Tag Archive for: arizona

AP FACT CHECK: Trump makes false claims about Arizona audit

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PHOENIX (AP) — Former President Donald Trump issued three statements in two days falsely claiming that voting fraud and irregularities…

PHOENIX (AP) — Former President Donald Trump issued three statements in two days falsely claiming that voting fraud and irregularities cost him Arizona’s electoral votes.

Trump relied on comments made Thursday by contractors hired by state Senate Republicans to oversee a partisan review of the 2020 vote count in Maricopa County, which includes metro Phoenix.

The “forensic audit,” as Senate GOP leaders are calling their review, is overseen by Cyber Ninjas, a small computer security firm with no election experience before Trump began questioning the 2020 results. Its CEO, Doug Logan, spread false conspiracy theories about the election before he was hired to lead the Arizona review.

Logan and Ben Cotton, a digital forensics analyst working on the audit, described issues they say need further review. Trump has parroted them as evidence the election results are tainted.

County officials and elections experts say the claims are false and based on a misunderstanding of election materials, which they say creates an appearance of irregularities where none exists.

Trump laid out his claims most specifically in a statement Friday night. A look at the irregularities he alleges in that statement:

TRUMP: “168,000 fraudulent ballots printed on illegal paper (unofficial ballots)”

THE FACTS: All of that is false. The ballots were not unofficial or printed on illegal paper, and even Logan never alleged they were fraudulent.

Logan pointed to ballots with the printing slightly offset between the front and back. He claimed this could cause votes to be counted for the wrong candidate if ink from one side bleeds through to another. He said the alignment issues were mostly from polling-place ballots, which are printed onsite, and said about 168,000 ballots were cast that way. The overwhelming majority of Arizona voters cast ballots by mail.

“We are seeing a lot of very thin paper stock being used especially on Election Day,” Logan added.

The allegation harkens back to…

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Election security experts say giving Maricopa County routers to Arizona Senate’s election auditors would be concerning

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Routers serve as the mail carrier of a computer network: They deliver messages using maps of networks and computer addresses.

Senate liaison Ken Bennett on the latest with the Arizona Senate audit of ballots

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Think of it like a mail carrier who relies on maps and addresses to get mail to the right place.

Given access to the mail carriers’ or routers’ information, it would be easier for a bad actor to get access to a person’s mail, or to target the information inside the network.

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That’s an analogy one tech expert – Matt Bernhard, a research engineer at Voting Works, a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for open source election technology — gave while explaining the importance of keeping Maricopa County’s routers secure.

Arizona Senate Republicans are trying to get access to the county’s routers and administrative passwords to the county’s voting machines, and to provide that to private contractors they’ve hired to audit the county’s 2020 election results, which began April 23.



a group of people sitting in chairs: Maricopa County ballots from the 2020 general election are examined and recounted by contractors hired by the Arizona Senate in an audit at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix on May 11, 2021.

© David Wallace/The Republic
Maricopa County ballots from the 2020 general election are examined and recounted by contractors hired by the Arizona Senate in an audit at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix on May 11, 2021.

Bernhard said providing access to the routers is a “pretty specific risk” to the county. Also, he and other election security consultants across the country are unsure why exactly the auditors would need the routers to audit the election results.

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Senate liaison Ken Bennett has said they are needed to check whether the county’s voting machines were connected to the internet during the election. But a county spokesperson said that the auditors already have the information and machines to perform that check, and a previous independent audit commissioned by the county proved they were not.

County Attorney Allister Adel has said that giving…

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Arizona Eyecare Practice Hit by Ransomware Attack

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Cochise Eye and Laser in Sierra Vista, AZ, has been hit by a ransomware attack.

The Jan. 13 incident “involved the encryption of our patient scheduling and billing software,” according to a notice on the practice’s website.

“There is no evidence that the data was taken, only that it was encrypted, and in some cases deleted, making it impossible for us to access anything in our scheduling system,” the practice stated in the Feb. 13 notice. “Our office is still operating with paper charts, so we can continue care of our patients.”

The practice said it’s been augmenting its security measures as well as recovering data and creating a new offsite backup. We will be using charts to rebuild our schedules.

“Everyone seen after January 1st, 2020 will be called to reschedule follow up appointments, as we have no way of knowing when they were originally scheduled,” the practice stated. “Although there is no evidence the data was taken, this is considered a breach of protected health information. Names, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers, and in some cases social security numbers were stored in our billing software.”

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Cochise Eye and Laser is recommending that its patients place a fraud alert on their credit file.

The practice reported the incident to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, stating that records for up to 100,000 patients affected.

Cochise Eye and Laser operates optometry clinics and a surgical office.

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Google Location Tracking Lambasted in Arizona Lawsuit

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The lawsuit, filed against Google by Arizona’s Attorney General, alleges that the tech giant uses “deceptive and unfair conduct” to obtain users’ location data.
Mobile Security – Threatpost