The curious case of Rebekah Jones, the Florida COVID data, and the accused hacking incident

[Dan Druff]

I don't know how many of you have been following this story, but it's very interesting.

Rebekah Jones worked as a data scientist for the state of Florida. I first heard of her in May, when she claimed she was fired because she refused to falsify COVID infection data, which she was supposedly ordered to do in order to make Governor DeSantis look good.

Her superiors at work dispute the allegation, claiming that she was on a bizarre campaign to "expose" DeSantis, and was routinely ignoring direction, instead spending her time at work attempting to distribute propaganda. They claim she modified a state data portal on her own and didn't seek approval as required, and they finally had to let her go.

At the time, I wondered who was right. I still do. Keep in mind that COVID data isn't all black and white. For example, "COVID deaths" is extremely subjective, and is subject to some degree of interpretation. A young guy in my county died of a drug OD, was tested COVID positive after death, and was ruled a COVID death. That's just one of many examples. There are also allegations of undercounting COVID deaths in some states, which is basically the reverse of this.

Anyway, it's not hard to believe that the state ordered Jones and others to report COVID data in some kind of nonstandard and/or unethical fashion. It's also not hard to believe that Jones was simply a DeSantis-hater with a differing opinion of what constitutes a COVID death, and went on her own unauthorized crusade. Or perhaps it's a bit of both.






The story got more interesting on December 7 when Jones' home was raided. The allegation was that Jones hacked a state system, and used it to message all employees with access to it. The message read:

it's time to speak up before another 17,000 people are dead. You know this is wrong. You don't have to be a part of this. Be a hero. Speak out before it's too late.

Jones claims that she didn't do it. She says that the raid was simply retaliation from DeSantis' office for speaking out. DeSantis' office denied knowing about the raid in advance.

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/GeoRebekah/status/1336065789313638400

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/GeoRebekah/status/1336081235907637255

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/GeoRebekah/status/1336156866167103488


Here's an article about everything up until that point: https://www.npr.org/2020/12/08/94420...data-scientist


This week, she filed a lawsuit. I'll analyze all of this in the next post.

[Walter Sobchak]

DeSantis is known to be corrupt even by Florida standards and tried to hide the extent of COVID in Florida early on so he could resist calls for restrictions that were already in place in other states. Don't know about this woman's specific claims though.

[Dan Druff]

It was tough to unpack what happened here.

Could it possibly be that Jones was framed by DeSantis, in retaliation for her whisleblowing? Jones claims this was a ruse, so the government could confiscate her devices and examine who was cooperating with her. Sounds too much like something out of a movie, but perhaps it was possible.

Or did Jones do something well-meaning but rash during one night of anger over the situation, and now doesn't want to take legal responsibility for it?

Interestingly, both sides seemed to be dishonest. Jones offered a weak denial essentially stating, "I'm not a hacker, I'm a data scientist", without directly claiming that a look at the evidence would exonerate her. DeSantis' office claimed they knew nothing of the raid beforehand, which is very hard to believe.

However, the civil lawsuit filed this week clarifies the picture a bit: https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/21/us/re...nvs/index.html


Here's the key part:

The suit states that IP addresses are commonly "spoofed" and references news articles that found that the username and password for the system of the message that triggered the investigation were publicly available on the health department's website.

Under Florida law, "no reasonable officer would regard accessing the site to be a crime," the lawsuit claims.

Notice that there is no denial that the IP accessing the system was hers. Instead, they are blaming it on "spoofing". This is very significant!

It is very difficult to frame someone using a residential IP. There's essentially only two ways to do it here:

1) Gain access to a device operating at Jones' home
-or-
2) Gain access to a wireless router operating at Jones' home

Actual "spoofing" is damn near impossible, despite what you see on TV shows. People confuse IP hiding (such as usage of proxy or VPN services) with IP spoofing (using someone else's IP to pretend to be then). The former is incredibly easy, the latter is almost impossible.

But notice that this is not what is being alleged! It is being claimed that her IP was "spoofed" -- not that any kind of personal device or router breach occurred. Furthermore, the lawsuit offers no proof of the so-called "spoofing" -- only a laughable claim that it's possible.

