This is something I can actually speak on with personal experience. I do not at all believe this would be a civil case. I worked in a location where someone recently fired used administrator credentials to log in and commit security breaches, and in our case the FBI was called in. It was a pretty serious crime.
Not a “send in the SWAT team” kind of crime, so I agree that is excessive, but not a “we are going to sue you” situation. Breaching a government computer system is very serious. In my case, the government was a tribal government, so the FBI had jurisdiction, in the case here state police would likely have jurisdiction which was why they were sent.
I wondered if that would make a difference here. But still, this was a very minor, white collar crime. Arrest her, charge her with something and let the courts deal with it. And, as implied by some of her tweets, confiscating her computer equipment and phone was pointless since she was getting the information from and posting it to the internet. All she had/has to do is get a new computer and she’ll be back up and running. Unless, of course, they disable her credentials (and no one on the inside gives her access).
And again, it needs to be remembered, she was was fired for refusing to manipulate covid data. Her recent arrest was due, in large part, to posting the unmanipulated data for the public to see.
Only because you’re choosing a biased way to interpret what she said. You even admitted they pointed their guns upstairs to get her husband to appear. That means they pointed their guns at him.
Similarly, you’ve interpreted the word “raid” in a way that is outside of normal language. If some SWAT team cops came in, drew weapons, and then confiscated my property, I would 100% call that a raid.
I also notice that you’ve framed the people siding with her as being partisan. That we need to give her the same scrutiny as “the right.” But her politics are entirely irrelevant to this. She could be an alt-right neo-nazi, and she would still be the person who was giving the people access to data that the people are supposed to have, that the government of Florida is deliberately trying to hide from people. Yet you phrase this as the more loaded “breaching a government computer system.”
The bigger picture is that the government put together this “raid” (or whatever you insist on calling it) to try and stop her from giving the people the data they are entitled to. The government’s actions are killing people by hiding the data.
Acknowledging that is only a left/right position if we allow the right to define the truth about COVID-19 as a partisan idea.
I do not consider framing her as a liar who cannot be trusted to be unbiased. She was fired because she refused to unmanipulated data, and now was being intimidated for the same reason.
Wait, why do her credentials still work if she was fired? The Florida govt hires its IT professionals from the pool of costumed hosts at Disney World, i.e., a literal Mickey Mouse operation?
I think I read that everyone uses the same credentials to log into whatever system she was using to get the data (and they didn’t change the password and give the current employees the new one). Or maybe they just hadn’t remembered to disable her account.
Regardless of the reason, I just wanted to make the point that it’s not like she hacked into the system or happened to know someone else’s password. She just logged in (even if she wasn’t technically allowed to at that point) to the system like she always did.
It’s true that there’s no footage of snipers centering her husband in the crosshairs of their scopes. But when cops are pointing their guns in the general direction that they believe a person to be, it’s 100% appropriate to describe that as pointing guns at that person.
One theory I have is that she might have used service account credentials. It’s a real pain in the ass to change the password on every single service account in your organization. I work for state government IT myself (a different state) and if I got fired I might be able to get back into my organization’s network even if they revoked my own personal credentials. But then for my theory to work, she’d have to possess the kind of knowledge of her state agency’s network that someone outside of IT shouldn’t know, and my impression is that her role there wasn’t in that field. So then my question would be how careful the IT staff are about who knows that stuff in that agency. Which does question their competence.
I’m sure the IT professionals did a fine job. I would blame the administrators for ignoring the IT recommendations and security systems by eg: using the same username and login for everyone.
Even if it was negligence on the part of IT staff, I would still blame the administrators of said emergency systems.
Her words are that they “pointed a gun at my face” and “pointed guns at my kids”. That was her tweet.
Furthermore, while Jones claimed FDLE agents had pointed guns at her, her husband, and her children, the video footage she posted does not support those claims. The footage shows agents bearing firearms, and at least momentarily, pointing them up the stairs while ordering Jones’ husband to come downstairs. The footage does not show the agents pointing guns at or “in the face” of anyone. Snopes asked Jones if she had additional video footage that might support those particular claims. In response, Jones claimed “the video shows” that her husband and children were at the top of the stairs. In reality, neither her husband nor her children are shown in the footage at all.
Also, to others who state that this should only be a lawsuit, I will note that the crime she is suspected of is a third degree felony, which can carry a sentence of up to 5 years. She is suspected of violating Florida state law by accessing a computer system without authorization.
When I was involved in a situation like this, my work PC was confiscated until forensics could be run on it, as were PCs of some of my coworkers, and a couple of servers were also confiscated. That seems like what happened here. Of course, our equipment wasn’t confiscated by guys in tactical gear, so it was definitely different in that regard.
Still, it doesn’t change much legally for her, istm. If you’re fired from your job then you know perfectly well you’re not allowed to just go ahead and login to your former employer’s network.
Oh yeah, absolutely. She could very well have broken the law, I’m not disparaging the judge who signed the warrant. I don’t know enough to say whether she did or did not.
It’s true that there’s not video footage including both the guns and the kids, nor the guns and her face. It’s also true that the entire interaction does not appear to be on film. It’s 100% not true that this is therefore evidence that she’s prevaricating. Given the history of law enforcement claims about their own action, and given what does appear on video and how incredibly inappropriate it is to point their guns upstairs where they believe her husband is, I’ve got no benefit of the doubt for the cops here.
If what she’s claiming is true, then I am definitely sympathetic to her motives. We do know that public figures have made misleading claims to downplay the severity of the pandemic, Trump even admitted that he did so, supposedly to prevent panic. (I don’t believe that, but I’d have trouble believing him if he claimed water was wet at this point.) So she’s not claiming that Martians are secretly meeting with the Florida governor, her claims are fairly plausible. But I have to be skeptical about her in the sense that if she’s going to exaggerate about what the Florida police did, I wonder about her other claims. I’m not saying she is a liar though. I do hope there can be some real investigation as to the validity of her claims.
Assuming the IP trace is incontrovertible and charges are brought for unauthorized access of a computer system, I would expect some sort of defense like, “my computer was hacked by some third party and they sent the message”. And “anybody who has ever used this system knows my username and password but that’s the state’s fault”.
