Parson Fails in Trying to Get Journalist Charged With ‘Hacking’

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s wacky however chilling public persecution of a journalist he accused of “hacking” a state training web site has fortunately been put to an finish. Despite all of the ruckus, apparently Parson nonetheless doesn’t know what hacking truly means.

Cole County prosecutor Locke Thompson has determined not to pursue prison expenses in opposition to Josh Renaud, a journalist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who found a gaping cybersecurity gap within the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education web site and published a story on it final October. The cybersecurity flaw left the social safety numbers of greater than 100,000 faculty academics, directors, and counselors uncovered to the general public.

In an announcement published on Friday, Thompson thanked the governor for passing alongside his issues and stated his workplace had a zero-tolerance coverage for the “unauthorized taking and using of the personal information of any person.”

“There is an argument to be made that there was a violation of law. However, upon a review of the case file, the issues at the heart of the investigation have been resolved through non-legal means,” Thompson stated. “As such, it is not in the best interest of Cole County citizens to utilize the significant resources and taxpayer dollars that would be necessary to pursue misdemeanor criminal charges in this case. The investigation is now closed, and the Cole County Prosecutor’s Office will have no further comment on the matter.”

Renaud discovered the vulnerability by merely inspecting the web site’s publicly accessible HTML supply code, which had the academics’ non-public info embedded in it, and responsibly reported it to the training division. The Post-Dispatch delayed publishing his story to provide the state time to safeguard the uncovered info in addition to affirm that none of its different web sites contained related flaws.

While emails present that state officers originally planned to thank the paper for its discovery, these plans appear to have been scrapped by the governor, who determined in charge Renaud for the state’s cybersecurity failures and accused him of “hacking.”

“This matter is serious. The state is committing to bring to justice anyone who hacked our system and anyone who aided or encouraged them to do so—in accordance with what Missouri law allows AND requires,” Parson stated on Twitter on Oct. 14. “A hacker is someone who gains unauthorized access to information or content. This individual did not have permission to do what they did. They had no authorization to convert and decode the code.”

Experts had been fast to level out that Parson clearly didn’t know what hacking meant and that viewing public HTML supply code, which anybody can do, is just not hacking. That didn’t cease the governor, nevertheless, from attacking Renaud and the Post-Dispatch. His political motion committee, Uniting Missouri, even launched a unusual video accusing the outlet of “exploiting private information,” which it didn’t do.

A press release from Parson’s workplace given to Missourinet on Saturday maintained that the incident was a hack, however appeared to again off the governor’s campaign.

“The hacking of Missouri teachers’ personally identifiable information is a clear violation of Section 569.095, RSMo, which the state takes seriously. The state did its part by investigating and presenting its findings to the Cole County Prosecutor, who has elected not to press charges, as is his prerogative,” Parson’s workplace stated, in response to Missourinet. “The Prosector believes the matter has been properly addressed and resolved through non-legal means. The state will continue to work to ensure safeguards are in place to protect state data and prevent unauthorized hacks.”

Renaud expressed aid over the prosecutor’s choice in an announcement on his personal website however stated it didn’t “repair the harm done to me and my family.” He maintained that his actions had been authorized and in step with journalistic ideas.

The Post-Dispatch reporter referred to as Parson’s therapy of him “political persecution of a journalist.”

“I am concerned that the governor’s actions have left the state more vulnerable to future bad actors. His high-profile threats of legal retribution against me and the Post-Dispatch likely will have a chilling effect, deterring people from reporting security or privacy flaws in Missouri, and decreasing the chance those flaws get fixed,” Renaud stated.