One of many individuals getting into data into Florida’s coronavirus web site was fired in a dispute over what info needs to be made public and was, in keeping with a report within the Each day Mail, allegedly also fired from Florida State College in 2017 for having an affair with a student — and later was charged with cyberstalking.
Rebekah Jones, who says she helped design the location, stated she was fired as a result of she wouldn’t manually change data to help Gov. Ron DeSantis’ resolution to start the reopening of the state. DeSantis denied that, saying Jones was fired for insubordination and may by no means have been employed as a result of she is being investigated for cyberstalking. He stated she was not one of many web site’s designers however somebody who entered data.
The Each day Mail reported Jones was charged with three counts of cyberstalking her student Garrett Sweeterman, then 21, who filed a restraining order in opposition to her.
She allegedly created a “revenge porn” web site referred to as SurvivingGarrett and despatched the hyperlink to on-line boards specializing in feminism and the #metoo motion.
Jones also wrote a 342-page manifesto with a story of her affair with Sweeterman; she posted on-line at the very least 60 pages, together with display screen grabs of their sexts.
Within the manifesto, she stated she was impregnated by Sweeterman. She gave delivery to a lady in mid-2018, and she or he has an 8-year-old son with her husband.
Jones, whose dismissal as an info methods supervisor with the Florida Division of Well being was first reported by Florida At present, couldn’t be reached for remark.
Robert A. Morris, Jones’ lawyer within the revenge porn case, emailed a press release to the Each day Mail.
“It’s unlucky that Ms. Jones has been thrust into this highlight,” he wrote. “I’m sure that acceptable investigation and inquiry from oversight committees and different investigative businesses will reveal what has occurred and why it has occurred. Ms. Jones has a sound educational historical past. Her prior private historical past and challenges shouldn’t be combined with the current circumstance. Ms. Jones is working laborious to resolve private and personal authorized points which might be utterly unrelated to her awkward thrust into the nationwide media by way of no alternative of her personal.”
Sweeterman’s lawyer also emailed a press release to the Each day Mail.
“Mr. Sweeterman has nothing to do with the present state of affairs between the Florida Division of Well being and Ms. Jones, and doesn’t know something about it,” Tiffany Cruz wrote in an e-mail. “In 2019, Ms. Jones printed numerous allegations about Mr. Sweeterman, from the time he was her student at FSU. Ms. Jones filed numerous authorized actions in opposition to him, which the court docket data will present had been rightly dismissed by her and the court docket.”
Jones has a PhD in geography from Florida State College, a grasp’s in geography and mass communication from Louisiana State College, and a BA from Syracuse in geography and journalism, in keeping with a resume posted on FSU’s web site.
FSU couldn’t be reached for remark.
Jones had introduced in an e-mail to researchers that she was reassigned from her duties overseeing a web based dashboard that gives day by day snapshots of Florida’s COVID-19 infections, testing and deaths.
Within the e-mail she despatched to researchers and others, Jones stated that as of Might 5, she was not answerable for the dashboard and that she wouldn’t count on “the identical stage of accessibility and transparency” within the data introduced on the dashboard, including that her “dedication to each is basically (arguably completely) the explanation I’m not managing it.”
Jones was extra pointed in an e-mail to West Palm Seashore tv station WPEC when she stated she was faraway from her function as a result of she wouldn’t “manually change data to drum up help for the plan to reopen.” It was unclear what data she was requested to alter.
Afterward, the governor’s spokeswoman, Helen Ferre, stated in an e-mail that Jones had “exhibited a repeated course of insubordination,” asserting that Jones had made “unilateral choices to change the Division’s COVID-19 dashboard with out enter or approval from the epidemiological workforce or her supervisors.”
The dashboard debuted on March 16, offering an in depth glimpse of the place coronavirus has hit, what number of Floridians have examined constructive for the an infection, what number of have been hospitalized and the way many individuals have died. Over the weeks, new info was added, together with the variety of infections by ZIP code.
After some prodding by the information media, the state also started releasing data on nursing houses and prisons, though it has declined to reveal some info that’s now a part of public data lawsuits filed by a number of information media corporations.
Within the early weeks of the outbreak, well being officers cited privateness points in declining to establish the place infections had been occurring, solely to reverse themselves when public concern over the outbreak grew and shortly grew to become a political problem.
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