Gov. Parson Says He Believes Prosecutor Will Bring Charges Against Reporter For Using 'View Source' (stltoday.com) 207
Gov. Mike Parson this week expressed his opinion the Cole County prosecuting attorney would bring charges in the case of a Post-Dispatch reporter who alerted the state to a significant data vulnerability. From a report: "I don't think that'll be the case," Parson said when asked what he would do if the prosecutor didn't pursue the case. "That's up to the prosecutor; that's his job to do." Parson referenced a state statute on computer tampering, which says a person commits the offense if they "knowingly and without authorization or without reasonable grounds to believe that he has such authorization" modifies or destroys data, discloses or takes data, or accesses a computer network and intentionally examines personal information. "If somebody picks your lock on your house -- for whatever reason, it's not a good lock, it's a cheap lock or whatever problem you might have -- they do not have the right to go into your house and take anything that belongs to you," Parson said.
Impeach him (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely to god this man is mentally incompetent?
Re:Impeach him (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Impeach him (Score:5, Interesting)
And possibly a competent one, if you define competent as "good at getting himself reflected".
Obviously someone in the governments IT fucked up. Maybe he has a clue on the details, but that seems unlikely as after failing at Uni his only claim to competence in 60 years is he owned 3 gas stations which puts his nerd creds at about the same level as my mother. Anyway at this point it doesn't matter, as it's now a political problem. As in, someone in his administration has violated the privacy of his voters, and there is a price to pay.
Politically, there are many approaches to this like public mea culpa and find the witch and conduct burning. He's gone with shoot the messenger. Shoot the messenger works if most of the electorate won't understand the message. Clearly he thinks, or at least thought they won't. Possibly on the basis of the witch initially convincing him using the same bullshit.
Whether he knows it's bullshit now is beside the point. If he admitted he was fooled by the witch - well that's just handling further proof to his political opponents he's incompetent. If he was doing something else a little more noble like protecting a loyal employee who lied to him - ditto, that's just handing some pretty good ammunition to his opponents. So at this point it's shoot messenger, or get thrown out of office.
And really who gives a shit the messenger is a honest man just doing his job, putting his neck out for the sake of his fellow citizens? Certainly not a politician. Politics is a brutal game, if you don't enjoy your enemies reputations into the dirt you're in the wrong business. Or so he thinks.
Re:Impeach him (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, that's why Dracula never ran for office!
Re:Impeach him (Score:5, Insightful)
> Surely to god this man is mentally incompetent?
Of course, it's what we call representative government. He represents his gerrymandered morons just fine.
Re:Impeach him (Score:5, Informative)
Gerrymandering has no effect on statewide offices. What is in effect here is something else, which is that people put less effort into choosing a candidate to vote for than choosing a new phone. A political consultant friend of mine informs me that if someone manages to win reelection *once*, he is close to unbeatable in subsequent elections to that office because people will nearly always vote for the devil they know.
But sometimes people do choose the "vote the bums out", even in the rare cases where the politicians aren't really responsible for whatever they're mad at. And therein lies the strength of democracy; it is not very good at electing good leaders, but it does give disaffected people a means to remove existing leaders.
Re:Impeach him (Score:5, Insightful)
people put less effort into choosing a candidate to vote for than choosing a new phone
And you know what's ironic? However much effort you put into choosing a phone, ultimately you end up with some variant of the exact same thing - a portable Android device that is solely designed to work in Google's best interest rather than yours and exploit you for all you're worth.
Very much like a politician...
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Impeach him (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't expect a governor to understand HTML and LAMP stacks. I'm sure his IT department is insisting this must have been a hack, rather than admit how incompetent their web team is.
Re:Impeach him (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't expect a governor to understand HTML and LAMP stacks. I'm sure his IT department is insisting this must have been a hack, rather than admit how incompetent their web team is.
By this point, I'm sure plenty of people have told him enough for him to know he's wrong.
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This is a politician. Even for normal people, being told they're wrong makes them double down. A politician will have superglued himself to the position.
Re:Impeach him (Score:5, Informative)
No, there's been correspondence that he was going to be thanked for letting them know before the governor made everyone do an about face.
The whole thing feels like Parson is personally vindictive about something else.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com]
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What are covid levels like there?
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He's vindictive against the Post Dispatch because it's a centrist newspaper that skews left, that's been pretty critical of his administration since the start. And rightfully so. He doesn't like the PD because they don't particularly like him and tend to call him on his bullshit.
