As Florida sets new records for daily coronavirus cases, we speak with a whistleblower who was fired in May from the Florida Department of Health after she refused to censor information about the state’s COVID-19 outbreak. Rebekah Jones is a data scientist who helped build Florida’s coronavirus tracking dashboard, and she says her termination came after she refused to manipulate data to support the state’s reopening. In December, police raided Jones’s home in Tallahassee, seizing her computer and phone and holding her family at gunpoint, as part of an alleged investigation into a hacking of the Florida Health Department’s website. Jones says she had not had access to the website for many months and that the raid was in retaliation for speaking out. “The state has been dodging releasing information at every opportunity,” says Jones, who now runs the independent coronavirus data portal Florida COVID Action.
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This post was originally published on Radio Free.
