Arrest warrant issued for ex-Florida data scientist Rebekah Jones
tampabay.com
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The main choice points are around specific decisions with regards to how interpret messy data. Those decisions require domain expertise and a deep familiarity with how various public agencies in Florida work. Perhaps Jones has that expertise, perhaps she doesn’t. A title of “data scientists” doesn’t change that.
Measuring her claims really requires knowledges of how the state made its interpretation. If those interpretations don't correspond to how most other data outside of Florida is counted, then there is a problem.
This is why data transparency is so important: Accurately understanding regional and nation trends can help inform where resources are dedicated and how the virus spreads.
... you won't explain why you believe this and then complains that no explaining it will get you downvote?
You are aware that to be able to contest your logic, we need to be aware of your logic, right?
Okay so I'll make a guess, the fact that they defends a cause, their bias might affect how they present data? Is that why you believe they can't be a data scientist? That's a pretty naïve view of the world sadly. The fact that someone doesn't act like an activist, doesn't make them unbiased sadly. The only thing that it change is how aware you are from a potential bias.
This is just silly. So if a medical doctor becomes an activist on diabetes, they're no longer a medical doctor?
Your argument appeared to be that someone who is an activist can't also have a role that requires discipline and focus while interpreting messy data. In that case, there's no difference between that person being a data scientist or a medical professional.
Do you care to expand on your argument, and perhaps provide support as to why, for example, it's okay for a medical professional to also be an activist but not for a data scientist or tax accountant? Where's the line, and why?
I'd hate to try to utilize my legally protected free expression rights, but accidentally do activism instead, so any tips or tricks you have would be greatly appreciated.
And?
First, just because you are an activist doesn't mean you deserve to have cops point guns at your kids. That smacks of harassment.
Second, the charges keep mutating. The wrongdoing should be what was in the warrant. That smacks of harassment.
Third, Florida leadership has been diddling with the official numbers so continuously throughout the entire epidemic that it has lost all credibility.
The Bayesian priors suggest taking what DeSantis and Co are saying with extreme skepticism.
Especially since if Rebekah Jones were really wrong, they just wouldn't care about her at all.
In the modern day, with so much that is online or involving computers, this should be considered unjust punishment, the likes of which should be reserved only for child molesters.
Not speaking to the rest of the story. However, this by itself troubles me.
Someone whom is not in jail, who is otherwise allowed to participate in society; abridging their rights of freedom of speech, expression, and discourse with others? That seems over-broad.
The whole copyright violation criminalization started this pattern of laws, that every citizen can assumed to be in violation of.
And if everyone is in violation of such a law, the state is free to choose which violations are prosecuted and which are not. Capriciousness. One of many assaults on democracy, coming in a nice disguise.
https://spectator.us/topic/financial-blacklisting-sargon-akk...
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/02/27/financial-blacklis...
Quite honestly this looks like a toxic, bigoted individual. I'm absolutely unsurprised that some organizations choose not to do business with him.
Banned from society? I was unaware that you're "banned from society" because private business Patreon doesn't want a relationship with you.
Just like any farmer in the 1800s can just go lay his own railroad tracks across the continent, every website that hosts wrongthink is equally capable of creating their own banks, payment processors, data centers, and internet connections. These businesses aren’t restaurants. They’re critical, privatized infrastructure.
Patreon is not a bank. Patreon didn't even exist a few years ago. They are a middle man to collect money using other middle men. They don't even have a monopoly on this.
This person is also not a US citizen.
Your comment is bizarre and nonsensical. No one has been "banned from society" based on "legal speech", a meaningless phrase.
A lot of people have been banned from using specific internet services because they used them to make threats of violence, or to tell dangerous lies about COVID.
This isn't "banning them from society". Get a grip!
Also, we are talking two classes of people here:
* people who work against humanity to spread COVID-19 based on a pack of obvious lies
* people who wish to violently overthrow the elected US government based on a pack of obvious lies
and frankly, these people can get fucked. They are destroying the country and the planet, and they deserve every single penalty the law can give them.
If private corporations, which Republicans claim to love, use their perfectly legal power to stop doing business with horrible psychopaths, then good for them.
One side went crazy, and now we have to choose sides.
Are you on the side of the delusional hateful lawbreaking violent psychopaths, or with the majority?
(My theory - you are not with the majority.)
Operation Choke-Point was actually an Obama era policy.
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
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.
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.
Geographic information system manager for the Florida Department of Health's Division of Disease Control and Health Protection
hmm
>>They are generally unarmed raids
So then does not happen all the time in Ireland
You should really look into how the US conducts "raids" even when there is no "gangland" case involved.