An innocent person would not go this route. They would assert that Jones absolutely did not access the system from her home, and that either her IP address was falsified in the evidence, or that a forensic analysis of her devices would reveal a breach which was used to impersonate her. Instead, we get some nonsense about "spoofing", and claims that accessing the system wasn't a crime anyway.

This really looks like the legal machinations of a guilty person. Rather than claiming the evidence is on their side and that a detailed look of the facts will exonerate their client, the lawyers are going the route of wild conspiracy theories and "this wasn't actually a crime" route. Not the look of an innocent person.

Furthermore, if looking to frame/punish Jones, you'd think they would have done something much more harmful than simply send a message asking people to speak out. In fact, this would be a dumb government frame job, because they would be harming themselves in the process, encouraging state employees to speak out about the government lying! Highly doubtful this was the route they'd be taking if this were a frame job.

Also, there's the matter that Jones took 23 minutes to answer the door during the raid, according to the bodycams of the officers involved. This makes it look like she was trying to rapidly hide evidence, and she's offered no legitimate explanation for why she took 23 minutes to answer the door, once the officers identified why they were there.

I do think that Jones believes she was doing the right thing. Correct or incorrect, it seems she perceived that DeSantis was putting out misleading data, and was on a crusade to expose the truth. In a way, I can respect that, but at the same time, laws are there for a reason, and you can't go totally rogue with this type of shit without consequences. If she had concrete data that DeSantis was up to no good, there were plenty of left-leaning publications which would have gladly examined and published it. In short, I think there's a good chance she's a kook (albeit a well-meaning one), and now is trying to worm out of criminal charges for something she actually did.

[limitles]

I don't know how many of you have been following this story, but it's very interesting.

Rebekah Jones worked as a data scientist for the state of Florida. I first heard of her in May, when she claimed she was fired because she refused to falsify COVID infection data, which she was supposedly ordered to do in order to make Governor DeSantis look good.

Her superiors at work dispute the allegation, claiming that she was on a bizarre campaign to "expose" DeSantis, and was routinely ignoring direction, instead spending her time at work attempting to distribute propaganda. They claim she modified a state data portal on her own and didn't seek approval as required, and they finally had to let her go.

At the time, I wondered who was right. I still do. Keep in mind that COVID data isn't all black and white. For example, "COVID deaths" is extremely subjective, and is subject to some degree of interpretation. A young guy in my county died of a drug OD, was tested COVID positive after death, and was ruled a COVID death. That's just one of many examples. There are also allegations of undercounting COVID deaths in some states, which is basically the reverse

You cannot build a case that relies on anecdotes and hyperbole. “Covid deaths are extremely subjective.”.
No. Where does that come from?

Covid doesn’t kill overnight. Covid victims have time to raise the alarm. Sudden deaths, as in overdoses, are related to extreme conditions. There is no chance a competent physician or coroner would ignore data relating to an overdose.

[Dan Druff]

Also LOL @ raising $248k so far on her Gofundme.

Also LOL @ the kissy-face, heavily filtered picture of her on the Gofundme, presumably meant to subliminally entice lonely soyboys to open up their wallets for her. I guess it worked.

Also LOL @ the name of the Gofundme being "DefendScience".

https://www.gofundme.com/f/DefendScience




Easy mark, SFO

[PLOL]

I chipped in $10. It's the least I can do to tilt people

[Dan Druff]

I don't know how many of you have been following this story, but it's very interesting.

Rebekah Jones worked as a data scientist for the state of Florida. I first heard of her in May, when she claimed she was fired because she refused to falsify COVID infection data, which she was supposedly ordered to do in order to make Governor DeSantis look good.

Her superiors at work dispute the allegation, claiming that she was on a bizarre campaign to "expose" DeSantis, and was routinely ignoring direction, instead spending her time at work attempting to distribute propaganda. They claim she modified a state data portal on her own and didn't seek approval as required, and they finally had to let her go.

At the time, I wondered who was right. I still do. Keep in mind that COVID data isn't all black and white. For example, "COVID deaths" is extremely subjective, and is subject to some degree of interpretation. A young guy in my county died of a drug OD, was tested COVID positive after death, and was ruled a COVID death. That's just one of many examples. There are also allegations of undercounting COVID deaths in some states, which is basically the reverse

You cannot build a case that relies on anecdotes and hyperbole. “Covid deaths are extremely subjective.”.
No. Where does that come from?

