[Hoot Gibson]

More ignorance on display. 

Transporting large volumes of data in vehicles is a common practice. I have done it myself when I worked for a consulting company in Indianapolis. Our largest client's facility was located 40 miles outside of the city in the middle of fields of corn and soybeans. We used large, rugged containers to transport tapes containing backup data, which was part of the client's disaster recovery plan. The tapes were stored in a fireproof vault in the consultant's office.

It is also not unusual for IT offices to be located in remote areas. The cost of living is much lower in rural areas and small towns than it is in most major cities. If an area has a low cost of living and fast internet speeds, it can be an ideal location for an IT facility.

Do you propagandists really think that it would have been more efficient for the subcontractor to send its entire staff from Montana to Phoenix to analyze the data? There is nothing illegal or unethical to have people working on a project to sign nondisclosure agreements and perform work in their own office. If the data had been transferred over the internet, which would have been a less secure alternative, I can only imagine what your reaction would have been. By driving the data from Arizona to Montana, the chain of custody was maintained and there was no chance that the data would be hacked.