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COVID-19 Whistleblower Has Hardware Confiscated

Christopher Frawley Christopher Frawley
Technology
9th December 2020
COVID-19 Whistleblower Has Hardware Confiscated
Jones to pursue legal action(GettyImages).

The Claim

Florida authorities raided the home of Rebekah Jones, confiscating her phone and computer.

Emerging story

For the past seven months, Rebekah Jones has been waging a war of information against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his State Government.

It began when Jones was fired from the Florida Department of Health in May. This was allegedly due to Jones exhibiting “a repeated course of insubordination during her time with the department, including her unilateral decisions to modify the departments’ COVID-19 dashboard without input or approval from the epidemiological team or her supervisors.” However, Jones offered another explanation: she was fired for refusing to publish manipulated data on the pandemic which had been altered in favor of the Governor’s plan to reopen the state.

After this heated fallout, Jones created her own COVID-19 data tracker and continued to publicly update it over the following months. All was relatively quiet until this past Monday when police officers entered Jones’ home with a warrant to collect her hardware. The validation for this seizure was that someone had hacked into the Florida emergency alert system and that investigators had tracked the hacker’s IP address to Jones.

A video from within Jones’ home which showed the officers entering and drawing their weapons quickly went viral. Jones claims that the officers pointed their guns at her two young children; the authorities have denied this accusation. The video does not fully show the scene unfolding.

Misbar’s Analysis

Jones’ story represents a serious threat to Democracy and transparency for many Floridians. Governor DeSantis has been widely criticized for his handling of the pandemic, and this particular use of force has been seen as authoritarian by many on social media. Despite this setback, Rebekah Jones has vowed to keep fighting what she sees as a corrupt establishment for as long as she is able. She plans on replacing her equipment and hiring a lawyer to pursue legal action against the state. A GoFundMe page she set up to pay for her expenses has accrued over $160,000 at the time of writing.

Misbar’s Classification

Commotion

Misbar’s Sources

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