Covid doesn’t kill overnight. Covid victims have time to raise the alarm. Sudden deaths, as in overdoses, are related to extreme conditions. There is no chance a competent physician or coroner would ignore data relating to an overdose.

Learn to read, les.

In my own county, they reported a 37-year-old male overdosed on drugs. He was found dead, tested, and it was determined both that he died due to a recreational drug OD, and that he also happened to have COVID.

Ruled a COVID death.

That wasn't a COVID death.

Yes, this situation was uncommon, but there are plenty of less-obvious situations where a "COVID" death was actually from other causes. It is possible DeSantis was taking a more conservative approach with COVID death classification than other states, and Jones simply didn't like it.

I don't know who was right or wrong here, but I'm simply stating that "number of COVID deaths" isn't as easy to determine as you think.

[Dan Druff]

I'm also curious about this state system which she was said to have accessed.

Her attorneys are claiming that the login info was "publicly available on the webpage", and the government claims the system was breached.

I'm trying to imagine what kind of government system would post login info to the public, to where the public could use such info to mass-message employees. Anyone have any idea about this situation? I don't feel like trying to dig this up.

If she really just went onto some publicly accessible system and fired out messages to state employees, that's obviously not a crime. However, I have to imagine it was much more than this, especially since her lawyers are also trying to weakly deny she did it, rather than simply assert that anyone had the right to use the system at any time.

I think it is possible that "hacking" is the wrong term, and instead she simply found login info which was inadvertently exposed on a publicly accessible page.

[Sloppy Joe]

Also LOL @ raising $248k so far on her Gofundme.

Also LOL @ the kissy-face, heavily filtered picture of her on the Gofundme, presumably meant to subliminally entice lonely soyboys to open up their wallets for her. I guess it worked.

Also LOL @ the name of the Gofundme being "DefendScience".

https://www.gofundme.com/f/DefendScience




Easy mark, SFO

There's that incel behavior I've been alluding to! Do you think attractive women have an advantage in crowdfunding that grinds you?

No clue about this but put me on the same that isn't Ron DeSantis, given his year of documented gaslighting and lying about COVID in Florida.

[tgull]

DeSantis is known to be corrupt even by Florida standards and tried to hide the extent of COVID in Florida early on so he could resist calls for restrictions that were already in place in other states. Don't know about this woman's specific claims though.

Hey FORUM: Walter has no idea about this topic, BUT his compulsion being a multi-millionaire and all, requires him to respond to EVERY POST. LOL, what a strange man this guy is.

[Dan Druff]

Also LOL @ raising $248k so far on her Gofundme.

Also LOL @ the kissy-face, heavily filtered picture of her on the Gofundme, presumably meant to subliminally entice lonely soyboys to open up their wallets for her. I guess it worked.

Also LOL @ the name of the Gofundme being "DefendScience".

https://www.gofundme.com/f/DefendScience




Easy mark, SFO

There's that incel behavior I've been alluding to! Do you think attractive women have an advantage in crowdfunding that grinds you?

No clue about this but put me on the same that isn't Ron DeSantis, given his year of documented gaslighting and lying about COVID in Florida.

It's not incel behavior. It's common sense.

This chick is a data scientist, not a model. Posting a picture of herself for the Gofundme is fine, but if it's heavily filtered and she's making a kissy-face in order to appeal to horny soyboys, that's not acting in good faith.

She's asking for legal fees. If she wants to make money via posting sexy pictures, she can start an Onlyfans page.

[limitles]

You cannot build a case that relies on anecdotes and hyperbole. “Covid deaths are extremely subjective.”.
No. Where does that come from?

Covid doesn’t kill overnight. Covid victims have time to raise the alarm. Sudden deaths, as in overdoses, are related to extreme conditions. There is no chance a competent physician or coroner would ignore data relating to an overdose.

Learn to read, les.

In my own county, they reported a 37-year-old male overdosed on drugs. He was found dead, tested, and it was determined both that he died due to a recreational drug OD, and that he also happened to have COVID.

Ruled a COVID death.

That wasn't a COVID death.

Yes, this situation was uncommon, but there are plenty of less-obvious situations where a "COVID" death was actually from other causes. It is possible DeSantis was taking a more conservative approach with COVID death classification than other states, and Jones simply didn't like it.

