Missouri governor, Mike Parson is threatening to prosecute a journalist for responsibly reporting a serious security lapse in the state’s website.
Post-Dispatch journalist Josh Renaud recently reported that the website for the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) was exposing over 100,000 teachers’ Social Security numbers. After reporting, the DESE promptly disabled the tool and fixed the vulnerability. But since, Missouri’s Republican Governor Mike Parson described the journalist who uncovered the vulnerability as a "hacker", and said the newspaper uncovered the flaw in "an attempt to embarrass the state".
The governor’s response to the Post-Dispatch report has sparked criticism, even from within his own party. Republican lawmaker Tony Lovasco wrote on Twitter that it was “clear the governor’s office has a fundamental misunderstanding of both web technology and industry-standard procedures for reporting security vulnerabilities”.