[ashwal]

What a weird story that keeps getting weirder.

I am a data scientist who spent June in Tallahassee helping coordinate state-wide COVID testing with FDEM (Florida Department of Emergency Management) and state health officials.

Everyone I worked with was pretty dedicated to getting the roll out right (including the governor and his appointees too..)

My data & work was spread far and wide with no issue - but just a personal anecdote

[jkhdigital]

Agreed--as a Florida resident, I have heard a variety of highly-charged opinions on this story from many of my fellow residents, but very few hard facts to confirm or deny any particular narrative.

I think the raid on Ms. Jones home was a grotesque and unwarranted use of police force, but I also think her "whistle-blowing" story is highly questionable based on the facts available.

[fdschoeneman]

I don't know what the raid on Ms. Jones house was about and am going to reserve judgment until I do. There's just so much weirdness. She calls herself a data scientist, which she may well consider herself to be, but the state appears to have hired her as a website developer, and fired her as a website developer, because she refused to put out data in her capacity as a web developer that the state's paid, official data scientists were giving her.

I guess you could consider her a whistleblower. But it's unclear the state did anything wrong other than a) insist that the numbers from its data scientists be published on a state website instead of Ms. Jones's and b) protect its emergency communication system by investigating abuses of same by what to me, at least, looks like a very likely suspect.

[MilnerRoute]

According to the article in the Tampa Bay Times, Jones' official title was:

Geographic information system manager for the Florida Department of Health's Division of Disease Control and Health Protection

[fdschoeneman]

Interesting.

[xibalba]

If you have few hard facts, how are you evaluating the justification for raiding her home?

[kasey_junk]

It’s fairly easy to reconcile the opinions “I’m not sure if she has done something criminal” and “the police used excessive and intentionally intimidating force when other safer options were open to them”.

[jkhdigital]

The raid on her home is one event which is pretty well documented, and I have little tolerance for militarized police tactics in general.

[mdoms]

I'd suggest you have a look at how policing is done outside of USA. A raid on someone's home is almost never justified - it would take highly exceptional circumstances to make a "normal" police force perform like that.

[overscore]

Raids are common in almost every European country - which in general have "normal" police forces - where the police believe someone might destroy evidence.

[trasz]

Only if the charges are heavy enough, and even then it usually happens in civilized way, not like SWAT.

[overscore]

It happens in Ireland all the time for personal amounts of drugs. They are generally unarmed raids unless it's a gangland case, though.

[spoonjim]

In some countries, a surprise raid of your home means “we think you have hostages in your basement” or something at that level.

[wl]

You're going to see surprise raids in any country whenever the police believe there's evidence to be found that would be destroyed or tampered with if the suspect had advance notice.

[chillwaves]

That doesn't explain them training guns on her when she was clearly unarmed and not a threat.

Also didn't they wait something like 20 minutes before breaching the residence?

[ptero]

It is a weird story. I do not think she is being targeted for speaking her mind or advocating a particular view of the COVID, the charges almost certainly are for accessing the non-public data she should not have accessed.

And some data is sensitive. For example, if someone was pulling private medical records and harassing or blackmailing another person with that information it would, to me, justify both the search and the potential arrest. It should not be the statistics about COVID -- that data is usually available to the public after some aggregation.

That said, the state response and the arrest warrant look very strange in this case; so strange that it smells of a personal vendetta (e.g., find a potential HIPAA violation and throw a book at her). I hope the state will clearly identify what the heck she is accused of accessing and why it is so damaging that the state resorted to its recent actions. My 2c.

[greenyoda]

> For example, if someone was pulling private medical records and harassing or blackmailing another person

I think it's highly unlikely that a state data analyst would have access to any private medical records. The Covid stats would have probably already been aggregated by the hospitals before they were sent to the state.

> find a potential HIPAA violation and throw a book at her

HIPAA is a federal law, so a violation of it wouldn't be prosecuted by the state of Florida.

[plussed_reader]

Your chosen terminology is a little strange to me(weird); would you by chance be an American?

This is a textbook example of the Government(State of Florida) targeting an individual for their speech.

But then again, Do-Nothing DeSantis is the successor to Senator Red Tide Rick. Par for the course with Florida, sadly.

[joering2]

+1. Also for that raid alone where public saw SWAT team members putting machine guns in her children faces, she most likely will settle and get $10MM+ settlement in less than 10 years. Of course our taxpayers money. DegenerateSantis will be then on his next high paid gig. Watch and see.

[yanderekko]

>Also for that raid alone where public saw SWAT team members putting machine guns in her children faces

Uhh what? The only video I've seen has an officer walking around with a handgun drawn and pointing it as he moves around her house, and at one point he aims it upstairs where her kids are.

How does this get telephone-gamed into "SWAT team members putting machine guns in her children faces"?? Is there some other video I haven't seen?