms or apps meets the legal requirements for certification for use in a US election.
Which means any county that’s planning to go ahead and continue using Konnech software for these upcoming 2022 midterms is **breaking state and federal election laws**. The software is not secure. This has been demonstrated to a grand jury that has indicted someone for this fact.
Dear County Elections Supervisor: We Need To Talk About Konnech
Is YOUR COUNTY planning to use this compromised Konnech EMS platform & apps for these upcoming midterm elections?
Don't you think you had better find out?
It is up to citizens to ensure their county elections board is complying with state and federal election laws. Left on their own, some county election boards and supervisors will take the easy, cheap way out and ignore clearly written laws and just do what they want, national security be damned. It’d be far cheaper and easier to just move forward continuing to use Konnech’s platform, so that’s what they’ll try to do.
At The Pit, a list of counties and states and districts who were under contract with Konnech for EMS services was shown to the audience. Recently Gregg Phillips posted on the Truth Social app that True The Vote will be providing an updated list that includes additional counties that are currently using Konnech’s compromised EMS platform.
Every concerned citizen and voter in this country should contact their county election supervisor and ask if Konnech’s dirty and compromised software has been utilized in past elections, or will continue to be used for future elections.
And if the county did have a contract with Konnech, what steps have been taken to remove the compromised platform & apps and replace them?
Gregg Phillips and his team found 1.8 million poll worker’s PII on that server in China. It’s fairly obvious that LA County election workers are only a handful of the people who’s data was stolen. So from what US counties did all the other poll worker’s data come from?
Is anybody investigating trying to find out?
Whether there’s any federal or state investigation going on or not, absolutely nothing is stopping concerned citizens from accessing public records and finding out if their county has been doing business with Eugene Yu and his corrupt company.
Was Konnech taking PII from every single US county it managed to sign a contract with and sending that data to China, or was this done only for some of the counties?
Thus far one other county appears to be asking the right questions. Allen County in Indiana had a contract with Konnech, and is doing it’s own investigation.
There are two things I'm noticing here in this article.
First thing: The local election officials in Allen County are avoiding the subject of if their poll worker's PII ended up in China.
The reporter never gets around to asking Allen County election board Director Amy Scrogham if Konnech storing Allen County poll worker's data on servers in China would be a violation of the company's contract with her county, and if so, what steps the county might take about that.
Second thing: When L A County investigators arrested Yu, they seized 'hard drives other digital evidence'.
It's been reported that Yu claimed he was about to leave on a business trip, had luggage with him [but no cell phone] and was arrested at the airport.
If true, what was he taking with him on this 'business trip', and what will L A investigators find when they go through these hard drives and other digital evidence?
Whatever they find, it’s clear that every single county in the United States that had a Konnech contract and has been using Konnech’s EMS platforms and apps needs to do some due diligence here and find out how much of their election data, if any, was sent out of the country to the regime in Beijing.
This is a massive national security scandal.
Over a million US poll workers key PII data was discovered on a server in China. There’s no way this should have been possible, and yet it happened.
The Konnech CEO arrested this week engaged in deceptive business practices and compromised US election security by claiming to at least one client who signed an EMS contract with Konnech that all their data would be stored on a secure server inside the US.
6 questions every real investigative reporter in America should be pursuing right now:
1. How did this poll worker data get to that server in China?
2. Who's responsible for putting it there?
3. How was this much US citizen PII taken without anybody supposedly knowing about it? Why did it take Gregg Phillips and his team tracing 2000 Mules geotracking data to stumble over it? What are federal authorities doing about this breach?
4. LA County has just a few thousand election workers. What other US counties had their poll worker's PII stolen and stored in China?
5. Are there any investigations underway in other counties, following the footsteps of LA County? Tracking down how their election worker data ended up being compromised when Konnech claimed to clients their election data was safely stored inside the US on secure servers?
6. How many other US counties that contracted with Eugene Yu and Konnech for EMS services were falsely told their election data was secure and would be stored only on secure servers in the US?
There’s a real important national security story sitting right there out in the open.
How many major news media outlets have their investigative reporters digging into it?
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Always great questions Brian! You’re a great investigative reporter and a real treasure.
Blessings friend
Brilliant.