That's all this is about. I'm not sure he even cares if he gets the prosecutor to bring charges, or whether they get a conviction. He only cares that he's had a couple of months of being able to badmouth the Post Dispatch to his bas
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Re: Impeach him (Score:4)
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He has some curious notions. His official state webpage is inaccessible to dirty rotten foreigners.
Evidently he thinks that mere accessing a webpage across international borders is tantamount to an attack.
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>Surely to god this man is mentally incompetent?
What are the chances he's counting on his spinning of the events gaining him votes, and what are the chances it might work ?
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Re:Impeach him (Score:4, Interesting)
Surely to god this man is mentally incompetent?
Sure, but that alone isn't grounds for impeachment.
But if the prosecutor does actually bring charges... well that basically means the governor demanded a political prosecution and the prosecutor granted his wishes. In that case both of them should be impeached with all possible haste.
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We all are the same. /s
Just curious if this is an unconscious bias you have or are you aware of it? I get that it makes being close minded easier but it's not a good way to grow or have conversations with people that have different mindsets.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Thought this was an Onion article for a second... (Score:5, Funny)
Wait what? (Score:4, Funny)
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Yea, exactly. Cracking a weak lock isn't an appropriate metaphor here. This is more like if the pattern of your keys was, due to some bizarre manufacturing error, displayed prominently to people outside in reflections of windows from certain angles, and you took a picture and sent it to the home owner to warn them, then they SUE YOU FOR COMPUTER FRAUD/WIRE TAMPERING.
Re: Wait what? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's not even that. It's like going to the bank to make a withdrawal, and they give you your cash in an envelope, but they also printed text containing PII belonging to other customers on the inside of that envelope. Then the governor says you've committed a crime by looking inside of the envelope that is for all intents and purposes already yours, despite that you didn't even ask for them to print it there. It could only be a crime if you somehow fooled the bank into doing that, only that didn't happen in this case, rather it was a deliberate design decision on their part.
This is because "view source" simply displays information that was already given to you along with whatever else it was that you requested.
Re: Wait what? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure why everyone is hell bent on analogies.
It's exactly like klicking a View source menu entry in a web browser. In think in 20-fuckin'-21 (essentially 22, actually), one could expect to understand a website source for what it is. It's been around for 30 years, give or take, for Pete's sake.
Ot at least go all the way and make an analogy with dinosaurs and giant ferns. Or paramecia, just to be sure.
Re: Wait what? (Score:3)
But they do understand "Right click, View Source", don't they?
Somebody has to make that analogy for them. The same somebody could simply just tell them that "source" is the actual data that gets transfered, what they see is just how the computer dislays it.
This would jave the added benefit of educating then and not leaving them in the dark for another 30 years.
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View Source isn't picking a lock (Score:3, Insightful)
It's using the key hanging next to the front door with a sign above it saying "HERE'S THE KEY TO THE FRONT DOOR! GO AHEAD AND USE IT TO COME IN THE HOUSE!"
Re:View Source isn't picking a lock (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's more like someone staying on the sidewalk, walking around the block, and seeing into your backyard. The info is there, it's publicly available, no further entry is required.
Re:View Source isn't picking a lock (Score:4, Insightful)
I would say it is more like a service that sends copies of documents upon request, so that you have the work in your possession at home, but then claiming the law does not allow you to turn the page over and read what is written on the back because that is exactly like breaking into the business's premises.
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No, it's more like someone staying on the sidewalk, walking around the block, and seeing into your backyard. The info is there, it's publicly available, no further entry is required.
Nope. It's like someone chucks their lunch box with their secret info into your back yard and then gets upset when you open the lunch box and read it instead of just reading the "chuck's lunch box" on the outside and returning it to them unopened.
Re:View Source isn't picking a lock (Score:5, Funny)
I'm saddened that not one of these analogies used a car.
Re: View Source isn't picking a lock (Score:2)
It's like if someone leaves their coffee cup on the roof of their car, and when you wave them down to tell them, they get mad at you for breaking into their car?
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You buy a car that has heated seats built in, but then you learn "Heated seats" is a licensed feature that requires paying a monthly subscription to the car manufacturer.
You take advantage of your technical ingenuity to cut the wires to the vehicle computer that control the heating elements, and you insert your own manual switch to allow you to use them without paying.