I don't know who was right or wrong here, but I'm simply stating that "number of COVID deaths" isn't as easy to determine as you think.

I'm reacting to your words. “Covid deaths are extremely subjective”. Let's examine that statement first. Cause of death is not taken lightly for many reasons. Professionals with much to lose are responsible.
When you say extremely subjective are you implying a coin flip is almost as good as a professional opinion?

Sudden death is not linked with Covid 19. Overdoses are. Even someone fresh out of school would follow a protocol to consider all. Overdoses leave significant markers.

[TheXFactor]

Florida Governor Ronald Desantis is a fucking Trump supporter and a person against science. A guy who rules from his gut and doesn't give a shit about what you think except for information about Covid-19.

He will literally come down and kill anyone releasing real data regarding Covid-19 for Florida. DeSantis had Florida stop reporting real information regarding Covid-19 back in July.

The numbers that Florida currently releases are made up billshit. The real numbers of infected and dead from Covid-19 are far higher.

[limitles]

Learn to read, les.

In my own county, they reported a 37-year-old male overdosed on drugs. He was found dead, tested, and it was determined both that he died due to a recreational drug OD, and that he also happened to have COVID.

Ruled a COVID death.

That wasn't a COVID death.

Yes, this situation was uncommon, but there are plenty of less-obvious situations where a "COVID" death was actually from other causes. It is possible DeSantis was taking a more conservative approach with COVID death classification than other states, and Jones simply didn't like it.

I don't know who was right or wrong here, but I'm simply stating that "number of COVID deaths" isn't as easy to determine as you think.

I'm reacting to your words. “Covid deaths are extremely subjective”. Let's examine that statement first. Cause of death is not taken lightly for many reasons. Professionals with much to lose are responsible.
When you say extremely subjective are you implying a coin flip is almost as good as a professional opinion?

Sudden death is not linked with Covid 19. Overdoses are. Even someone fresh out of school would follow a protocol to consider all. Overdoses leave significant markers.

What happened to fatt todd. The fabricator, the truth stretcher.
He didn't stick around long enough to verify his obscene anecdote proclaiming a local suicide was deemed covid.

He ran away from that one.
What a fake. What a sham. Critical thinker, I think not.

Fatty just logged on. It will take a while to reply with a page of blather
Boys and girls you can't verify bullshit. Just so you know
Don't try it. The owner of this site is a fool

[Cerveza Fria]

So, here's some local perspective from someone actually living in South Florida, who has followed this story for months.

Some background. Desantis came out of nowhere to win the Republican Primary for the office of Governor in 2018. He was supposed to lose that Primary to Adam Putnam (who was the Commissioner of Agriculture and the clear frontrunner). Trump endorsed DeSantis and the deal was sealed. All of the Major newspapers and media outlets supported the Democrat Andrew Gillum. For those of you with short memories, he's the guy who recently got caught incoherent and disheveled in a hotel room with a male prostitute and a bunch of meth. Before the election he was the subject of a FBI bribery investigation that was never completed. Desantis barely won. The first thing he did when he got elected was to give the Teachers the largest pay increase in history. That shut up the Teachers' union for a while and he generally got high marks from all on both sides of the isle until COVID hit.

COVID hits and he bans flights from NY. Governor Cuomo takes it personally and sicks CNN and the rest of the Main Stream Media on Desantis. Game on!

So, yes The State of Florida was manipulating the data on COVID. But unlike other states like California, it was not inflating them. It wasn't calling every hospitalization a COVID case. Mrs. Jones got caught manipulating the data (not the way the state wanted) and was terminated for insubordination. She of course went public with her claims of being a "whistle blower" and CNN and MSDNC and the Miami Herald were delighted to run her story. But what you won't see on CNN is her back story. She was arrested in July 2019 and charged with 3 counts of Stalking following Cyber harrasment, Cyber Harassment and Stalking. All but the single misdemeanor charge of stalking were dropped and she was released on pre-trial supervision. This was all PRE-COVID, and in no way can she claim this charge was retaliatory. There is also no way she can claim the latest charge is out of character for her. She's not just a "whistle blower".

