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Missouri Governor Vows to Prosecute St. Louis Post-Dispatch for Reporting

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Re: Missouri Governor Vows to Prosecute St. Louis Post-Dispatch for Reporting

#41

Post by treeman79 »

weatherlight wrote: post #26
CivBase wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of weird. After all, it's not like the governor is directly responsible for the flaw. Even if his opposition could have indirectly linked his administration to the flaw, his response has certainly done far more damage to his reputation than that ever could.

Most likely voters don't understand how computers work. I'm not sure it'll matter much.

I’m fairly sure he doesn’t understand. Language used makes it sounds he has no clue how html works.

Back in 90s, I was constantly being accused of hacking things just for knowing how to build a website. This was also the era of when the news would run phone polls on whether the Internet should be allowed or not.

I learn to keep my mouth shut about what I could do unless I was sure it was a tech savvy crowd.

This dude brings back a lot of those memories

Re: Missouri Governor Vows to Prosecute St. Louis Post-Dispatch for Reporting

#42

Post by [deleted] »

jrs235 wrote: post #37
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #4

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R) .. vowed his administration would seek to prosecute and investigate .. anyone who aided the publication in its "attempt to embarrass the state and sell headlines for their news outlet." Embarrassing governments is the natural outcome of the press doing it's job. This is what the extra constitutional protections are for.

This is why my outlook on the future is growing dim. Politicians are threatening revenge, using the power and purse of the state, against people who embarrass them.

[deleted]

Re: Missouri Governor Vows to Prosecute St. Louis Post-Dispatch for Reporting

#43

Post by handrous »

nostrademons wrote: post #32
Bluecobra wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a student at DeVry University (a national for-profit college with 40 campuses) your SSN was your student ID. This wasn’t corrected until 2002 or 2003. :(

Your SSN was your driver's license number in 29 states until 2004, when Bush outlawed the practice. Many, many institutions in the USA are built on it being a high-trust society. Now that it's falling into a low-trust state, we can expect those institutions to fail, and perhaps the state to as well.

They weren't supposed to be used as any kind of important, general ID number. It took various governments and institutions a long time to wake up to the reality that, because we really, really need such an ID and the government has displayed no intention of ever creating one, social security numbers had been forced into the role by necessity.

Re: Missouri Governor Vows to Prosecute St. Louis Post-Dispatch for Reporting

#44

Post by busterarm »

hangonhn wrote: post #9
geerlingguy wrote: post #5

Oh hey, my home state is on Hacker News! Oh... sigh.

hugs My home state is Florida. It will be alright.

I just moved to Florida after New York completely lost the fucking plot. Literally my neighborhood (Hell's Kitchen) reverted to its 1980s self, street-walking prostitutes included. Homeless encampments as far as the eye can see.

Loving it here so far.

Re: Missouri Governor Vows to Prosecute St. Louis Post-Dispatch for Reporting

#45

Post by joe_the_user »

vipa123 wrote: post #39
jrs235 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why my outlook on the future is growing dim. Politicians are threatening revenge, using the power and purse of the state, against people who embarrass them.

This is as old as the country itself, the constitution is stronger than these thugs.

The US state has successfully suppressed free expression in a number of instances (Henry Miller and Wilhelm Reich come to mind).

The US isn't special as a democracy and it's been pretty shoddy at quite a number of times, though now isn't necessarily the worst moment. The constitution is only strong on free speech and freedom of the press if people defend it.

Edit: It's especially notable that the degree that governments in the US are run as personal fief where officials lash out at anyone who inconveniences them (as is happening here), is strongly related to how far the government is from urban centers.

Re: Missouri Governor Vows to Prosecute St. Louis Post-Dispatch for Reporting

#46

Post by dragonwriter »

vipa123 wrote: post #39
jrs235 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why my outlook on the future is growing dim. Politicians are threatening revenge, using the power and purse of the state, against people who embarrass them.

This is as old as the country itself, the constitution is stronger than these thugs.

> the constitution is stronger than these thugs.

The Constitution is exactly as strong as the people who don’t dismissively pretend it is self-enforcing.

Re: Missouri Governor Vows to Prosecute St. Louis Post-Dispatch for Reporting

#48

Post by alexjplant »

snicker7 wrote: post #6

Apparently, the SSNs were all embedded directly in the HTML file. Like … what?

If they were using a server-side rendering framework then what probably happened is that they used HTML comments instead of template engine comments to "remove" the SSN s without understanding the ramifications.

Re: Missouri Governor Vows to Prosecute St. Louis Post-Dispatch for Reporting

#49

Post by [deleted] »

zzzeek wrote: post #8

> “And then to react in this way where you don’t say ‘thank you’ but actually turn on the reporter and researchers and go after them…it’s just weird.” it's not "weird", it's an elected official trying to deflect from being exposed as completely endangering the PII of state employees. while trying to bring charges here is ridiculous, it might not be the case in a few years as we watch the continued crumbling of instit…

[deleted]

Re: Missouri Governor Vows to Prosecute St. Louis Post-Dispatch for Reporting

#50

Post by dkarl »

zzzeek wrote: post #8

> “And then to react in this way where you don’t say ‘thank you’ but actually turn on the reporter and researchers and go after them…it’s just weird.” it's not "weird", it's an elected official trying to deflect from being exposed as completely endangering the PII of state employees. while trying to bring charges here is ridiculous, it might not be the case in a few years as we watch the continued crumbling of instit…

I wouldn't be surprised if the governor acted more because he sensed an opportunity than out of fear of the story. By playing the story this way, he gets to act out the feelings of a constituency that feels judged by educated urbanites and unable to keep up with a changing world. He is standing up for the honor of Missouri against the sneering condescension of the fancy city reporter. From that point of view, he isn't dealing with a threat so much as feasting on a political opportunity.
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