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Police Raid Home Of Woman Who Built COVID-19 Tracking Software For Government

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Gabrielle Temaat Contributor
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Florida police raided the home of COVID-19 data scientist Rebekah Jones on Monday, after she was accused of hacking the state’s health alert system, according to BBC.

Jones had built Florida’s official Coronavirus database. She was fired from her job at the US Department of Health in May after accusing officials of altering data to cover up the extent of the virus. She has since kept up her own independent database, the BBC reported. (RELATED: National Governments And WHO Relied On Suspect Data From Small US Company To Determine COVID-19 Policies)

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement obtained a search warrant to investigate whether Jones had hacked a government messaging system to tell employees to speak out about COVID-19 deaths. Jones denies this accusation, reported CNN.

Jones posted a video of the raid on Twitter.

10 officers raided her home in Tallahassee with guns drawn and took her computers, phone, and hard drives, according to CNN. The video shows an officer pointing a gun up a stairwell, where Jones said that her husband and children were.

A spokesperson for The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Gretl Plessinger, said that the officers called Jones and asked her to come to the door in order to avoid disrupting her family. He stated that she hung up on the officers and refused to come to the door for 20 minutes.