Could this worker have drawn attention to faulty code or shoddy methods with a typical blog post or news article? I have a feeling that the allegations, firing and potential trial are just increasing her profile beyond what it would've been, thus further exposing the case to scrutiny.

To scrutinize her, I worked for a time as a data analyst in the pandemic too. There was a lot of shoddy work in many places, but no one of the many great employees I worked with hijacked mass communication software to send an inane message. Look at her message's text, it reads like a Tweet, there's no substance to her critique of her government in the actual message in question (she offers some more detailed objections elsewhere).

For their part, Florida did a very poor job with COVID. The governor was part of the crew of the GOP who detests science and reason, it seems, or at least capitalizes on those feelings in the populace. I understand why they fired her, you can't have data analysts hijacking your software to send mass messages of protest. I'm not sure if the message really did much damage in the end, saying it distracted fellow employees...is that very damaging?

Comparing this to the case at Google, for instance, where the engineer wrote up a long essay with many data points and actual structure...I can't help feeling that both employees' messages were greatly disseminated by the hierarchy's response to them, though I believe her Tweet had much less discussion and text to generate a broader debate here on HN or elsewhere.