L.A. prosecutors: China had back-door access to U.S. election data

Calling it “probably the largest data breach in United States history,” Los Angeles County prosecutor Eric Neff said Chinese contractors working for a Michigan-based software company had direct control over U.S. election data through an app for poll workers called PollChief.

The prosecutor, describing the volume of data in the breach as “astounding,” was commenting on the criminal case against Eugene Yu, the CEO of Konnech, for allegedly storing Los Angeles election worker data on servers based in China.

The complaint issued by the L.A. District Attorney’s Office cited as evidence a message from a Konnech project manager through a Chinese-owned messaging app that said “any employee for Chinese contractors working on PollChief software had ‘superadministration’ privileges for all PollChief clients.”

Sam Faddis, former CIA officer, put that statement in perspective in a Substack post.

“An individual with super administration access to a system can do effectively anything inside that system,” he wrote. “He or she can delete data, steal data, alter data, change programming, etc.”- READ MORE