"FDLE began an investigation November 10, 2020, after receiving a complaint from the Department of Health (DOH) regarding unauthorized access to a Department of Health messaging system which is part of an emergency alert system, to be used for emergencies only," Plessinger said.
The DOH said recently that someone hacked the emergency communications channel. Jones told a reporter that she is not a hacker: "I don't know how to do that stuff."
The FDLE affidavit for the search warrant said a special agent spoke to a DOH official with the Preparedness and Response office about a suspected breach of the custom-made communications system for emergency management.
An unidentified subject gained access to the system and sent out a group text saying: "It's time to speak up before another 17,000 people are dead. You know this is wrong. You don't have to be a part of this. Be a hero. Speak out before it's too late."
The text message was sent from the ESF-8 mail account to 1,750 recipients before the software vendor could stop the message from being transmitted further, the affidavit said.
The ESF-8 account is the state's emergency support function for public health and medical services and is used by many people from several agencies, including DOH and Emergency Management.
"Once they are no longer associated with ESF-8 they are no longer authorized to access the multi-user group," the FDLE affidavit said. All authorized users use the same user name and password.
Jones told a reporter for the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida that her sources at DOH told her an email had gone out across the department from the ESF-8 email account around the time that five of eight team leaders had been fired.
Jones told the reporter that a series of firings and resignations in DOH, including recently departed public information officer Alberto Moscoso’s departure, were “a purge.”
“It's like a massacre. And those aren't the only people that have been fired or left,” she said.
Jones also said she has backups of the data and files that power her websites that were stored on the seized hardware.
"This is what happens to scientists who do their job honestly," Jones tweeted. "This is what happens to people who speak truth to power."
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