Political persecution of public interest dissidents at its finest.
Arrest warrant issued for ex-Florida data scientist Rebekah Jones
211–220 of 231 posts
Re: Arrest warrant issued for ex-Florida data scientist Rebekah Jones
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
People were banned from financial services for growing weed and being sex workers, largely at the request of the right. And now the right is complaining this is coming back to them.
The equivalent would be advocating for "growing weed and being sex workers".
No, the equivalent would be anyone else banned from patreon for violating terms of service. Patreon is not a bank or a 'financial institution'.
Re: Arrest warrant issued for ex-Florida data scientist Rebekah Jones
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
This particular warrant case is not being searched for any violent behavior and has no history of violence, with the warrant happening in a place with no history of violence or abuse. There is no reason to be pulling guns in a home with children as soon as one enters it. It shouldn’t be routine to draw weapons in a place where there is no reason to presume weapons exist.
It being Florida is enough reason to presume guns might be present in the house. Note that contrary to the expectations of many foreigners, Florida does not have a list of all Floridians who own guns. In fact it's actually illegal for the state to create such a list. The children seem to be irrelevant; if children weren't in the house I doubt you'd suddenly be fine with what the cops did, so the presence of children…
> In fact it's actually illegal for the state to create such a list.
To elaborate on this a little bit, NO state in the US has such a list - not one worth a damn, that is. For instance, NY recently mandated the registration of all "assault weapons" in the state, but compliance there is estimated to be in the single-digit percent range. (1m+ applicable weapons, ~45,000 registrations - the definition is really broad and includes essentially everything semiautomatic with a detachable magazine) These weapons were previously legal to own/buy/sell/transfer, and would continue to be legal to own if registered - and registration still didn't crack 10%.
Extrapolate to people that the police are likely to deal with in an adversarial manner, and you can see that a DB entry showing "no guns at 123 Main Street" is absolutely worthless.
Re: Arrest warrant issued for ex-Florida data scientist Rebekah Jones
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Different threat models, but a raid is a raid. Just like an arrest is an arrest, even though in the US it will necessarily involve firearms and in Ireland, it almost never will.
> a raid is a raid Nonsense. There's a world of difference between a couple of cops knocking on your door and a full squad of fully armed, fully armoured militarised faux-soldiers busting down your door and threatening to shoot you, your family and your pets - and often following through on those threats.
You are moving the goal posts.
Police knocking on your door is not a raid - the element of surprise is the defining factor, from the US to anywhere in Europe to an infantry section in Kandahar.
You claim above that raids are unique to the US and its abnormal police, but now the claim has morphed into the manner in which they are conducted that's different.
Even in Ireland, where police are routinely unarmed and gun crime is rare, if there's a reasonable suspicion that a suspect may have firearms, a police raid will involve nearly identical weapons and equipment to a US SWAT team.
I think you have an unrealistic view of policing outside of the US. There are no police forces that do not conduct raids.
The militarisation of police is separate problem, and the solution is not going to involve removing the tactics that the so-called normal police forces rely on.
Re: Arrest warrant issued for ex-Florida data scientist Rebekah Jones
#215How many other instances are out there where authorities "can't say what someone is charged with" until they're in custody. This smells like a CYA deal with DeSantis and his partisan bungling of the COVID crisis.
Probably millions of instances. I think I'd prefer the state not announce what it is charging people with. Once she's charged, she should be able to say so. But consider the possibility one is falsely accused of rape. In my case, I'd want the charge kept private until the courts sorted things out. Or until I was falsely imprisoned at least.
A basic aspect of the court system is the public should know what the court is doing. The last thing you want is secret courts and secret police disappearing people. At any rate the charges will be public after she is arrested as required by law.
Re: Arrest warrant issued for ex-Florida data scientist Rebekah Jones
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I think doing data scientist work makes you a data scientist Then we just hope you Surgeon is not like that, and has at least a degree in Medicine.
I don't get it. 1) People on HN say the person isn't educated, so you link her degrees in varying fields (not statistics or epidemiology). 2) People on HN say that those fields are irrelevant to her work, so you explain their relevance to the field of statistics. 3) People say on HN that credentials don't matter as long as you're doing the work of a data scientist, at which point you declare the importance of a relev…
>I don't get it.
-I just said that she is probably perfectly capable of interpreting simple data.
-That you don't have to be a "data scientist" to understand simple data.
-Data Scientist is not a real Job but a base training (learn tooling and a bit statistic)
-A Mathematician/statistician/scientific-programmer has probably more of a clue what data's and statistics are and how to interpret them then any "based trained data-scientist".
