Thread by @normative

If I understand this correctly, the state ineptly left personal information about employees embedded in the HTML source of publicly accessible pages, and… the governor is now threatening to prosecute the reporters who discovered this for “hacking”?

https://twitter.com/GovParsonMO/status/1448697768311132160

This is utterly ludicrous. Looking at HTML source is not hacking. Every Web browser has a “view source” button. And… you’ve ALREADY “accessed” the source code of every Web page you look at. That’s what the server sends to your browser!

This does not make any of this any less stupid, and the legal theory here is still absolute nonsense. Apparently the personal information (SSNs) embedded in the page source had to be decoded or translated in some way. But that’s not “hacking” or “unauthorized access.”

https://twitter.com/GovParsonMO/status/1448750830857904129

Decoding information *you have already downloaded to your own computer* is not an “unauthorized access”. All the “accessing” has already happened at that point, and it was clearly authorized! It cannot be “hacking” to *decode data on your own computer.*

If I spell out my credit card number in Pig Latin in the source code to my publicly accessible webpage, and it turns out you know how to click “view source” and read Pig Latin, that does not make you a hacker. It makes me an idiot who has recklessly disclosed personal data.

Here’s the St Louis Dispatch writeup. The state should be thanking the reporters for drawing their attention to their own shocking incompetence, not threatening absurd legal action that would get laughed out of any court. stltoday.com/news/local/edu…

Ike-May Arson-Pay Is-Ay Umb-Day. Be warned that if you turn the previous sentence into ordinary English in your brain, this is an UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS and I will have you prosecuted for l33t haxx0r activities in Missouri.