The vehicle manufacturer charges you with criminal hacking and theft of service for modifying the car to steal $50 monthly subscription fe
Re:View Source isn't picking a lock (Score:5, Insightful)
Best analogy yet but it's even worse than that. It's like someone giving you a paper airplane as a gift, and you unfold it and find that there is personal information printed on the paper it's made from. You report this to the person giving away the paper airplanes, who is outraged at this act of data theft and intends to bring charges against you.
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In a good neighborhood, this analogy holds; but there are some bad neighborhoods around here. It has only happened to me twice, but I have had to respond to the angry inquiry of "Why are you looking at my house?". I don't know if those dudes were tweaking, but they were definitely paranoid. Maybe they were robbed in the past, but this is not the proper way to respond. Turning the neighborhood in to a "no go" zone, keeping pitbulls around for "security", having that kind of attitude? It really just runs
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100% they're cooking meth in that house, lol!
The emperor's new website... (Score:5, Insightful)
The analogy I would choose is from the Emperor's new clothes, where the naked emperor has the child arrested and prosecuted....
Re:The emperor's new website... (Score:5, Funny)
For being a peeping tom :-P
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It's using the key hanging next to the front door with a sign above it saying "HERE'S THE KEY TO THE FRONT DOOR! GO AHEAD AND USE IT TO COME IN THE HOUSE!"
Except in this case, they didn't even use a "key to the front door" that is just hanging there. They simply read the fine print on the sign which disclosed all the information in the first place. And then pointed out saying, "hey someone should probably change that sign, because in the fine print it is disclosing all these items that should be protected information".
do you have $100K+ to make that point in court (Score:3)
do you have $100K+ to make that point in court?
Will the PD have the time to make an good case?
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This was a journalist employed by a not-insignificant regional newspaper (26th largest in the U.S.). The newspaper has the money to make that point in court, and if they were to drop the ball I'm reasonably sure that the ACLU or other press-freedom organizations would jump in to pick up the slack.
Read the law much? (Score:5, Insightful)
"If somebody picks your lock on your house -- for whatever reason, it's not a good lock, it's a cheap lock or whatever problem you might have -- they do not have the right to go into your house and take anything that belongs to you," Parson said.
If somebody examines the lock on your house and tells you it's a cheap lock that doesn't actually work, you don't have the legal grounds to prosecute them for breaking and entering or theft.
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Most consumer grade locks are easily picked.
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And even the good ones are quickly destroyed with a drill or bolt cutter.
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Confirmed. For the first time in my life I locked myself completely out of my home a few years ago and had to call a lock smith. It took him a couple of minutes to pick the lock. I was both happy I didnt have to wait long and concerned over just how easy it was.
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It took me under five minutes to pick my front door first time trying. I am a complete amateur and it was only the second lock I tried to pick. I can't change it to something better because it's an apartment and it isn't allowed.
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Bad analogy anyway
Source is public
There's no breaking and entering at all
Politicians are weird: whine about cybersecurity -> antagonize anyone offering even the most basic help because it shows how you screwed up
Analogy (Score:2)
A closer analogy would be if you knock on someone's front door and it falls off it's hinges, you can't prosecute them for breaking and entering.
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Please note that I am simply showing what can be done, not what would pass in court, but that doesn't matter since it will take a year for it to go through the courts and in the meantime will force the person to have to pay for a lawyer, possibly lose their job if the business they work for has a zero tolerance type policy or similar situation where a criminal charge would prevent the ability to fulfill their role/dut
Re:Read the law much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Painfully Stupid (Score:3)
Re:Painfully Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
It's even worse than that. It's as if he has a cheap lock on the door, but he also left all of his belongings out on the front porch. His neighbor says to him "You might want to take all that stuff inside. It shouldn't be out here where everyone can see it."
Re:Painfully Stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
The analogy fails at the very start where "houses" are brought up. This is nothing like doing anything with a private residence. The server sent the entire document to the local browser upon request, as it was intended to do. All the guy did was choose another option for viewing the document.
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Yes, so much this. This doesn't need an analogy. The person was sent a document and read it.
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I think at this point his IT people have told him he's full of shit. But if he were to admit that, he'd have to admit he made a mistake. So he's following Dear Leader and doubling down on his stupidity. If the prosecutor is stupid enough to bite, he'll declare victory. If the judge finds the poor fellow guilty, he'll declare himself to be a stable genius. If the judge finds the poor fellow innocent, he'll use it as part of his next campaign against "corruption", "the left wing press", etc.
He's a Republican;
I just did Control U, lock me up! (Score:2)
And I Control U at your mother, Parsy, who smells of IE Berries!
