SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the who-feels-safe-in-Florida-now? dept.
Armed police raid home of Florida scientist fired over Covid-19 data
Rebekah Jones, the Florida data scientist embroiled in a dispute with the state's Republican governor over the handling of coronavirus figures, had her home raided on Monday by armed police who confiscated her computers.
In a stream of posts on Twitter, Jones posted a video of the raid that showed state police carrying handguns escorting her out of her Tallahassee home. She can be heard saying: "He just pointed a gun at my children," with her husband and two children apparently upstairs at the time.
Jones claimed in her tweets that the raid was the work of Ron DeSantis, the governor with whom she has clashed repeatedly since she was fired by the state's department of health in May in a row over Covid-19 data. She compared the incident to sending "the gestapo", adding: "This is what happens to scientists who do their job honestly. This is what happens to people who speak truth to power."
The Florida department of law enforcement confirmed they had entered Jones's house on a search warrant. But in a statement the department said the action was related to a recent computer hack of the health department website, in which emergency response coordinators were sent an unauthorised message.
Also at CNN, The Verge, and The Hill.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2020, @09:48AM
I think this is a good example of why political types, on both sides, have difficulty every coming to any sort of an agreement - instead just ending up in ad hominem and other nonsense. You're saying here that percents don't matter. Imagine now somebody said that BLM is kind of bizarre since more white people, than black, are killed by police. Would you now resort to 'raw numbers don't matter, only percents' without skipping a beat, probably while simultaneously telling the other guy he was being disingenuous? In that case I'd actually agree with you, because it would be disingenuous. But in this case you're taking your turn there. Percents are all that matter - raw numbers are generally just used to mislead.
And yes, you are also absolutely right that our response to 9/11 was beyond retarded. It was politicians manipulating the *emotions* of the public to seize more power for themselves which has still not, and probably never will be, fully relinquished. And guess what's happening exactly again with COVID? A decade from now we're going to look back at all of the liberties we sacrificed, and wonder what in the world we were thinking. Do you think the "travel permits" we're creating today, will go away as COVID does? Passports, as a requirement for travel, were a "temporary war measure". So too will these travel permits be. Gradually your "travel permit" will come to be the equivalent of a domestic passport, necessary to participate in an ever widening range of activities. Oh, you smoked a joint, maybe downloaded a movie or song? Your permit is now revoked for a month - no need to even involve the courts since it's not even going to be an official government requirement, just something corporations will all voluntarily adopt. Fun times.