by Wendi Strauch Mahoney at UnCover DC
2000 Mules, a 90-minute documentary produced by Dinesh D’Souza, is the visual tip of the ballot trafficking iceberg based on the digital evidence collected by True the Vote (TTV) and OPSEC. Utilizing geospatial technology to ping cellphones using data from apps, Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of TTV, coordinated with Gregg Phillips’ OPSEC team of cyber analysts to establish a “pattern of life.” They then corroborated those anonymous cellphone data trails with publicly available dropbox surveillance videos. Phillips has been doing highly specialized work on elections globally for forty years but the technology used in this project has only been around for the past few years.
The AP published a “hit piece” on May 3, attempting to expose TTV’s “flawed analysis of cellphone location data and ballot drop box surveillance footage” presented in 2000 Mules. We will examine those claims, weaving in information from the movie and conversations with Engelbrecht over the weekend.
Notably, the AP story states neither D’Souza nor Engelbrecht responded to “a request for comment.” At least in Engelbrecht’s case, she was given little to no time to respond. She “received the request for comment at 11 p.m., and this story was published the next day.”
THE SILLINESS OF THE @AP AND @POLITIFACT “FACT CHECKS” BECOMES OBVIOUS WHEN YOU SEE “2000 MULES.” CABDRIVERS GOING PAST DROPBOXES, REALLY? ELECTION WORKERS? THESE COVER-UP ARTISTS WANT YOU TO BELIEVE THEIR PREPOSTEROUS CONJECTURES INSTEAD OF YOUR OWN EYES HTTPS://T.CO/GXMJ2YMXBK
— DINESH D’SOUZA (@DINESHDSOUZA) MAY 8, 2022
Is Geospatial Data with Cellphones Precise?
“Cellphone data is like digital DNA,” Engelbrecht explained. A court case on the precision of this technology makes that claim difficult to dispute. In response to the 2016 Supreme Court case, Carpenter v. United States, Justice Roberts wrote a 2018 opinion in which he describes the level of precision tracing afforded by pinging a cellphone using geofencing technology. “Accordingly, when the Government tracks the location of a cell phone,” writes Roberts, “It achieves near perfect surveillance as if it had attached an ankle monitor to the phone’s user.” Two of the most striking paragraphs from his 2018 opinion are captured below:
Much of the premise of the AP story is built around proof that cellphone data is not as precise as Justice Roberts describes in his opinion. Notably, Engelbrecht mentions in the movie that their data in Georgia was used by law enforcement as a test case to help law enforcement solve a cold murder case of a young girl.