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Wrong Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
I think someone has mislead the governor on what happened-- this isn't a lock-picking and entering exercise. This is the equivalent of sending out an envelope containing not just my information, but everyone else's information, and hoping no one would read the extra pages.
The person who should be facing charges is whoever wrote the application that displays the data, and transmits ALL the data instead of the least necessary amount of information.
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this.
Re:Wrong Analogy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wrong Analogy (Score:4, Informative)
I think someone has mislead the governor on what happened
It is good that you're presuming a positive intent, that he was genuinely mistaken or misunderstood.
Unfortunately, it isn't the case.
He's generally blind to both the repression and oppression he causes, and he has caused it often.
He was born and raised with an authoritarian slant. Six years in military police, 23 years as a sheriff. Joined the state legislature on a strong financial base, largely with insurance and fiscal oversight, always about controlling and asserting control over others.
Since entering office he's made decrees about appointing officials he wants, he repealed voter-approved amendments to re-enable gerrymandering (the legislature knows better than the independent people), pushed to make ballot referendums much harder, and is big on criminalizing abortions (women don't know what they want). He's created administrative rules that lets the state withhold medical funding for causes he doesn't like even if they're authorized by the legislature, including abortion. He's used low-income housing funding as a bargaining chip in political wrangling, screw the poor as long as it helps his cause.
For the breach he has been told by a bunch of people that the state itself published the data, including being told by legislators from both parties and his own advisors, but he won't listen.
More like leaving an object in somebody else's (Score:5, Insightful)
If Bob asks Alice for a book, and Alice leaves said book at Bob's, is Bob not allowed to open the book?
If Alice gives Bob a radio (gives, not loans), is Bob not allowed to inspect the inside of the radio?
if Bob discovers a dangerous problem with the radio (e.g. likely to blow up its battery due to short circuit or something), is Bob not within his rights to alert Alice, or to alert the population in general (in this case, the radio should surely be recalled by its manufacturer).
Using View Source is like inspecting something that somebody else has willingly given you.
rent a car telling them about an light = hacking? (Score:2)
rent a car telling them about an light = hacking?
Didn't violate the statute (Score:2)
I followed the link to read the law. None of the reporting has claimed that Renaud "accessed a computer network and intentionally examined personal information". Because who would possibly have guessed that personal information was invisibly embedded in the page? It's such a brain-dead idea, that you wouldn't intentionally look for that.
to bad it will be in hands of people paid $15/day (Score:2)
to bad it will be in hands of people paid $15/day to be the jury
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> no way in a million years I'd actually get selected
In this century the job of the prosecutor is to get convictions, not to find justice.
Re: to bad it will be in hands of people paid $15/ (Score:2)
I suspect you and I used to work together on some middleware servers, and itâ(TM)s probably a good reason that we share near identical opinions and likelihood of jury selection on this! Iâ(TM)m no longer in Cole though.. Iâ(TM)m pretty confident the Governor doesnâ(TM)t understand this issue on his own, so Iâ(TM)m really curious who advised him on this. And thankful I wonâ(TM)t ever have to deal with them!!
If you still might have to deal with them, my condolences!!!
Re: to bad it will be in hands of people paid $15 (Score:2)
Holy crap, mobile input is NOT parsed well. Sorry for that eyesore comment.
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Any trial would also involve expert witnesses. In theory most expert witnesses that he prosecutor talks to about this should pass and tell them that they have no case whatsoever. There are enough unprincipled mercenary types out there that they could fish for someone. The defense would be able to get their own export witness though. Personally, I would love to see this go to trial if the defense could appeal to, say, Tim Berners-Lee to appear as an expert witness.
Well (Score:2)
I'm quite sure there is NO law forbidding someone to see if you have a Chubb or a Yale or Titan or....
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car analogy (Score:2)
An car analogy will be taking an road without authorization that has NO GATE or FENCE AT ALL with NO SIGN SAYING private road.
View Source may kind of being like taking an short cut that is not the main flow but is open an in the public with no locks on it.
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A car analogy would be sending you a car with clear windows, and then suing you for looking inside the windows.
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Unfortunately, some places have laws making it illegal to look inside car windows (they're supposed to be to prevent smash and grab robberies). That makes that a poor analogy even though it should be a good one.
Sure, if the lock is picked (Score:2)
But if you leave the curtains open and people look through the window??!
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But if you leave the curtains open and people look through the window??!
From the street.
