We received a report over the weekend dated May 3 from the Maricopa County Attorney’s office directed to the audit team in Maricopa County explaining that they just weren’t able to provide routers requested by the auditors. They also shared that they had provided all the passwords they had to the audit crew.
Below is the two-page letter (4 paragraphs) making these points.
Routers La Rue to Bennett Re Routers Final by Jim Hoft on Scribd
We noted that the Sherriff of Maricopa County, Paul Penzone, was cc’d in the letter. He is probably better known for the $2 million in support from George Soros in 2016 in the Deep State’s effort to see Sheriff Joe lose for the first time in seven elections. This was reported in Arizona at the time:
When Paul Penzone ran for Maricopa County sheriff in 2016, he famously received a $2 million contribution from billionaire George Soros — the liberal philanthropist’s single biggest investment in a local race that year.
The Democratic ex-Phoenix police officer won the race, stopping Republican Joe Arpaio from obtaining a seventh term in office.
1. The first bone of contention is in the first paragraph of the above response letter where the County claims:
delivering routers, or “virtual images” of routers, posed a significant security risk to law enforcement data utilized by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office as well as numerous federal agencies. We had previously believed that the risk would be eliminated by redacting the law enforcement data on the routers and not producing it”.
This response is very questionable because based on our discussion with experts, routers only show the traffic going between entities. Routers record date and time stamps of traffic flow to/from entities and these timestamps are by the second and are not editable. Based on this response the County doesn’t want the auditors to see where data was transferred to and from related to the 2020 Election.
2. In the second paragraph, the County states:
Providing routers or virtual images of routers puts sensitive, confidential data belonging to Maricopa County’s citizens— including social security numbers and protected health information at risk as well. As a result, the County cannot at this time provide the virtual images of routers. The County knows that the Senate would not want to do anything that would endanger the lives of law enforcement officers, their operations, or the protected health information and personal data of Maricopa County’s citizens.
Since the routers don’t record and save the information transferred to and from the County it is not possible to see any data with social security numbers and health info in routers. This is total BS – said one of our experts who looked at this.
3. The third paragraph basically says we will keep looking at this issue and if we find a way to safely provide you the data from the routers we’ll let you know. (Yes, more BS)
4. In the fourth and final paragraph the County addresses their inability to provide passwords:
Additionally, you wrote me on April 30, 2021, asking that the County provide additional passwords, user names, and/or security keys utilized with the County’s precinct-based tabulators. The County has provided every password, user name, and security key in its custody or control, as commanded by the Senate’s subpoenas, and does not have any others.
This last issue is very concerning. A company needs the admin system passwords to run their systems. If true, then who does have the administration passwords. This indicates the County has ceded full reign of their election tabulators to some other entity. This puts the County more at risk than any of their concerns with sharing router data. This is actually appalling but it is supported by testimonies held after the election:
Some overall observations are why does the County mix legal and election traffic on the same routers? Also, what did the County provide the previous auditors they hired to perform their audits or is this just another example of the inadequacy of those audits?
