Parson's attempt to shift blame for faulty teacher website must be condemned

[Nevilledog]

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Gregory Holman 📲📰
@GregHolmanNL
This morning @USATODAY has chosen to republish the @springfieldNL Editorial Board opinion piece on Gov. Parson's conflict with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch over a flawed state website

Editorial: Parson's attempt to shift blame for faulty teacher website must be condemned
Gov. Parsons threatened to retaliate against a journalist who identified a problem. Such abuse must be condemned, swiftly and in the strongest terms.
usatoday.com
8:09 AM · Oct 15, 2021

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/10/15/missouri-gov-mike-parson-threat-post-dispatch-teacher-website/8466918002/

As recently as Tuesday, the Social Security numbers of tens of thousands of Missouri teachers were accessible to anyone with a web browser and an internet connection. Thanks to a St. Louis journalist, they're better protected today.

That personal information was available, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, through an online application that allowed the public to search the credentials and certifications of state educators. Social Security numbers were not shown as part of the default display, the paper reported, but were present in the source code, which can be freely viewed by anyone with browser apps like Safari, Firefox and Chrome.

When a journalist discovered the flaw and confirmed the information with several teachers, the Post-Dispatch alerted the state and waited until the problem was corrected before publishing a story.

Gov. Mike Parson's response? Holding a press conference during which he called the Post-Dispatch journalist a "hacker," threatened him with criminal prosecution and accused the newspaper of trying to "embarrass the state."

The governor is doing a fine job of that on his own.

*snip*

[haele]

1. So, inadvertently hitting F12 on the keyboard makes one a hacker?

I guess that makes my cat Goblin a serial hacker.

Haele

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. I accidentally hit that and got "Inspect."

I use "View page source" all the time. I copy the published and updated times for articles in USA Today. They don't copy when I try to copy text from the original page.

[Claire Oh Nette]

3. "accused the newspaper of trying to embarrass the State"

The Governor was embarrassed and his narcissism won't allow him to thank the reporter. All these GOP gasbags are the same.
The asshole who could dish it out but couldn't take it, and went running to Mommy/the teacher/daddy to make it all better.

John Edwards was right about Two Americas.

[Sherman A1]

4. Governor Do Nothing is a useless hack.

Nothing more.

[DemocraticPatriot]

5. Why would social security numbers be present in the source code, anyway?

That makes no sense to me.