Bad analogy (Score:2)
"If somebody picks your lock on your house -- for whatever reason, it's not a good lock, it's a cheap lock or whatever problem you might have -- they do not have the right to go into your house and take anything that belongs to you,"
It's more like like the door was wide open and someone looked inside quick (without actually entering the house) and saw it was full of valuables. Instead of taking said valuables, they contacted the home owner so they could re-secure their house. After the issue was resolved
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He's not just a moron, he's also an asshole. Then again, he is a politician and they all tend to be some level of brain dead mixed with arrogant these days.
I can't imagine there's nobody on his entire staff that could give him the toddler level explanation to make what actually happen make sense to him. So, he's either too arrogant to listen to his advisors, which is not at all unheard of among politicians of all stripes, or he's made sure anybody that does grasp the situation well enough to explain it to
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I can't imagine there's nobody on his entire staff that could give him the toddler level explanation to make what actually happen make sense to him.
Yeah, but next thing you know he would be giving a speech explaining that the Internet is not a dump truck, but instead a series of tubes.
Just when you think they have reached peak stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
Does the US have a law against "malicious prosecution"? Because that would probably apply.
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Future transcript from trial:
Defense fires up browser, right clicks, view source.
Judge: Case dismissed and prosecution needs to get that weak shit out my courtroom. *DROPS MIC*
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Alternatively:
Defense fires up browser, right clicks, view source.
Judge: Arrest the defense! They are repeating their heresy! I see a few death penalties by stoning coming up, this _must_ be stopped!
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Does the US have a law against "malicious prosecution"? Because that would probably apply.
No, the reporter is not wealthy or connected enough compared to the accuser. Further the entire profession he is in, liberal reporting, is nothing but a thorn in the side of every republican man, woman, and child. He is guilty until proven so in a court of law, may god have mercy on his soul. /s
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There's always some next level of stupid politicans can raise themselves up to. Thoroughly unsurprised. Everyone is pointing at some republican as being clueless, but I can guarantee you its on both sides of the aisle.
And yes, we do, but I think there's some governmental protection. Used to have protection for cops, but that appears to be slowly changing.
The real analogy (Score:3)
You sent someone a letter based on their query but you also for some reason included some naughty pictures of your girlfriend. The recipient called you and said you might want to be more careful next time. You then accuse him of stalking.
F12 (Score:2)
This just in: opening the dev console will be prosecuted as a crime in Missouri.
Malicious Prosecution (Score:2)
Malicious prosecution is a thing, and illegal in many (all?) jurisdictions. I can't find the exact link, but:
- https://elsterlaw.com/missouri... [elsterlaw.com]
- https://missourilawreview.blog... [blogspot.com]
When you charge someone with a crime, and they are found not guilty, [and a slew of other conditions,] then you can sue for malicious prosecution. Now it's up to the jury to decide if the prosecutor should have known that what you did wasn't against the law.
Of course, you run into hurdles:
- licensed lawyers don't want to sue their
Police standard (Score:2)
Since 1994 (Score:3)
If viewing source is illegal, I've been breaking the law since 1994.
This is a man... (Score:2)
This is a man who clearly believes that the Internet is a dump truck and does not understand that it's a series of tubes.
A book is a good analogy (Score:2)
The web server generates the "source" that is downloaded to my machine and displayed and rendered by my browser. This text is what I'm seeing when I right-click and select view source.
So: you're putting this data on my hard drive, and daring me to look at it. That's like giving me a book and daring me to open it. And then when I do open it and look at the text on the pages, you're claiming I've committed a crime.
The 1) audacity and 2) idiocy is astounding.
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From a linked article in that main article [stltoday.com]:
The book ana
Fucking Moron (Score:2)
"If somebody picks your lock on your house -- for whatever reason, it's not a good lock, it's a cheap lock or whatever problem you might have -- they do not have the right to go into your house"
Stupid analogy. A better one is that the fucking door was wide open and the accused saw wealth of valuables from outside the door and FUCKING ALERTED YOU.
Everyone has the wrong analogy (Score:2)
A better analogy would be somebody HANDING you their private stuff and then charging you when you take your sunglasses off for a closer look. When you "view source" the data has already been sent. you're just looking at it without a filter in front of your face.
Re: Not a good analogy (Score:3)
Send data to my computer, and I have the right to inspect it.
I agree, but be careful: in many countries there are laws that go against this principle. Send radio waves at me - but it is illegal to have a detector for police radar. Send me a video to watch (streaming), but it is a copyright violation if I record it. Etc..
All of these laws are wrong, but they exist. It is not impossible that thus prosecution will succeed...