They have one procedure for all raids, and it very militaristic, they are always armed, and it is ALWAYS excessive and violent.
What you are calling a "raid" in Ireland would not be what we in the US called a Raid which is very specific activity of police
Just like an arrest is an arrest, even though in the US it will necessarily involve firearms and in Ireland, it almost never will.
Nonsense. There's a world of difference between a couple of cops knocking on your door and a full squad of fully armed, fully armoured militarised faux-soldiers busting down your door and threatening to shoot you, your family and your pets - and often following through on those threats.
Police knocking on your door is not a raid - the element of surprise is the defining factor, from the US to anywhere in Europe to an infantry section in Kandahar.
You claim above that raids are unique to the US and its abnormal police, but now the claim has morphed into the manner in which they are conducted that's different.
Even in Ireland, where police are routinely unarmed and gun crime is rare, if there's a reasonable suspicion that a suspect may have firearms, a police raid will involve nearly identical weapons and equipment to a US SWAT team.
I think you have an unrealistic view of policing outside of the US. There are no police forces that do not conduct raids.
The militarisation of police is separate problem, and the solution is not going to involve removing the tactics that the so-called normal police forces rely on.
I live outside the US, dipshit.
Also didn't they wait something like 20 minutes before breaching the residence?
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.
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.
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.
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?
They have this sort of thing in some countries like China where the government arrests someone and nobody knows why.
It's not a great thing.
You make it sound like the police broke into her home and deliberately pointed weapons at her children. That’s completely bullshit.
The police had a warrant signed by a judge. They repeatedly asked her to open the door, she refused. This went on for over 20 minutes. When they eventually did get inside, they’re entering a premise where the suspect had already demonstrated to not be cooperating and it’s standard practice to enter with your weapon drawn.
You could argue with whether the warrant itself is justified. But the police did everything the way they’re supposed to and the only person who put those children at risk was the mother who refused to cooperate with a legally signed warrant.
We need to hold cops to a higher standard of behavior.
Sadly, when you give people a stick and tell them they are allowed to beat other people with it, at least some of them tend to start behaving a bit like wild animals. It’s sad, but seemingly unavoidable.
It shouldn’t be routine to draw weapons in a place where there is no reason to presume weapons exist.
The children seem to be irrelevant; if children weren't in the house I doubt you'd suddenly be fine with what the cops did, so the presence of children doesn't contribute to your point. Furthermore some of the narratives about what happened are greatly exaggerating the situation, claiming that cops pointed guns in the faces of children. I've seen no evidence of this happening, so I think some people are cynically pointing to the children in an attempt to emotionally manipulate others. I don't see any other reason to mention the kids. They simply aren't relevant to the story.
To elaborate on this a little bit, NO state in the US has such a list - not one worth a damn, that is. For instance, NY recently mandated the registration of all "assault weapons" in the state, but compliance there is estimated to be in the single-digit percent range. (1m+ applicable weapons, ~45,000 registrations - the definition is really broad and includes essentially everything semiautomatic with a detachable magazine) These weapons were previously legal to own/buy/sell/transfer, and would continue to be legal to own if registered - and registration still didn't crack 10%.
Extrapolate to people that the police are likely to deal with in an adversarial manner, and you can see that a DB entry showing "no guns at 123 Main Street" is absolutely worthless.
I wouldn't call it an injustice that she wasn't granted some sort of special treatment that's normally reserved for "famous people".
Wow, let's extend that reasoning just a bit further. If someone SWATs me (or pulls strings to get a warrant for my arrest), and I don't open the door immediately, I bear the responsibility for putting my family at risk?
So what? If somebody is knocking on my door, in the middle of the night, claiming to be a police officer, then making phone calls to verify that is 100% reasonable. If I had just been fired for politically motivated reasons, then making phone calls to alert the media when your home is being raided is 100% reasonable.
> They’ll most likely even find it boring and start skipping ahead to more knocking without a response.
Police are allowed to be bored. Police are allowed to sit outside a house and wait. It does them no harm, and does not justify them using additional force when serving the warrant.
Z is for "Zulu" time zone (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9706688/what-does-the-z-...)
So hour 13:00 in Z would be 8:00 am in Florida.
Nobody is denying it's government overreach, blatant disregard to our rights, and breaks the 4th amendment. But wool should've been over everyone's eyes like 10 years ago. The US acts no different than China in how the state allows government abuse of power to fuck you bureaucratically. Unlike places like Germany where the state compensates you for your time and money if they can't prove your criminality, also reserving your job as well unless convicted; The US just says fuck you but only with slightly more rights than China gives their citizens.
