“Montana” is trending this morning thanks to this story last night on Anderson Cooper’s show on allegations that Arizona voter data has been sent to cabin/lab in rural Montana by one of the contractors involved with the Maricopa county audit:
Arizona voting system data has been taken by truck to a so-called "secure powerful laboratory" in rural Montana to be "forensically evaluated."@GaryTuchmanCNN visits the area to investigate. pic.twitter.com/Om5fW19Wx5
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) June 17, 2021
Except, this is old news. The Arizona Republic’s Jen Fifield broke the story two weeks ago:
New from me: Maricopa County election data is in a 'secure lab' in Montana, or maybe a log cabin in the woods? https://t.co/gCerNj0vGM
— Jen Fifield (@JenAFifield) June 4, 2021
And the Twitter account for the audit responded to the allegations on June 4:
CyFIR, AZ Audit subcontractor to Cyber Ninjas is following industry best practices in maintaining the security of all audit data as documented in policies and procedures previously provided by Cyber Ninjas to the AZ Senate and AZ SOS. See link below: https://t.co/I6EVTYuWxS
— Maricopa Arizona Audit (@ArizonaAudit) June 4, 2021
Of note, CNN missed that the policy manual linked to by the audit Twitter account in defense of their data practices appears to have been copied from a Policies and Procedures Manual created by the Department of Justice:
🤔🤔🤔 pic.twitter.com/N5WxdfrmuK
— Dillon Rosenblatt (@DillonReedRose) June 4, 2021
Anyway, if you don’t have time to watch the entire segment, you can read this thread from Fifield where it certainly appears that CNN lifted her investigative work and packaged it for air without any credit:
The ballot hand count is getting so much attention but there's so much more to this audit like "copies of voting system data was sent to a lab in Montana"
what lab?
what data?
who has access?
what protections are there to secure that network?https://t.co/MT2fsF9pA0— Jen Fifield (@JenAFifield) June 2, 2021
Alright, here's my wormhole for tonight, Twitter. Montana. We know that CyFIR is one of Cyber Ninja's subcontractors and CEO Ben Cotton is the one that made the "deleted files" claim.
This lists Cotton as CEO of CyTech Services in Big Fork, Montana.https://t.co/zqFvJMlVi0
— Jen Fifield (@JenAFifield) June 2, 2021
Bigfork is a vacationers hub of Kalispell, in northern Montana. Fairly remote, lots of cabins. I was there like 3 years ago for a reporting project talking about how lots of people are moving there because it's pretty.https://t.co/uesu2zADuN
— Jen Fifield (@JenAFifield) June 2, 2021
Hi, data! pic.twitter.com/zluNLab905
— Jen Fifield (@JenAFifield) June 2, 2021
I just looked up the address in property records.
The "lab" where our voting system data was sent appears to be a log cabin in a remote part of northern Montana, owned by CyFIR CEO Ben Cotton.
— Jen Fifield (@JenAFifield) June 2, 2021
Just remember this one the next time Brian Stelter or anyone else at CNN is preaching about the importance of local newspapers.
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