Yes, I believe she was asked to manipulate data. Since her termination, she started her own website to counteract the state's official COVID numbers. And yes, I believe she hacked into the State's system. The way she described the police raid is way different than the body cam video that was released. She is full of shit and she is using this to make money off of COVID, just like the website she set up. And she has the support of the Miami Herald and Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel who have run daily hit pieces on DeSantis. She is just a willing tool trying to make a name and a buck from COVID.

[garrett]

I live in Florida and saw this along the way now


Its not really news down here at all. Or if it werent for the Interwebs and here I dont think I would have even read about all this or known actually. But briefly reading up on all this shenanigans id say offhand that, shes probably making a Mountain out of a mole hill. And no one is actually, really, trying to destroy HER, especially not our Governor. Some of it seems a little like throwing Mud at a wall and seeing how much it will stick.


Overall, I think DeSanctis is a pretty good Governor, hes not a stupid guy either. So maybe this with her and him is more personal in ways too. Society will forget about all this, and her in short time. He on the other hand, hes a real possible GOP Presidential Candidate for the Republicans actually, if that is something he wanted to do of course..

[Dan Druff]

BUMP

Well, looks like I was right: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ree-times.html

First off, she's nuts. Three years ago, she had an affair with a 21-year-old student, then stalked him and posted revenge porn after he ended it with her. The student also impregnated her, and in 2018 she had the baby. Her cuck soyboy husband stayed with her.



Here's the dude she was obsessed with. Pretty sure OSA would like this guy:



She was arrested for this behavior, by the way.


Read the Dailymail article I posted above. Very enlightening regarding how crazy this chick is.

Second, a Reddit poster claims that her "whistleblowing" was BS. Instead, she was just obsessed with artificially inflating the numbers, and then did it anyway when her superiors refused her allowed her to do so. He also provided links regarding other nutty behavior she's engaged in over recent years:

Scam.

This is the woman who slept with her student when she was a TA at FSU then posted revenge porn of him and threatened to fail his roommate if he broke up with her, leading to her being charged with harassment and cyberstalking and her dismissal from the university.

https://news.wjct.org/post/criminal-...st-drag-august

A few months after that she was charged with felony robbery, trespass and contempt of court for violating a domestic violence injunction

https://www.documentcloud.org/docume...Affidavit.html

Around this time she was also charged with criminal mischief and property damage

https://www.documentcloud.org/docume...hief-2017.html

And way before this she was let go from LSU and assaulted a police officer when she wouldn't leave

https://www.lsureveille.com/daily/cr...7ab6bb2be.html

She was fired because she was counting all positive antibody tests as positives even though they have major accuracy problems, was counting people who contracted COVID-19 in another state and then died in Florida as a Florida citizen death, and overruled the State Medical Examiner's cause of death ruling in recording some cases. Her stats were pretty far off from the Johns Hopkins and NYT dashboards. She also sent a message out on the emergency system telling people to rise up, and from her criminal past looks like a lunatic.

This whole thing was a scam to get people to donate to her Go Fund Me pages, which have raised over half a million bucks. If you fell for this under some misguided 'believe science!' notion you got suckered.

Here's the Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/...ed_technology/



However, this didn't stop Forbes from naming her Technology Person of the Year, which is as good of an example as any how much our mainstream media has let us down this year.

Forbes made it all political, instead of doing just a slight bit of investigation which people on the internet were apparently able to do without much difficulty: https://www.forbes.com/sites/helenpo...h=3f86ced37088



Was I right about this chick being full of shit, or what? There were so many red flags here. LOL at anyone making a hero out of this histrionic nutcase.

[nunbeater]

The biggest red flag here is Druff taking the Daily Mail at face value

[Dan Druff]

The biggest red flag here is Druff taking the Daily Mail at face value

The Daily Mail puts out the facts and gives no shits. I love them.

People call them a "tabloid", but in reality they just publish things that other outlets are afraid to touch, and they supply details when other outlets don't want to do so because of political correctness.

Feel free to point out what's false about their take on the story, though. Do you believe this crazy chick is a hero?

[Dan Druff]

BTW, I guess the kissy-face filter pic worked!

She's raised $253k from smug liberals, most of whom really believe they're donating to "fight for science!!!!!!11"




The left is so easy to scam when it comes to victimization stories.