In a situation like this there may be a pause until the owner or lawyer arrives, but during that pause the people would not be permitted to be in the to-be-searched location without police supervision; the owner has the right to supervise police while they are searching, but they don't have any privacy right to do stuff there before letting the police in; if the lawyer's presence is required then whoever is in that location would let the police in and wait for the lawyer together with the police officers with neither doing anything until the search commences. If noone is present, then the police may seal the door while they wait for the owner or their representative to arrive; or, alternatively (e.g. if the owner is on the run), there is a process to recruit neutral witnesses from the community, e.g. having your neighbours supervise the search and sign off on what was taken out during the search.
(1): https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=states...
(2): https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo...
This person arrested is alleging that Florida has been fudging the numbers to make their situation look much better than it is.
If you read the emails related to this case, it's clear that the behavior she describes as "fudging the numbers" has no material impact on Florida's Covid-19 reporting.
Of course the state isn't really obligated to refute every claim made against them, but whether they do it don't, I'm only saying that the state is only denying her claim, snot actual evidence to support their counter claim of no manipulation of the data.
Except she's not. Here's the dashboard that she set up after being fired: https://floridacovidaction.com/. And here's the official state data: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/96dd742462124fa0b38.... The numbers are virtually identical.
There is exactly as much evidence for the claim that Florida is falsifying data as there is for the claim that Trump really won the election.
To be fair, Florida also has some of the lowest latitudes in the US.
A sibling comment is linked to her GoFundMe, which appears to be about halfway to it's 500k goal.
"Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials said Rebekah Jones has been under investigation since early November after someone illegally accessed the state’s emergency alert health system...."
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/e2-80-98censored-by-the...
"An affidavit for the warrant claims that an unauthorized message sent from a state emergency management account on Nov. 10 was traced to an IP address associated with Jones."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/12/09/raid-f...
Assuming the worst that she accessed a computer she was not authorized to access. This data, in the aggregate, is public data.
Regardless innocent until proven guilty applies. And to date the state hasn’t even made their charges public which seems ridiculous. ‘I have an arrest warrant for you, but I can’t tell you the charge’.
As I understand it, the police can tell _her_ the charges, but they cannot make the details of the warrants public until she has been processed. After that it becomes public record with the court.
This is itself an issue, because websites scrape court documents and re-publish the information as a service. They then charge a service fee to have the information removed, even in cases where the charges have been dropped.
Publishing public, aggregated, anonymous health data should not be a cause for this arrest; and I hope the judge that signed the warrant understands this. So there must be a different explanation and the state must provide it, and quickly.
She was accessing a system that she was not supposed to access anymore including for messaging employees of the state of Florida. she was no longer an employee and was using the system to send out mass text messages.
They traced her IP and sent police to knock on her door with a search warrant. She would not open the door for over an hour so they eventually went into her home with more aggressive force. Her entire story for 2020 has been driven by her original termination due to her conflict with the data science team. She was making updates to the dashboard without their permission or approval and was terminated. Then when this happened she made a claim that is not substantiated that her conflict with the data science team was driven by a desire to hide data from the public on the part of the state. This was in May. The figures she claims were being hidden never materialized because it was never actually true. she had claimed tens of thousands more people had died than the state was reporting which was completely untrue.
The reality is that the partisan press and numerous partisan actors used her as a useful idiot to attack their political enemy Governor DeSantis. All of this was around this narrative that Florida must have far more deaths and infections because they were opening up more aggressively than other states with high death counts and infection rates. The reality is that the data is pretty clear and states like California aren't doing better than Florida in any metrics.
The most problematic element to all of this has been her shameless self-promotion that appeals to conspiracy theorist and others. And let's be clear: the media started calling her a data scientist to bolster credibility for their partisan attacks against DeSantis and that's the primary reason.
I would welcome any HN reader to look at the state statistics on covid especially per capita and wonder why the media treatment of certain states has been completely different than other states that have identical statistics. I have done so and the biggest driver I have found has been the political party of the governor. Illinois has not done well. California is not doing well. Florida has done far better than it should given its elderly population. Georgia is not markedly worse than other states, but media called their decision to open in the spring "an experiment in human sacrifice."
From the article, and quite shocking:
> The Florida Department of Law Enforcement confirmed there is a warrant for Jones’ arrest but said it cannot disclose what charges she faces until she is in custody.
What do you think will come next? I see her winning a lawsuit against him or some part of the state.
"We were just following the WHO recommendations."
"She's just a web developer and doesn't understand anything about the numbers."
