I linked to Rebekah Jones‘ keynote address at the August 2020 Data Science Conference on COVID-19 sponsored by the National Institute for Statistical Science. Below is a song in tribute to her, wishing her well.

(h/t Bill McKibben)

We’re doing what we can. Support Rebekah Jones efforts and legal defense fund.

ASA’s Ethical Guidelines for Statistical Practice

ASA President writes to HHS Secretary regarding the integrity of and rebuild confidence in the COVID-19 hospital data

Reacting to new HHS Covid19 hospital reporting guidance, the ASA signs letter with 100 organizations urging the administration “not to advance the new data collection plan any further and instead consult with the public health and healthcare communities to discuss effective strategies for ensuring the availability of the data we all need and want to bring the pandemic under control in the U.S.”

ASA signs onto letter to Vice President Mike Pence saying “it is vital that we lead with science and with the best data available” and objecting “to any attempt to cast doubt on science and sow mistrust for public health expertise, and to spread misinformation during this challenging time for all Americans”

ASA submits comments on FBI Use-of-Force Data Collection

My comments at the ASA Community alerting it to the violent raid on Rebekah Jones’ home:

I first saw this in today’s Briefing of news from the science journal, Nature.

There are several details available from local news sources, including video. Some of them have partial paywalls. As a consequence, A synopsis says the warrant is based upon a Comcast IP address being traced to Jones’ home. The warrant claims it was used to post an anonymous “mysterious” message at Florida’s emergency public health and medical coordination team. The IP address was, in some manner, associated with this message but officials are not making the connection because they claim to be protecting someone’s personally identifying information. The warrant has more information, including that the IP address is an IPv6 address.

If an IP address is all they have to make the connection, as a former professional in that industry I consider that extremely flimsy evidence. Indeed, it could be creating by someone cracking into the Jones’ home network and issuing the message, or could masquerade in other ways, e.g., malware Javascript from a Web site. Moreover the association of the IP address with the Jones’ home needs to be completely watertight. It is more difficult to make the association, for example, using conventional IP geolocation tools, because the address is IPv6.

Full warrant text is now available.

Indeed, the only want to definitively tie this IPv6 address to a particular geographic location is with Comcast’s cooperation, using their logs from the time of the incident on 10th November 2020. That’s because IP addresses are volatile, particularly IPv6 addresses. Indeed, Comcast says they only retain logs for 180 days.

The basic details.

Local academics react.

Video of raid.

More details including defensive posturing by government.

NPR version of story.

Update, 13^th December 2020

And it isn’t just data scientists and statisticians who have been cast out …

https://www.npr.org/player/embed/945989963/945989964