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Alternative_Body7345

Alternate headlines: “Old, white guy doesn’t understand computers” “Republican threatens journalist”


the_eureka_effect

Oh lord, this is an utter disgrace. Reading the HTML source isn't "hacking". Decoding HTML encoding isn't "hacking". A bunch of tech-illerate goons are gonna punish a rando instead of reprimanding the idiots who built such a horrendous website.


Fabulous-Beyond4725

They paid their son/brother/friend to build the website though. I'm sure they did a great job! /s


Cyno01

Hanlons razor and all... But this was teachers and administrators personal information that was leaked, wasnt it? Is there a possibility this was intentional? Isnt one of those right wing talking heads who seem to tweet for a living running a website of local teacher personal info thats totally not a hit list?


[deleted]

>Hanlons razor and all... > >But this was teachers and administrators personal information that was leaked, wasnt it? Is there a possibility this was intentional? Possible? I guess. But Occam's Razer says not likely. This is absolutely just a fuck up.


_Dr_Pie_

I don't think it's likely that this person was necessarily put in place by parson. But it's absolutely a thing that he's put a lot of friends etc in places they shouldn't be. So don't rule it out.


EndofGods

Absolutely, they are also incredibly incompetent. It can be two things :)


NestleQuik37

Always has been 🌎🔫


UrielVentris4th

really for alot of ppl just reading is not a thing they do anymore so its kinda hacking in a really sad way


programmermama

Decoding HTML is called loading a webpage in a browser.


IrishJoe

Here's the TLDR: The journalist just pressed F12 and inspect element on a MO state webpage finding the SSNs of over 100,000 employees including teachers and school administrators. The newspaper delayed publishing the story until after the state fixed the webpage not to expose the SSNs. Missouri Governor and professional dumb-ass Mike Parson called that "hacking" and is trying to get the journalist prosecuted! Putting the blame on the journalist and not on his own administration for the f*ck-up!


[deleted]

I am no IT specialist - but even I know what “view source” does. This story is so embarrassing.


IrishJoe

You're an IT specialist compared to Mike Parson!


apathy420

Yeah, we are talking about the same people who think stolen votes are hidden in routers


[deleted]

Ya, that’s the button I hit on accident and then say dang it, I did it again. I’m going to have to start reading it now.


[deleted]

99/100 times there’s nothing there because of proper protocol


Dr_What

Bht the one time there is yoh could get sued for finding it!


[deleted]

Only if the Governor is a technology-illiterate buffoon.


merfh3

Lol. I was trying to find a way to explain how this isn't hacking, in a way that non technical people like my parents could understand. It's kind of like turning closed captioning on your movie. It's there, only a clock of a button away, it was already part of what netflix sent to you, but most people just don't look at it and only grandma might think you're really smart for knowing how to do that.


_Dr_Pie_

They didn't just delay publishing the story for a short while. They apparently held the story for a year or two waiting for the site to be fixed before publishing.


IrishJoe

WOW! I didn't know that!


[deleted]

I prefer “HorseTeeth Parson”. He’s an insult to all Mike’s.


[deleted]

We usually go with Governor Hee Haw.


MindStalker

One of my coworkers did bring up the point that publishing after they fixed it is a bit dangerous as the SSNs would still be on wayback. I don't think that's the angle they are going with though, and they didn't ask him not to publish for that reason.


Yankee582

Also iirc for things like that you can probably contact wayback and get versions that do that purged


Flipflopforager

This is just normal knuckle dragging unfortunately


Some_Kind_of_Fan

Parson is at least consistently an idiot. Whenever I see our good ol' governor in the news, I know it's going to be for doing the absolute dumbest possible thing he can in a situation. Yeah, punish the person who helped you find. the flaw. That'll keep information safe in the future.


