by Just one day after New York Times tried to downplay the suspicions surrounding the election software company Konnech, the company’s CEO, Eugene Yu, was taken into custody on suspicion of sending data about American poll workers to Communist China.
On October 3, the New York Times published an article by journalist Stuart Thompson titled “How a Tiny Election Company Became the Target of a Conspiracy Theory,” in which he claimed that “election deniers” were targeting Konnech, an election software company in Michigan with just 21 US employees, and had developed a theory with “junk evidence” that the company had been linked to the Chinese Communist Party and had given the Chinese government backdoor access to the personal data of about two million poll workers in the United States.
Thompson suggested that such beliefs were ridiculous and anyone who suggested there was any validity to these claims was simply an “election denier”, spinning conspiracy theories.
WOW WOW WOW WOW.
I’ve never seen anything age so badly, so quickly. From the NYT @stuartathompson
Also, could adults please stop using the Democratic propaganda term “electoral denial” to describe people with legitimate challenges to the electoral administration? That is so generous. pic.twitter.com/YEcevYjhdI
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) October 5, 2022
On October 4, just one day later, the NYT published another article by Thompson titled “Election Software Executive Arrested on Suspect of Theft,” which reported that Eugene Yu, the CEO of Konnech, had been arrested on suspicion of theft after US user data was found stored in China — just as The “choice deniers” Thompson had derided claimed.
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon commented on the situation saying, “Data breaches are a constant threat to our digital lifestyle. When we entrust a company with our confidential data, it must be willing and able to protect our personally identifiable information from theft. Otherwise, we are all victims.”
In a statement, a Konnech spokesman said the company was trying to learn the details “of what we believe to be the illegal detention of Mr. Yu” and that it stood by recent statements it made in a lawsuit defending its handling of user data. .
“Any Los Angeles County poll worker data that Conneh may have had was provided to him by Los Angeles County and therefore could not have been ‘stolen’ as suggested,” the spokesperson said. In a statement, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office said it had reason to believe personal information about election officials was “criminally obtained” and was seeking to extradite Yu from Michigan to Los Angeles.
Read more at New York Times here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan
