4 ms·

Why are there no repurcussions for what essentially amounts to fraud? Why is it acceptable for politicians to commit fraud, but not for anyone else?

by nartz 6y ago

jariel 6y ago
We only have a soundbite from one side of the story, we have no idea what really happened. Communication is always political, and how information is represented is important, and public opinion matters. For example in Quebec, there are 'big numbers' of cases, but almost 80% of the deaths are in long-term-care homes. So you could have one person who doesn't want that data to be highlighted, while some other person does because frankly, that information might frame Covid as ultimately being less risky and yet, it's more transparent. Hydroxychloroquine is another kind of example - in reality, there may be some benefit for this, but it's really not helpful to have the general public tweeting about it, because it's not generally useful, and the impact will be overwhelming on health officials and cause shortages for those non-covid people who really need it. So the information is either suppressed or 'led' in the direction that public health and safety officials want. So if the state official was literally trying to get someone to literally just change the data and make it look better, this is obviously going to be a whistleblower case. But this may not be the situation. Public communication is hard. Trump is probably the anti-example.
- zo1 6y ago
  I think this part is crucial and something that is framing this discussion in a possibly wrong light. We're getting "snippets" of the events from this individual, and it could very well be that they're phrasing their comments and selectively "mentioning" parts of the story in order to amplify and push a certain interpretation. Everything is marketing, and I would certainly say it's plausible that a developer that was this much in the spotlight would be steering the conversation to at least frame him or herself in a positive light if not outright promote their politics (even if that is just one of transparency/government accountability).
  - testbot123 6y ago
    > We're getting "snippets" of the events from this individual, and it could very well be that they're phrasing their comments and selectively "mentioning" parts of the story in order to amplify and push a certain interpretation No, there's a single email that she sent out to a listserv that she was a part of, which is now being quoted. She's not "selectively 'mentioning' parts of the story." Don't twist this to sound like she has some sort of insidious motive. > Everything is marketing Are you joking? From elsewhere in the comments: "FFS they fired the person whose official job it was to make information available to the public and she reports it was because they wanted to censor it. I mean, does that not strike you as something she should absolutely blow the whistle on?"
  - jariel 6y ago
    I personally would not go far as this very cynical take, but I think it's totally fair. I think the HNer thing to do is 'believe whistleblowers no matter what' but I'm of the inclination everyone is tricky and that we are deluded by our own egos quite a lot. We need more context.
NotSammyHagar 6y ago
One repercussion is voting them out. There can be a change or an impact when there is clear evidence.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Unfortunately, voting people out doesn’t really work when a good chunk of people actually side with the person you’re trying to remove.
lazyjones 6y ago
Repercussions based on a single person's unproven allegations? Would you like to live in a place where this is the norm?
- paganel 6y ago
  I have to say I haven't followed this news that close but as far as I could understand most of the covid-related data for Florida plus some map layers are now gone/not accessible any more, so that proves that the most important allegation of this person is correct, i.e. the powers that be wanted the data closest to the truth not to be easily accessible anymore.
  - makomk 6y ago
    I can't figure out what data is actually missing for Florida. It looks like there's currently data on cases, hospitalizations and deaths at the county level, as well as historical data on new cases per day and deaths per day (by day of death). The only things that seems to be missing are historical deaths by date reported, historical hospitalizations, and historical county-level data, and most of those are likely to just be noise - admittedly, noise that would be very useful to publications cynically wanting to cherry-pick data and misrepresent it as evidence of a spike due to the reopening like they have with other states, but that doesn't seem like a reason why publishing it would help inform us. (In fact, I think Florida was actually the state where people took a all-time high spike in newly-reported coronavirus deaths due to the state reporting a bunch of old deaths at once as proof reopening was killing people. And that spike happened on the same day - May the 5th - as this woman complained that she was supposedly removed for "manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen.")
  - lazyjones 6y ago
    > so that proves that the most important allegation of this person is correct We'll take your word for it. I assume you have ascertained that what your sources are claiming is correct and that the data displayed previously was also correct? I can think of many other possibilities and prefer to wait for an official investigation before yelling for someone's head.
anigbrowl 6y ago
Because serious opposition is criminalized. You are not free.
vkou 6y ago
Because there are no laws on the books that punish legislators and the executive for lying to you. The voters are supposed to punish them, but voters in Florida don't care as long as they have an (R) next to their name on the ballot.
dexen 6y ago
>the government took it down to protect itself That's a far-fetched hypothesis, bordering on conspiratorial thinking. A more mundane, realistic -and more common- scenario: due to mistakes made (as noted in OP: downtime, misplaced data files, APIs needlessly changed, etc.,) the responsibility was transferred to another team.
- Traster 6y ago
  I think you've mis-read the reporting, she was removed on May 5th, before the issues you listed, after being asked to censor the data.

Why are there no repurcussions for what essentially amounts to fraud? Why is it acceptable for politicians to commit fraud, but not for anyone else?

by nartz 6y ago

Why are there no repurcussions for what essentially amounts to fraud? Why is it acceptable for politicians to commit fraud, but not for anyone else?

jariel 6y ago

We only have a soundbite from one side of the story, we have no idea what really happened. Communication is always political, and how information is represented is important, and public opinion matters. For example in Quebec, there are 'big numbers' of cases, but almost 80% of the deaths are in long-term-care homes. So you could have one person who doesn't want that data to be highlighted, while some other person does because frankly, that information might frame Covid as ultimately being less risky and yet, it's more transparent. Hydroxychloroquine is another kind of example - in reality, there may be some benefit for this, but it's really not helpful to have the general public tweeting about it, because it's not generally useful, and the impact will be overwhelming on health officials and cause shortages for those non-covid people who really need it. So the information is either suppressed or 'led' in the direction that public health and safety officials want. So if the state official was literally trying to get someone to literally just change the data and make it look better, this is obviously going to be a whistleblower case. But this may not be the situation. Public communication is hard. Trump is probably the anti-example.

zo1 6y ago
I think this part is crucial and something that is framing this discussion in a possibly wrong light. We're getting "snippets" of the events from this individual, and it could very well be that they're phrasing their comments and selectively "mentioning" parts of the story in order to amplify and push a certain interpretation. Everything is marketing, and I would certainly say it's plausible that a developer that was this much in the spotlight would be steering the conversation to at least frame him or herself in a positive light if not outright promote their politics (even if that is just one of transparency/government accountability).
- testbot123 6y ago
  > We're getting "snippets" of the events from this individual, and it could very well be that they're phrasing their comments and selectively "mentioning" parts of the story in order to amplify and push a certain interpretation No, there's a single email that she sent out to a listserv that she was a part of, which is now being quoted. She's not "selectively 'mentioning' parts of the story." Don't twist this to sound like she has some sort of insidious motive. > Everything is marketing Are you joking? From elsewhere in the comments: "FFS they fired the person whose official job it was to make information available to the public and she reports it was because they wanted to censor it. I mean, does that not strike you as something she should absolutely blow the whistle on?"
- jariel 6y ago
  I personally would not go far as this very cynical take, but I think it's totally fair. I think the HNer thing to do is 'believe whistleblowers no matter what' but I'm of the inclination everyone is tricky and that we are deluded by our own egos quite a lot. We need more context.

NotSammyHagar 6y ago

One repercussion is voting them out. There can be a change or an impact when there is clear evidence.

colejohnson66 6y ago
Unfortunately, voting people out doesn’t really work when a good chunk of people actually side with the person you’re trying to remove.

lazyjones 6y ago

Repercussions based on a single person's unproven allegations? Would you like to live in a place where this is the norm?

paganel 6y ago
I have to say I haven't followed this news that close but as far as I could understand most of the covid-related data for Florida plus some map layers are now gone/not accessible any more, so that proves that the most important allegation of this person is correct, i.e. the powers that be wanted the data closest to the truth not to be easily accessible anymore.
- makomk 6y ago
  I can't figure out what data is actually missing for Florida. It looks like there's currently data on cases, hospitalizations and deaths at the county level, as well as historical data on new cases per day and deaths per day (by day of death). The only things that seems to be missing are historical deaths by date reported, historical hospitalizations, and historical county-level data, and most of those are likely to just be noise - admittedly, noise that would be very useful to publications cynically wanting to cherry-pick data and misrepresent it as evidence of a spike due to the reopening like they have with other states, but that doesn't seem like a reason why publishing it would help inform us. (In fact, I think Florida was actually the state where people took a all-time high spike in newly-reported coronavirus deaths due to the state reporting a bunch of old deaths at once as proof reopening was killing people. And that spike happened on the same day - May the 5th - as this woman complained that she was supposedly removed for "manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen.")
- lazyjones 6y ago
  > so that proves that the most important allegation of this person is correct We'll take your word for it. I assume you have ascertained that what your sources are claiming is correct and that the data displayed previously was also correct? I can think of many other possibilities and prefer to wait for an official investigation before yelling for someone's head.

anigbrowl 6y ago

Because serious opposition is criminalized. You are not free.

vkou 6y ago

Because there are no laws on the books that punish legislators and the executive for lying to you. The voters are supposed to punish them, but voters in Florida don't care as long as they have an (R) next to their name on the ballot.

dexen 6y ago

>the government took it down to protect itself That's a far-fetched hypothesis, bordering on conspiratorial thinking. A more mundane, realistic -and more common- scenario: due to mistakes made (as noted in OP: downtime, misplaced data files, APIs needlessly changed, etc.,) the responsibility was transferred to another team.

Traster 6y ago
I think you've mis-read the reporting, she was removed on May 5th, before the issues you listed, after being asked to censor the data.