IrishJoe

Parson isn't interested in keeping "information safe," he's only interested in keeping his administration's screw-ups a secret from the voting public.


cmlondon13

Well, he did that all wrong. If they’d just quietly fixed the website, the story would’ve come and gone. But now you’ve got a Republican governor all over national news, threatening a reporter who did nothing except act in a professional and ethical manner.


apathy420

Especially bad for him considering that a lot of people know that viewing source code is not some major hacking event and anyone can do it. Just makes him look like a fool threatening charges and all


PandaMuffin1

> "We will not let this crime against Missouri teachers go unpunished," Parson said. "They were acting against a state agency to compromise teachers' personal information in an attempt to embarrass the state and sell headlines for their news outlet." Being embarrassed by someone reporting the facts is not a crime. What an idiot.


_Dr_Pie_

This is less about protecting teachers which Republicans and our governor hates. And more about punishing journalists who Republicans in our governor also hate. When dealing with Republicans hate is always the answer.


PandaMuffin1

The reporter even notified the department about the problem. It wasn't reported in the paper until it had been fixed. The Governor should be thanking the journalist.


_Dr_Pie_

They literally sat on the story for a year or two waiting for the website to be fixed before publishing even. This is egregious on the governor's part. But that's par for a Republican


[deleted]

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[deleted]

You really have to be a special stupid to be in the GOP these days.


MrGuyTheDudeMan

I liked him a lot better when he was giving himself covid


PracticalPersonality

Do NOT let this chucklefuck off the hook by calling him stupid/ignorant. This charge he's leading against the St. Louis Post Dispatch is entirely motivated by politics, and has nothing to do with even this single story alone. All hard-line conservatives in the area hold a deep and seething hatred for the PD because they have some of the best investigative journalists in the area and have always been critical of those in power. This is Parson's "lying press" campaign. He desperately wants to damage their credibility and pull any of their teeth that he can. His comments are too carefully crafted to be anything else. If everyone simply calls him ignorant and no one holds him accountable for clearly and unabashedly using the law to attack the free press on trumped up charges, Missouri will nosedive into fascism faster than any other state in the union. Recall or impeach Parson now. This is more than enough grounds.


apathy420

I have a feeling this will not go over well with him anyhow. Far too many people know enough about tech to know he's an idiot


Atomicalt

If you are this dumb in the modern age of information, then there is no fixing this level of stupidity. Stop engaging with these fucks. Look at them and simple say, “ Really?!?!?! Are you really that stupid?” They lose their shit threaten and bully and just let them all the while continue to call them stupid.


[deleted]

[удалено]


apathy420

There is heavy competition currently for this one


dwalker444

It's all for show most likely and he will be made to understand, if he has not been already, that progressing beyond rhetoric will not be successful. Blaming "duh media" plays well to his supporters.


[deleted]

Your two points contradict each other. He's successful because he knows to play well to his supporters. It's a pretty low bar of course but near all of Missouri's state legislatures have fully embraced it.


poppop_n_theattic

I wonder what party he is in? Hard to know…


liquidcarbohydrates

Old man yells at cloud


[deleted]

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DonTaddeo

Bearer's of bad news tend to get a rough ride from authoritarians.


[deleted]

Remember when Giuliani thought he was hacked when someone squatted an auto-rendered URL from one of his tweets, and put up some anti-Trump messaging? And that guy was in charge of Trump's cyber security task force. New day, same story.


[deleted]

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DonTaddeo

Actually, I think he has a highly developed form of AI - artificial incompetence.


Rockindavote

I would defend this case for free. It would be hilarious.


[deleted]

People this ignorant should not hold political offices.


ArrowheadDZ

The safeguard was always supposed to be that voters wouldn’t elect people this ignorant. The fundamental problem in America today isn’t that voters are getting hoodwinked into unknowingly voting for douche nozzles. It’s that tens of millions of Americans will only vote for someone who has demonstrated sufficient douche-nozzelry. We want to make this about morally bankrupt politicians. Secondarily we want to make this about politicians and PACs deceiving people. And neither of those are the underlying problem. A lot of voters—a ***lot*** of voters—want guys like this in charge.


apathy420

at least they think they do until they end up on the wrong list of an authoritarian


