The top executive of an elections technology company was arrested by Los Angeles County officials in connection with an investigation into the possible theft of personal information about poll workers.
George Gascn, the Los Angeles County district attorney, said in a statement that Eugene Yu, the founder and chief executive of Konnech, was arrested on suspicion of theft.
Scheduling poll workers is one of the things Konnech develops. Los Angeles County is a customer of the company.
Groups challenging the validity of the 2020 presidential election accuse the company of storing information about poll workers on their server in China. In recent statements to The New York Times, the company denied keeping data outside of the US.
The investigators in Mr. Gascn's office found data in China. The data would be in violation of Konnech's contract.
The county didn't give any more information about its investigation. The alleged conduct had no impact on the tabulation of votes and did not change election results, according to the statement.
The district attorney's office said that data breeches are an ongoing threat to the digital way of life. When weentrusting a company to hold our confidential data, they need to be willing and able to protect our personal identifying information from theft We are all victims if that's the case.
The company stood by statements it made in a lawsuit against election deniers who had accused the company of wrongdoing.
The spokesman said that the data that Konnech may have had was provided to it by L.A. County.
Questions about the arrest were not answered by the Los Angeles County district attorney. The county wants to extradite Mr. Yu to Los Angeles.
The founder of True the Vote, a nonprofit dedicated to uncovering election fraud, came under scrutiny this year. The team at True the Vote downloaded personal information from a server in China that was owned by Konnech. According to online accounts from people who attended a conference about voter fraud, the data was obtained by using the server's default password. The group said that it had given the information to the FBI.
Some advocates are concerned about China's influence on America's election system.
The company was close to signing a contract with Dekalb County. McCarthy questioned where the company stored and secured its data during a public comment period at the elections board meeting.
The New York Times was told by Konnech that it had no evidence of a data breach. Konnech had a subsidiary in China that was involved in the development and testing of software. There were always dummy test data used by the programmers. The subsidiary was not open anymore.
True the Vote and its founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, were sued by Konnech last month. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which made it illegal to access a computer without authorization, was one of the charges brought against the group.
True the Vote had to reveal who gained access to Konnech's data after the judge in the case granted an emergency restraining order. The name was made public in a court filing.
The group said it was honored to have played a small part in the investigation. The organization thanks the Los Angeles district attorney's office for their quick and thorough work.
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