Communications of the ACM
Software Detective Debunked Mike Lindell's Election Fraud Claims
In its 23-page report, the arbitration panel pointed out that Zeidman said he entered the contest not expecting to win, believing that any data offered had to have been strictly vetted, but in order to see history in the making.
Credit: Robert Zeidman
Robert Zeidman, a software detective who literally wrote the book on looking for evidence of wrongdoing in lines of computer code (The Software IP Detective's Handbook), was awarded $5 million on April 19 by an arbitration panel for winning the "Prove Mike Wrong" challenge. That is, he debunked a claim made by MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, who insisted that he had data documenting Chinese interference in the 2020 election. Lindell announced the contest during a 2021 so-called cybersymposium in South Dakota. He handed 11 files over to contestants, including binary files, text files, and a spreadsheet, and offered the cash prize to anyone who could prove that the data wasn't related to the 2020 election.
Zeidman quickly did so, documenting his analysis in a 15-page report and concluding that "the data Lindell provides, and represents reflects information from the November 2020 election, unequivocally does not contain packet data of any kind and do not contain any information related to the November 2020 election." Zeidman detailed the steps he had taken to analyze the data, ruling out an election connection.
From IEEE Spectrum
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