Just one day after the New York Times attempted to downplay suspicions around the election software company Konnech, the company’s CEO, Eugene Yu, has been taken into custody under suspicion of sending data on American poll workers to Communist China.
On October 3, the New York Times published an article by reporter Stuart Thompson titled “How a Tiny Elections Company Became a Conspiracy Theory Target,” in which he claimed that “election deniers” were targeting Konnech, a Michigan election software firm with just 21 U.S. employees, and had developed a theory with “threadbare evidence” that the company had tied to the Chinese Communist Party and had given the Chinese government backdoor access to the personal data of around two million poll workers in the United States.
Thompson suggested that such beliefs were ridiculous and anyone suggesting there was validity to these claims was simply an “election denier,” spinning conspiracy theories.
WOW WOW WOWWWWWWWWWWWW.
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) October 5, 2022
I have never seen anything age this poorly, this quickly. By NYT’s @stuartathompson
Also, could adults stop using the Democrat propaganda term “election denial” to describe people with legitimate challenges to election administration? It’s so puerile. pic.twitter.com/YEcevYjhdI
On October 4, just one day later, the NYT published another article from Thompson titled “Election Software Executive Arrested on Suspicion of Theft,” in which he reported that Eugene Yu, the CEO of Konnech, had been arrested under suspicion of theft after U.S. user data was found stored in China — exactly what the “election deniers” that Thompson had derided claimed.
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, commented on the situation saying: “Data breaches are an ongoing threat to our digital way of life. When we entrust a company to hold our confidential data, they must be willing and able to protect our personal identifying information from theft. Otherwise, we are all victims.”
By Lucas Nolan
