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Gov Parson pushes to prosecute reporter who found security flaw in state site

missouriindependent.com

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Re: Gov Parson pushes to prosecute reporter who found security flaw in state site

#111

Post by lowkey_ »

otterley wrote: post #69
anovikov wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider myself a liberal, and i agree with the point that college is net detrimental to society. It makes people waste their best years, teaches them mainly, useless stuff, barely breaks even in terms of lifetime earnings, and makes people bitter because they feel they are not valued by society the way they believe they should. This world needs a lot more new plumbers than new liberal arts majors. It is the societ…

I largely agree with the sentiment that we need more plumbers than liberal arts graduates. One answer, though, is "why not be both?" Post-secondary education, regardless of the specific major a student chooses, does provide a significant benefit to society: especially in the early years, it teaches students how to think critically. Perhaps this skill could be taught earlier during secondary education, but at least in…

> it teaches students how to think critically

Most colleges have done the opposite in recent years. They provide echo-chambers for emotionally-fueled pseudoscience.

I've seen this while spending time at Boston University, Harvard, Brown, and Columbia. It's frightening how little people are able to think or question anything once they've gone through the college system. They become frightened by and angry at truths that don't align with the narrative they've been taught.

I've spoken to dozens of people who've gone through the wringer and come out the other side realizing how detrimental college was to themselves and their peers intellectually.

Re: Gov Parson pushes to prosecute reporter who found security flaw in state site

#112

Post by comrh »

mcguire wrote: post #54

The Post-Dispatch needs to act to force the State Police investigation forward, or the whole incident will shortly be forgotten, except for the allegations. Perhaps a daily column with updates on it. Perhaps a libel case?

I agree, I know it's a high bar but doesn't this fit the purpose of libel laws?

"Under United States law, libel generally requires five key elements: the plaintiff must prove that the information was published, the plaintiff was directly or indirectly identified, the remarks were defamatory towards the plaintiff's reputation, the published information is false, and that the defendant is at fault."

Seems to fit all of these. I imagine there is some protection because these words are coming from a PAC but the governor has said the same stuff in news conferences.

Re: Gov Parson pushes to prosecute reporter who found security flaw in state site

#113

Post by thehappypm »

joncrane wrote: post #15
davidw wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of thing was used in the past to keep Black people from voting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test#Voting

The OP is saying the test is for holding office, not voting. There absolutely should be a higher bar for holding office than for voting.

Nope. Imagine a 99% white town where a Black man wants to run for mayor. Sorry pal, you failed the literacy test.

Re: Gov Parson pushes to prosecute reporter who found security flaw in state site

#114

Post by hyperpape »

This is a decent article, but it would’ve been so much better if it clearly explained how easy it is to see the “HTML source code”.

If the article said “anyone who right clicks the web page in Chrome and selects view source could see social security numbers” it would clarify things for the majority of the population that doesn’t know what “HTML source code” is.

Re: Gov Parson pushes to prosecute reporter who found security flaw in state site

#115

Post by otterley »

jfrunyon wrote: post #100
otterley wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I largely agree with the sentiment that we need more plumbers than liberal arts graduates. One answer, though, is "why not be both?" Post-secondary education, regardless of the specific major a student chooses, does provide a significant benefit to society: especially in the early years, it teaches students how to think critically. Perhaps this skill could be taught earlier during secondary education, but at least in…

It absolutely is taught in secondary education in the US. Heck, it's taught during elementary education. But you can't teach someone something unless they're willing to learn it. Post-secondary education doesn't help that.

Young children's brains aren't developed sufficiently to build these skills. Even a lot of high schoolers have difficulty with it. It's largely taught in post-secondary education because by then, the brain has matured enough to handle the cognitive load.

Re: Gov Parson pushes to prosecute reporter who found security flaw in state site

#116

Post by moron4hire »

voidwtf wrote: post #45

This attitude is how you attract the attention of many grey/black hat types willing to make you look foolish. I'm curious how long before someone accepts this as a challenge to expose truly damaging security missteps in the state government sites.

The most likely thing is that there are many trivial security issues such as this, they are actively being exploited, and the exploiters don't report because they can make more money just staying quiet and selling the data on the black market.

Re: Gov Parson pushes to prosecute reporter who found security flaw in state site

#117

Post by JCharante »

anovikov wrote: post #108
sli wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole "college = liberal arts majors" is a wildly reductive argument and is extremely common among the types that OP is referring to. It's pretty disheartening to see it repeated here.

People who take up STEM, are of course of different type, and for them, surely college is a net benefit. But that kind of people would go to college even 50 or 70 years ago already. All paranormal increase of college admissions in the last decades came from precisely those people who are getting those bullshit degrees just because they are the only ones they can get, and they feel compelled to get some kind of a coll…

Even STEM degrees could be optimized. Most of what I've learned is not applicable to software dev, but at least some of the classes (like foreign language) were neat, although college classrooms are a suboptimal way to study that.

Re: Gov Parson pushes to prosecute reporter who found security flaw in state site

#119

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

nrmitchi wrote: post #27
Acutulus wrote: post #7

I find the article title kind of curious, given that it states Parson has "doubled down" which suggests that the video the article references is an active effort on Parson's part. It then goes on to state that the video was produced by a PAC Parson created but doesn't give direct input to. Comes off as unnecessarily inflammatory to me I suppose. Having said that, this situation in particular really tests my willingne…

This situation is keeping his name in the spotlight, and people will, in general, be more likely to vote for names that they recognize. I don't believe that there is any other reason here.

I would assume this is pure politics.

He knows perfectly well who is to blame, but he's using the situation opportunistically to further his own career.

The issue isn't just that he's objectively and morally wrong, it's that most voters don't see through the grandstanding.

All they see - and all they want to see - is a rich old white dude punching down at some college-educated kid who thinks he's clever enough to have an opinion.

It's not obvious a jury will parse this any differently.

Although I'd hope someone like the EFF would turn up with some heavy hitter experts to add some friction to the self-serving bad take.

This is why it's hard to do politics. While everyone is fact-checking and getting outraged about the reality the political game is being played on a different level with different rules - by people who are often quite good at winning it.

Re: Gov Parson pushes to prosecute reporter who found security flaw in state site

#120

Post by logifail »

otterley wrote: post #69
anovikov wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider myself a liberal, and i agree with the point that college is net detrimental to society. It makes people waste their best years, teaches them mainly, useless stuff, barely breaks even in terms of lifetime earnings, and makes people bitter because they feel they are not valued by society the way they believe they should. This world needs a lot more new plumbers than new liberal arts majors. It is the societ…

I largely agree with the sentiment that we need more plumbers than liberal arts graduates. One answer, though, is "why not be both?" Post-secondary education, regardless of the specific major a student chooses, does provide a significant benefit to society: especially in the early years, it teaches students how to think critically. Perhaps this skill could be taught earlier during secondary education, but at least in…

> Post-secondary education, regardless of the specific major a student chooses, does provide a significant benefit to society: especially in the early years, it teaches students how to think critically.

(My highlight)

I wish that were true, but it isn't always the case.

My counter-example is my ex-colleague who started her science PhD at the same time as me in the same research group as me waaaay back in the late 1990s.

Long and short of it, we each did our 3-ish years in the lab, she wrote up her thesis, I wrote up my thesis, we each had our oral exam around the same time. Her writing (her words) was "torn to shreds", she ended up back in the lab for several months doing more work and some serious rewriting, I got away with only a handful of typos to fix.

I blame our supervisor for this, but that's another story.

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