>>received a dual master's degree in geography and mass communication
>>where she completed course work with an emphasis on data science and was working on a doctoral dissertation titled Using Native American Sitescapes to Extend the North American Paleotempestological Record Through Coupled Remote Sensing and Climatological Analysis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebekah_Jones
...Just a Webdeveloper
And making your Doctor with emphasis on data science, has nothing todo with understanding simple data like covid-cases right?
BTW Earth science has probably more todo with data than anything else.
There’s a rationale around what is, and is not, included in case definitions and included in dashboards. It’s likely that these decisions are made by epidemiologists with not only specific training, but also access to much more data than the person who builds the dashboards.
Making a decision to include data in a visualization without understanding why is not a good idea because it’s common that people think they know what numbers mean, but only because they have limited visibility.
Having a degree in data science doesn’t mean that I’m a data scientist. If I’m hired in a web dev role, then I hope my input is received well and considered by epidemiologists in charge. And I hope they’d be able to spend time explaining the rationale behind their decisions.
This seems like a similar analogy where the build engineer decides to change the git repo because they know better than the dev team. Then someone reading the article says “well they have a PhD in computer science so they should know what they’re doing, it’s simple.”
Credentialism: belief in or reliance on academic or other formal qualifications as the best measure of a person's intelligence or ability to do a particular job
>making your Doctor with emphasis on data science, has nothing todo with understanding simple data like covid-cases right?
Plenty of employees have been let go for spreading falsities around COVID, most having been on the other side (COVID isn’t real etc). These behaviors are absolutely unacceptable and are dangerous.
Moreover, she is repeatedly referred to in the press as a data scientist, but all accounts of her actual work are that of a dashboard developer. Having done both myself, I can attest that they are very different types of work warranting very different training.
Literally all of her research involved gathering and communicating relevant insights from vast and disparate data sets, which is the role you just described.
> Having done both myself, I can attest that they are very different types of work warranting very different training.
She's educated as a data scientist specific to a given field. No different than a rocket scientist running numbers at a hedge fund. And I'd argue training v. education are vastly different; education gives context to job-specific training.
Pedantically pointing out that, literally, this is a false statement.
It’s ok to accurately reflect her work and that advanced degrees are hard without assigning incorrect and hyperbolic characteristics.
My statement is so generic as to be true in the context of fields involving scientific research. And that's in essence the point: that's what data science is in the end.
This isn't an attempt to incense those with Data Scientist in their job title or job description, but it's why so many STEM folks can easily find homes in Data Science without formal education on the topic.
Also, data science is a sort of generic term and trying to generalize to any form of common characteristics is not very productive. I’m not aware of any certified curricula for data science or accreditation bodies so it’s kind of a marketing label assigned to everything from boot camps to GIS programs.
I think this is positive since lots of people work with data. But it’s problematic to assume that it means anything other than someone wants to signal that they work with data.
But that is, in fact, the definition of research ("the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions") and the publication of research findings fits the definition of communication.
I guess my point is: if you're going to be pedantic on the internet, you should consider whether it's worth your time defending your own contribution. I've got no qualms defending the idea that Rebekah Jones is a data scientist.
> [data scientist] is the role you just described.
No. She's not a data scientist and she herself doesn't even make this claim [1] Her job titles were: 1) GIS Analyst and 2) Geographic Information Systems Manager. Both are systems/dev roles. Clearly, neither is a position from which one is qualified to contravene the WHO.
Her degrees (per her own LinkedIn page) are in Geography. Take a look at the degree requirements at Syracuse (which offers both a BA and a BS (Jones earned the BA option)) [2] and LSU [3]. Next, go look at a few DS job postings and tell me the requirements are aligned (they are not).
I'm sure Jones is smart. I'm sure Jones is well versed in Geography. But she's not a data scientist. Even if she were, her skills and experience would not qualify her to overrule WHO guidance.
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/stormjones/ [2] http://coursecatalog.syr.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=3&po... [3] https://lsu.edu/ga/programs/msgeography.php
You know what GIS means? Geo INFORMATION System....Analyst.
Not many other Fields produces more Data then geo...maybe Weather...that's more complicated data (and hard to interpret) as most people who claim the title Data Scientist will ever see.
>But she's not a data scientist.
Stop with that it's no even a real job, it's a base training. Do you really think a Data Scientist has any plan what Cern Data s even mean...no.
"My Experts™ are more Experts™ than your Experts™"
Not a single person in this thread as actually made any factual statements or presented any actual evidence of either sides correctness or validity.
It simply "She has these degree;s so we should listens" vs "The WHO Says...."
It would be amusing if it was not so sad...
