Posted on 05/20/2021 3:07:55 PM PDT by marktwain
A forensic auditor helping conduct an audit of 2020 election machines in Arizona’s largest county disputed on May 20 reports claiming he backtracked on allegations that files were deleted from one of the machines.
“My testimony on May 19th before the AZ Senate is being taken out of context by some media outlets. To confirm: the ‘Databases’ directory on the EMS Primary Server WAS deleted containing the voting databases. I was able to recover the deleted databases through forensic data recovery processes,” Ben Cotton, founder of CyFIR, said in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times by the audit’s liaison.
Some reports, including articles from The Associated Press and CNN, alleged auditors had “backtracked” from or “reversed” allegations that files were deleted from a machine.
AP, for instance, claimed that Cotton said that “data was not destroyed, reversing earlier allegations that election officials in the state’s most populated county eliminated evidence.”
CNN claimed that auditors “backtracked” from claims that a key database had been deleted.
Both outlets left out the crucial context from Cotton’s testimony before Arizona state senators on May 18.
Cotton said in examining the machine that he discovered a master file table “that clearly indicated that the database directory was deleted from that server.”
“Subsequently, I’ve been able to recover all of those deleted files, and I have access to that data,” he said. “I have the information I need from the recovery efforts of the data.”
Outlets had only included the latter portion in attempting to promote the idea that Cotton’s testimony conflicted with what Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, a Republican, told Maricopa County in a May 12 letter.
The Associated Press and CNN didn’t immediately respond to inquiries.
Fann told The Epoch Times on May 20 that there was no backtracking of the deletion claims.
(Excerpt) Read more at theepochtimes.com ...
Not the same thing at all. There is video at the site, of the Arizona Senate hearing.
The video is very good.
Are you saying the databases were NOT deleted? The data would not need to be recovered if it had NOT been deleted. Maricopa County was destroying evidence—proves they are as guilty as hell!!
This is down in the weeds level of technical knowledge. Many do not know that just because you delete a file or a directory, that it does not actually remove the file. Rather it removes the reference to the file and makes that reference available for reuse. As long as that reference does not get re-issued (overwritten) the location of that file still retains the original information.
Thus, disk / data recovery tools can be used to recover a deleted directory.
Well, of course the gloom and doom trolls here on FR are bound to be disappointed. They work so hard to demoralize the faint of heart here.
and now you know that the leftist (cnn, etc) narrative put forth and/or reinforced by certain people here (who claimed based on their personal “expertise” that the auditor was incompetent) on this site were entirely wrong.
Go back and read the article. He was partially quoted, which gave the impression that he said the database had NOT been deleted…but what he actually said was that he had gotten the data from other sources because it HAD been deleted.
Good to see the auditors push back against the media distortions.
Bump for later
Why am I not surprised the CNN and other liberal news outlets continue to misreport what is going on in Arizona. Nobody believes CNN, WaPo, NYSlimes or any of the other liberal news outlets.
Who's surprised? People fell for it. That's what's important.
quite a few right here on this site ...
It is going on live, right now!
The hearing took place on 18 May. It appeared to be live.
It is 1 hour, 14 minutes, and 37 seconds long.
He recovered it with FORENSIC RECOVERY METHODS!
It was effing DELETED!
There is plenty of distortion to push back against. The county supervisors and the Maricopa County election officials are not showing themselves in a positive light by releasing carefully parsed statements that seem designed to mislead people and result in media soundbites intended to disparage the audit.
As but one example, the county election officials stated that they didn't delete the election files, but paragraphs later in their report they say that:
In accordance with the standard database archival processes, the data files (MDF file type) were moved to a backup hard drive in February to ensure the server had sufficient space to perform the statutory mandated March Jurisdictional Election. When this occurred, the SQL Log Files (LDF file type) demanded by the Subpoena were retained on the primary server. These files were not removed and were stored on the server when it was provided to the Senate on 4/21/2021.
Source: Maricopa County Report
Apparently even though "moving" a file from a server to a separate backup drive results in the file being marked as deleted on the original server, the Maricopa County elections people thought they should loudly announce that they didn't delete the file, and try to ridicule the people who pointed out that the file apparently had been deleted from the server.
It seems like they are parsing the difference between moving something from a disk drive so it is no longer present on the disk drive with deleting something from a disk drive so that it is no longer present on the disk drive.
MSM caught lying again
*bump*
I’ll buy the ‘we had to clear the table...’ argument for the moment. So why didn’t you inform the audit team that you had done so?
If you scream bloody murder about someone auditing your election, something is wrong with your election. And you know it.
I watched the video of this guys testimony and everything he said was technically correct. He did not back track, he said the master boot record for the file was erased. This is what occurs when you delete a file. He then said he was able to recover the database. It was hysterical when he stated the county would not turn over the router passwords because it would violate voters personnel information. He then stated the county claimed having access would impact law enforcement. I’m sorry but routers simply don’t work like that and the gentleman said so. The election was stolen, it just needs to be exposed in a way that everyone will understand.
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