Rebekah Jones, the creator of Florida’s coronavirus database who has actually clashed publicly with Guv Ron DeSantis in a conflict over information manipulation, stated she would give up on Sunday after a warrant was released for her arrest.
The state department of law enforcement stated it would not expose information of the allegations against the 31- year-old information analyst till she remained in custody. The agency had been investigating accusations Jones illegally accessed a state messaging system and staged an armed raid at her Tallahassee home last month.
Jones, who was fired by the Florida department of health in May for insubordination after claiming she was bought to censor and manipulate details on the database she established and handled, stated she was informed the charge was unrelated to that investigation, and accused DeSantis of retaliation.
” The guv will not win his war on science and totally free speech,” she stated in tweets that also confirmed her objective to turn herself in to cops on Sunday night. “He will not silence those who speak out.”
The episode prolongs a bitter conflict that began last year when Jones claimed she was informed to change information to support the Republican guv’s strategy to resume the state economy regardless of soaring Covid-19 cases.
Jones was fired by health officials and DeSantis was swift with his own retribution, subjecting Jones to a public character assassination and dismissing her as an insubordinate and dissatisfied previous worker.
Because her termination she has continued to amass and share state Covid-19 details online, preserving a competitor to the official database and more just recently compiling and publishing details on cases in Florida schools.
Jones’s December arrest followed an allegation by the Florida health department that an unidentified individual or persons hacked into a state system used to send emergency interactions and sent out an unauthorised message to members of a group accountable for collaborating public health and medical response.
The message prompted recipients to “speak out prior to another 17,000 people are dead. You know this is incorrect. You do not have to be a part of this. Be a hero. Speak up before it’s far too late”.
On Saturday, Jones said a police search of computer devices seized throughout the raid on her home in December “ found no proof of a message“.
She conceded that “police did find files I received/downloaded from sources in the state, or something of that nature” but insisted the “criminal activity” was not connected to the original warrant.
In her latest tweet, posted on Sunday lunchtime, Jones stated she was “censored by the state of Florida until further notification”.
Jones published a video of the 7 December raid and said authorities pointed weapons at her kids. Her household have actually because vacated Florida for safety, she said. A Florida judge is mulling her ask for the return of seized computer devices.
On Sunday, Florida reported 11,093 new cases of coronavirus for a total of 1,571,279, and 135 deaths, bringing that toll to 24,515
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