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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2020, @08:01PM (1 child)
In many ways this is why I think decentralized responses are best.
When you have a centralized authority that says "Ok, everybody do this!" and everybody follows... well that is great when they're right. But when they're wrong? Maybe not such a big deal in this case, but in a different case we might be looking at an explanation to the Fermi Paradox. By contrast when you leave it to people to evaluate what's up and make their own decision, you are 100% guaranteed that some people will do dumb things - which kind of sucks. But you're also almost 100% guaranteed that at least some people will adopt the right strategy.
Decentralization is really little more than a microcosm of evolution. Some get it right, some get it wrong, and in the end the winner (and the lucky) move on and repeat the game ad infinitum.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2020, @10:23PM
We on the morally superior right have adopted the right strategy!!