Uniting Missouri
8 HN mentions · mentioned in 4 months, 2021–2022
0:55 · 104K views · Oct 20, 2021
A one-minute political ad from a PAC tied to Missouri Governor Mike Parson attacking a reporter who disclosed a state website flaw as a hacker.
HN cites it as an example of the Missouri 'view source' controversy and the governor's attempt to portray viewing HTML as hacking.
8 comments from Hacker News
This definitely is not "much ado about nothing." I prefer the Verge article on this one though [1]. Relevant quote from the article: > They turned the case over to Cole County Prosecuting Attorney Locke Thompson on Monday, December 27. Governor Parson then held a press conference on Wednesday, December 29, where he cited a state statute related to computer tampering and repeatedly suggested Thompson should use it to prosecute Renaud and the paper. It was just earlier this week that this was turned over to the prosecutor's office. This prosecutor is an elected official, and the Missouri conservative PAC has put their money behind this by placing attack ads against the reporter, and framing this as "holding the fake news accountable" [2]. Also, IANAL but if we're going by the letter of the law, the local Missouri computer crime section certainly does seem to include the actions of the reporter [3], even if the SSNs weren't Base64 encoded. Bad law, but the fact that the law is bad doesn't have bearing on whether they'll decide to prosecute. [1] [LINK] [2] this video [3] [LINK]
IANAL, but the local Missouri computer crime statute is very broad [1]. Technically, the reporter seems to have factually "Accessed a computer, a computer system, or a computer network, and intentionally examined information about another person" without "authorization." Considering the conservative PAC for the state has already pushed attack ads against the reporter [2], and the fact that the prosecutor is elected (potentially supported by conservative PACs), I definitely see a possibility of this going to court and potentially arriving at a conviction. Again, IANAL, and I don't know the jurisprudence or case history behind this particular statute. [1] [LINK] [2] this video
Regarding "It's playing great with his constituents:" His PAC is running ads like this. this video To a lot of us, that looks like nonsense, but you have to remember how far through the looking-glass a lot of the conservative populace has gone... The press is now the enemy in their mind, and they don't understand technology well enough to get why these claims are ridiculous. So he gets to build steam and any pushback is just seen as more "fake news" coverage that would (of course) support their fellows in the media. It's deeply frustrating because it's a form of social jujitsu built atop existing mistrust, and there aren't good ways to combat it.
Ah, so finally the detail. The site was apparently an ASP.NET site, and they were putting the whole SSN into the "VIEWSTATE" object. Which looks something like this in the html: <input type="hidden" name="__VIEWSTATE" id="__VIEWSTATE" value="BASE64STUFFHERE="> There is a choice to encrypt it, but I'm skeptical how useful that is, or that it was enabled in this case. So the "hack" was "view source" -> decode some base64 data sitting in plain sight. Edit: A little bonus. This bizarre video from a PAC the governor started, still trying to call this "hacking": this video
Thompson is a small-town Missourian elected prosecutor, facing pressure from fellow conservatives to "hold the fake news accountable" as stated in the latest attack ad against the reporter from a conservative PAC [1]. At best it's a coin toss imo. [1] this video