Nevertheless, Ms. Jones was paid as a web developer by the state, not as a data scientist, and if she was publishing data she thought was important at the expense of data the state's paid data-scientists thought were important, she had to be fired.
What if Ms. Jones was taking advantage of her position as a web developer and publishing her work as a hobbyist data scientist that showed masks are ineffective at the expense of the data science work of official state data scientists who were saying they are likely to be helpful? I'd still consider her a data scientist, I just would want the state to be able to fire her.
Then we just hope you Surgeon is not like that, and has at least a degree in Medicine.
1) People on HN say the person isn't educated, so you link her degrees in varying fields (not statistics or epidemiology).
2) People on HN say that those fields are irrelevant to her work, so you explain their relevance to the field of statistics.
3) People say on HN that credentials don't matter as long as you're doing the work of a data scientist, at which point you declare the importance of a relevant degree to the field.
So, which is it that draws importance? The college-level education of any kind, or the credentials that establish the doctor?
I find your opinions to be largely at-odds with one another.
Personally : I don't care at all about credentials if the quality is there. With regards to this specific case, i'll wait until the facts are in -- but it rubs me the wrong way that authorities don't want to speak of her charges even though she's available and willing to cooperate from what I read in the article.
P.S. I share your pain with those that edit comments in a dishonest way post-reply. It's a real problem on HN.
-I just said that she is probably perfectly capable of interpreting simple data.
-That you don't have to be a "data scientist" to understand simple data.
-Data Scientist is not a real Job but a base training (learn tooling and a bit statistic)
-A Mathematician/statistician/scientific-programmer has probably more of a clue what data's and statistics are and how to interpret them then any "based trained data-scientist".
-If it's so complicated you would need a specialized covid-data-scientist/mathematician, but it's NOT....compared to let's say, what Surgeons do...hence the degree in Medicine, with specialization on surgery.
I did not say she's wrong or right, but to say that someone has no clue because he/she is not even specialized in "fill in occupation" or employed as "fill in occupation" is just plain wrong, and shuts down every other opinion.
Just look for a example at Apollo 1, a fireman or chemist would have probably said: WHAT! filling the Cabin with pure oxygen is a terrible idea!!
But he's/she is not a Astronaut, Doctor or Rocket Scientist. With the logic here, he's maybe capable of understanding rocket-fuel or how to put out fires, but has no clue of humans and what they need in space...and he's not even employed as Human-equipment-specialist.
I'm open to the idea she was and is a data scientist, nevertheless the state was not paying her for that. It was paying her to publish on official state website(s) data and analysis provided by the state's official, paid data scientists.
Just as it’s realistically impossible to not break driving laws while behind the wheel, giving pretext to a traffic stop, the same is true if you give people looking to get you a huge swath of your life.
There are flaws in the justice system. And by no means is it totally fair. But in this sort of situation, where a judge has seen the evidence and issued a warrant, usually there is usually something there. It's very possible this is selective prosecution. But, I'll bet you a good sum of money at even odds that there's probable cause she committed a crime.
“ Lawyer's fees, private investigators, an armed security guard for my home since the police published my home address and contact information online, moving expenses so my family can get out of the Governor's reach, and any costs associated with this fight that I may not be anticipating. My family and I will need to move and get set up in a new place.”
Holy hell it’s like she pulled a Snowden or something. All she did was be good at her job and tell the truth. Just another reason for me to never live in Florida.
What "truth" do you think she was exposing? The original dispute that caused her to leave her job was a boring technical dispute about whether to automatically publish data from PDFs or to have it reviewed for accuracy first: https://polimath.substack.com/p/a-long-one-about-the-florida.... Despite insinuations from various irresponsible media figures, there is zero evidence that Florida is falsifying data.
There’s no story here, except about a hysterical, attention-seeking woman who poked the wrong bear. Good luck to her. If nothing else, I hope she learns a lesson.
It makes me glad I did bureaucratic rebellion then. I learned quickly that the powers that be will never concede to you, people quickly disperse or disown you the moment you need help fighting something, and ideals are worthless things fighting for short of endless mass mobs demanding it.
Like criminally not innocent? Not clear on what you mean hear.
Honestly, I think she was just attributing sinister motives to fairly inane bureaucratic decisions about data and reporting. But once she decided to go on CNN and lob accusations, this whole fiasco turned into a political Rorschach test that is completely unmoored from the underlying reality.
We have some serious work to do. I'm very hopeful that we're going to have a very solid team at the national leadership level in 3 days, after a year of a vacuum, but I'm still concerned about state and local levels. I don't think these types of personality fights are very helpful.