Rebekah Jones: Farewell data scientist from Florida surrenders to authorities

Rebekah Jones: Farewell data scientist from Florida surrenders to authorities

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Rebekah Jones was charged with a felony charge against users of computers, computer systems, computer networks and electronic devices, the FDLE said. She surrendered on Sunday to the Leon County Detention Center.

In a series of tweets on Saturday, Jones announced his intention to surrender to the authorities.

“To protect my family from ongoing police violence and to show that I am ready to fight whatever they play against me, I am becoming a police officer in Florida on Sunday night,” tweeted Jones.

“The governor will not win his war against science and freedom of speech. He will not silence those who speak.”

Jones was fired from the Florida Department of Health in May and repeatedly criticized the way Governor Ron DeSantis handled the Covid-19 crisis.

The FDLE said it is investigating whether Jones accessed a state messaging system without authorization to call state officials to talk about Covid-19 deaths.
Putting 'politics ahead of lives': DeSantis faces criticism of Florida's Covid-19 response

“It is time to speak before another 17,000 people die,” said a message sent on November 10, according to the statement. “You know this is wrong. You don’t have to be a part of it. Be a hero. Speak before it’s too late.”

Authorities traced the message to an IP address linked to Jones’ home, according to a search warrant statement.

On December 7, Jones’ home was invaded. Jones filed a lawsuit alleging that FDLE officials violated her First Amendment rights, deprived her of due process and illegally seized her computers, cell phone and storage media during a search of her home.

The suit claims that IP addresses are commonly “spoofed” and references news articles that found that the username and password of the message system that triggered the investigation were publicly available on the health department’s website.

Governor faces growing scrutiny

Jones’ investigation comes as DeSantis faces increasing scrutiny about how to deal with the pandemic.

In April, the governor falsely claimed that Covid-19 had not killed anyone under the age of 25.
Despite several outbreaks of Covid-19 in the state, DeSantis refused to allow municipalities to apply their own masking mandates or stricter social detachment laws. This limitation of local control has been criticized by mayors of both parties.
A South Florida Sun-Sentinel investigation found that the DeSantis administration worked to minimize bad news about the pandemic and spread misinformation.
Some health department spokesmen were instructed in September not to make statements until after the November election, and officials have hidden crucial data about the spread of the virus, the newspaper reported.

Jones, who helped build the state’s coronavirus panel, became one of the governor’s most severe critics, publicly claiming that DeSantis was to blame for the rising death toll.

In May, state officials said Jones was fired because he “exhibited a repeated course of insubordination” and modified a state data portal without input or approval from epidemiologists or their supervisors.
But Jones said she was fired after refusing to falsify state Covid-19 data.
'We are dying here,' says the Florida newspaper, as it pleads with the governor to issue a mask mandate across the state
Jones filed a complaint in July with the Florida Human Relations Commission.

After his resignation, Jones published his own Covid-19 statistics panel. She said she received internal records from people who worked for the state, including what she said was proof that state officials “were lying in January (2020) about things like internal reports and notifications from the CDC.”

That evidence was on “a bunch of flash drives” that the police took when they broke into his home, Jones said. She said she also had documents that had been accessed legally since she was a state employee.

Legal experts said the material could theoretically be used to target Jones’ sources if they violated internal information sharing rules.

The search warrant allowed law enforcement officers to retrieve “any and all computer equipment” that stores or transmits data, including hard drives, devices, software and correspondence “relating to the possession, receipt, origin or distribution of data involving the facilitation of criminal offenses. Computing . ”

Labor lawyers in Florida said state workers who leaked internal records to Jones could face disciplinary action or possibly legal problems – although they can seek protection under state reporting laws.

Curt Devine of CNN contributed to this report.

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