-If it's so complicated you would need a specialized covid-data-scientist/mathematician, but it's NOT....compared to let's say, what Surgeons do...hence the degree in Medicine, with specialization on surgery.
I did not say she's wrong or right, but to say that someone has no clue because he/she is not even specialized in "fill in occupation" or employed as "fill in occupation" is just plain wrong, and shuts down every other opinion.
Just look for a example at Apollo 1, a fireman or chemist would have probably said: WHAT! filling the Cabin with pure oxygen is a terrible idea!!
But he's/she is not a Astronaut, Doctor or Rocket Scientist. With the logic here, he's maybe capable of understanding rocket-fuel or how to put out fires, but has no clue of humans and what they need in space...and he's not even employed as Human-equipment-specialist.
Re: Arrest warrant issued for ex-Florida data scientist Rebekah Jones
#217There’s a lot of talk in this thread of whether Jones is a data scientist or not, but that talk is missing something crucial - it doesn’t take a data scientist to assemble basic reports about infection rates and mortality. Little to none of what differentiates “data scientist” from “data analyst” or “statistician” is involved in these reports. There is no massive data, no black-box modeling, really no new statistics…
Right now, she is apparently an activist. There is nothing wrong with being an activist. However, IMHO, being a "data scientist" is inherently incompatible with being an activist. No matter how qualified you were, once you became a passionate activist, you are no longer a "data scientist" or a "data analyst" or a "statistician" on the topic. Again, there is nothing wrong with being an activist, but you can't be both.…
Can you please define activism for me, in your own words?
I'd hate to try to utilize my legally protected free expression rights, but accidentally do activism instead, so any tips or tricks you have would be greatly appreciated.
Re: Arrest warrant issued for ex-Florida data scientist Rebekah Jones
#218I’m seeing a lot of people posting conspiracy theories here and on social media. I wonder what makes this instance exceptional...
Re: Arrest warrant issued for ex-Florida data scientist Rebekah Jones
#219>After she was fired, Jones started her own online COVID-19 dashboard. But she said Saturday that she may no longer be allowed access to computers, the internet or other electronic devices as a condition of her release from jail pending trial. In the modern day, with so much that is online or involving computers, this should be considered unjust punishment, the likes of which should be reserved only for child moleste…
yeah what is the concern that she's going to hack the president's phone and steal the launch codes? /s
Re: Arrest warrant issued for ex-Florida data scientist Rebekah Jones
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it would be helpful if you let us know why you believe it is obvious.
In what sane world do you merit a police raid for publishing public health data? Assuming the worst that she accessed a computer she was not authorized to access. This data, in the aggregate, is public data. Regardless innocent until proven guilty applies. And to date the state hasn’t even made their charges public which seems ridiculous. ‘I have an arrest warrant for you, but I can’t tell you the charge’.
In typical comment section fashion most of the people including yourself don't know anything about the details of this case.
She was accessing a system that she was not supposed to access anymore including for messaging employees of the state of Florida. she was no longer an employee and was using the system to send out mass text messages.
They traced her IP and sent police to knock on her door with a search warrant. She would not open the door for over an hour so they eventually went into her home with more aggressive force. Her entire story for 2020 has been driven by her original termination due to her conflict with the data science team. She was making updates to the dashboard without their permission or approval and was terminated. Then when this happened she made a claim that is not substantiated that her conflict with the data science team was driven by a desire to hide data from the public on the part of the state. This was in May. The figures she claims were being hidden never materialized because it was never actually true. she had claimed tens of thousands more people had died than the state was reporting which was completely untrue.
The reality is that the partisan press and numerous partisan actors used her as a useful idiot to attack their political enemy Governor DeSantis. All of this was around this narrative that Florida must have far more deaths and infections because they were opening up more aggressively than other states with high death counts and infection rates. The reality is that the data is pretty clear and states like California aren't doing better than Florida in any metrics.
The most problematic element to all of this has been her shameless self-promotion that appeals to conspiracy theorist and others. And let's be clear: the media started calling her a data scientist to bolster credibility for their partisan attacks against DeSantis and that's the primary reason.
I would welcome any HN reader to look at the state statistics on covid especially per capita and wonder why the media treatment of certain states has been completely different than other states that have identical statistics. I have done so and the biggest driver I have found has been the political party of the governor. Illinois has not done well. California is not doing well. Florida has done far better than it should given its elderly population. Georgia is not markedly worse than other states, but media called their decision to open in the spring "an experiment in human sacrifice."