Tag: police state

Controversial COVID-19 Data Scientist’s Home Raided, Guns at Pointed Family, Computers Seized

Earlier this year in May, Rebekah Jones, the data scientist working for Florida, who put together that state’s COVID-19 database, made national headlines when she was fired by the state over a disagreement in reporting the numbers. Jones says she was fired for refusing to manipulate data that showed a higher number of deaths while the state claimed she was fired for insubordination. Fast-forward to this month, and what started as a firing ended with armed agents of the state allegedly pointing guns at an entire family, during a raid on their Florida home.

After she was fired in May, Jones made the following claim:

I was asked by DOH leadership to manually change numbers. This was a week before the reopening plan officially kicked off into phase one. I was asked to do the analysis and present the findings about which counties met the criteria for reopening. The criteria followed more or less the White House panel’s recommendations, but our epidemiology team also contributed to that as well. As soon as I presented the results, they were essentially the opposite of what they had anticipated. The whole day while we’re having this kind of back and forth changing this, not showing that, the plan was being printed and stapled right in front of me. So it was very clear at that point that the science behind the supposedly science-driven plan didn’t matter because the plan was already made.

After she was fired, Jones continued her work reporting the numbers by starting the website Florida COVID Action, which is a dashboard of Florida COVID information, like the one she used to run for the state. Since then, she’s been running this site without much resistance from the state — until now.

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Mayor Garcetti Bans Walking As Latest LA Lockdown Begins

As LA Mayor Eric Garcetti kicks off the most restrictive lockdown in the country in the City of Angels, it appears even walking and exercise are now banned as California takes a page out of Australia’s COVID-19 playbook.

During comments earlier this week, the LA Mayor warned “it’s time to cancel everything”, including “unnecessary travel on foot” – also known as ‘walking’.

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THE MICROSOFT POLICE STATE: MASS SURVEILLANCE, FACIAL RECOGNITION, AND THE AZURE CLOUD

NATIONWIDE PROTESTS AGAINST racist policing have brought new scrutiny onto big tech companies like Facebook, which is under boycott by advertisers over hate speech directed at people of color, and Amazon, called out for aiding police surveillance. But Microsoft, which has largely escaped criticism, is knee-deep in services for law enforcement, fostering an ecosystem of companies that provide police with software using Microsoft’s cloud and other platforms. The full story of these ties highlights how the tech sector is increasingly entangled in intimate, ongoing relationships with police departments.

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CDC urges ‘universal’ indoor mask use when not at home

Lewandowski, Bossie added to Pentagon advisory board after latest purge

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday recommended the “universal use of face masks” as a key step to fighting the coronavirus pandemic, warning the U.S. has “entered a phase of high-level transmission.”

The agency recommended in a report that officials at the state and local level “issue policies or directives mandating universal use of face masks in indoor (nonhousehold) settings” as one strategy to combat the virus, a tactic President Trump and many GOP governors have resisted.

The CDC said wearing a mask is most important when someone is indoors somewhere besides their house and outdoors when six feet of distance cannot be maintained. Masks should also be used inside one’s household when someone is infected or has had recent exposure to the virus, the report said.

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