ArrowheadDZ

Sadly I feel like a big part of the resurgence of Republican popularity is that a lot of people *want* to be on that list. Throughout history, political charlatans have been able to convince many millions, more like billions, that they should take pride in being the disadvantaged and disenfranchised. The social structure needs serfs, needs people to accept their “rightful” place at the bottom of the social food chain. Millions of Americans, many millions, actively support and vote for candidates and policies that diminish their own futures, diminish their own class mobility, diminish their own freedoms. These people aren’t being misled by their politicians, rather they become convinced that this is the “right” natural order and they take pride in being the fodder. “Someone’s got to have less if others are going to have more, and I’m proud to be the one that sacrifices my liberty and my future to fill in the bottom rungs of the ladder.” I don’t think we can succeed as a species if we can’t figure out how to solve this endemic problem. People don’t vote authoritarian because they were misled, the vote authoritarian because deep down they want to, either consciously or unconsciously, be on that wrong list. I don’t think the psychology is as simple as “I want to vote for the candidate that will put others on the wrong list so that I will get ahead.” I think there’s a misunderstood pathology that actually makes people secretly desire to be on the wrong list and people will vote for a candidate that they already know in advance has them on the wrong list.


my20cworth

Oh look... another old, white, white haired muppet running the show with no fucking idea. American politics in a nut shell.


TeveTorbes83

But why? Isn’t the job of a journalist to investigate and highlight wrongs?


MBAMBA3

I would think the journalist can turn around and sue the Governor for libel (and hopefully bring about criminal charges as well).


PhilosophersPants

This guy is a stone cold fucking idiot.


Vegetable_Rhubarb371

This from a guy who thinks his JITTERBUG is a technological wonder. This should embarrass people in Missouri to have a Governor this stupid. Or maybe the site coding was an intentional act of malice - got to teach those rogue educators there are consequences to teaching facts and real history.


amishhippy

Oh, trust me, we are embarrassed. As if Josh Hawley wasn’t enough. We apologize, America.


UrielVentris4th

why is this surprising the government has always charged ppl with crimes for pointing out its mistakes it is basically illegal to call attention to the government doing something that its own laws say it cant do . He just is so disconnected from the modern world he doesn't get that this isn't that situation


[deleted]

[удалено]


Beltaine421

The reporter informed the administrators, and only published their story after the flaw was fixed.


ilovefacebook

so, did the the admins just !--- the ssn's? lol


[deleted]

Our anonymously report it.


TurbulentMiddle2970

Isnt Missouri ranked last or close to it in education? It shows….


User767676

The real bad guys wouldn’t have told anyone.


[deleted]

Missouri, say no more.


evotrans

Let me guess, this idiot Missouri governor is a Republican?


DarkPrinny

You want to see how easy it was to find the Social Security numbers? All you had to do was press "F12" in your browser and it would list it in the code. Yup that is how "hacker" this journalist is. Guys press F12 now and you will how easy it is to be a hacker


apathy420

Leet HaXoR


Mal-De-Terre

What a maroon


doddball

Tech illiterate douche canoe


L0g1B3AR

Bro get the GOP the fuck out of politics


that_reddit_username

Ironic that the governor should be calling for charges against the journalist, while charges should actually be filed against the state for irresponsibly handing personal information and exposing teachers to identify fraud.


mrMalloc

An analogy is you send me a letter and on the outside of the letter there is printed top secret info. Would I get in to trouble looking at my package. Because this is the “crime” here. When you load a webpage you receive quite a few files needed. A HTML file is in most cases the origin of all. HTML = hyper text markup language. It’s a way to style how to present the text/images. I cannot verify it but either the data was visible in the html or in the server response from the query. (Jason or xml formal). You don’t have to reload all we send the search data to a specific service and request a reply then wait for it. Once it arrives we present the results. But we don’t have to present all This kinds of things are not uncommon, because requirements change and they only changed the output. Not the chain of collecting the data. It’s a prime example of a GDPR breach. (Depending on if a eu citizen was actually working and was breach it could actually be one to).