Have I mentioned that the governor of Missouri, Mike Parson, is utterly worthless? I believe I have.
In our latest episode, a reporter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch discovered that what appeared to be the social security numbers of more than 100,000 of the state’s teachers were visible in the html code of a state online database. The Post-Dispatch then consulted with three educators and a cybersecurity expert to confirm that the nine-digit numbers in the code were in fact Social Security numbers. Yep, they were.
For the techie-challenged, the html code of any page can be viewed with any browser I know of. Right-click on this page and look at the menu that pops up. Click on “view (or show) page source” or “inspect.” There it is.
The Post-Dispatch notified the state agency hosting the database so the problem could be corrected, or at least taken offline, before the story became public. Yesterday, the newspaper published the story.
So then Gov. Idiot trots out and makes a complete ass of himself. It’s especially fun to hear Parson accuse the Post-Dispatch of trying to embarass his administration while Parson is standing there doing a bang-up job of embarassing his administration.
My favorite tweet about this, so far:
BREAKING NEWS: this is the sophisticated 8-step process that @GovParsonMO alleges hackers used to breach the state’s sensitive data stores:
1. right click
2. View Page Source
3. look
4. at
5. the
6. HTML
7. and
8. see what it saysCould this be Russia’s doing??? ?
— Sam Sycamore ? ? (@tanoaksam) October 14, 2021
Here’s the front page of today’s Post-Dispatch:
Yeah, the Cardinals fired manager Mike Shildt after he took the team through a record-breaking winning streak and into a Wild Card game. This was the doing of president of baseball operations John Mozeliak. Mozeliak said the firing was over “philosophical differences,” which people are taking to mean Shildt did something to piss off Mozeliak. St. Louis is pissed. But let’s go on.
Parson is not backing down or yet acknowledging he had no idea what he was talking about when he accused a reporter of “hacking” the “HTN MLN” source code. Today the state’s news media are advising Parson to get over it and get serious about cybersecurity, as he’s been warned about before.
What a maroon.
I have only been a Cardinals fan for 70 years (I started late at age 3). The firing surprised me but I will hold on upset until a new manager is named and after we get some feedback from players that include Yadi, Waino, Goldie, and/or Arenado. My biggest want for the Cards is a healthy pitching staff next season.
Your governor seems to be stupid enough to consider himself future presidential material so killing Missouri citizens is part of burnishing his credentials. Here in the Mississippi of the Midwest (aka Indiana), I have two rePuknican senators and a rePuke governor. They are asshats, but not at the same level as yours.
The actual Gov. Parsons looks like an actor sent up from central-casting when the part called for an older, dumb, corrupt, corpulent Southern cracker who can pass for a state's Governor.
What a hack!!!
What the Cardinals did was very, VERY, un-Cardinal like!
Shildt was a Cardinal lifer. A lifer!
The Cardinals don't often fire managers.
Almost no teams fire their lifers after only a four-year run, let alone where the team was in the play-offs for three of them. Three!
It's hard to believe that this classy franchise would fire a manager who got his team to the play-offs three times in four years – including THIS season, when the Cards finished off the season with a 17 game winning streak! 17!
And they lost a one-game play-off game to the team with 106 wins, and the highest payroll in Baseball.
I'm a closet Cardinals fan. I'm an open, life-long Yankees fan. But I also like the Cardinals because they also have class, and a long history of winning, like my Yankees.
Firing Shildt was a sin.
I guess he didn't kiss the asses of the computer genius analysts who are now the REAL managers in the game long and hard enough.
The days of the Stengels, Billy Martins, Earl Weavers, are done.
Tony LaRussa, at 77, and still the active manager of the White Sox, is the last dinosaur.
The computer nerds are the ones running, and ruining, the once great game of baseball.
The nuances of this beautiful, elegant but tough game, are being lost to statistics.
I want to watch a sport. A game. Not relive math classes in junior and senior high school.
A bunt. A sacrifice. Please, baseball, re-watch the great George Carlin's classic baseball v. football bit! The game was fun!!!
This is hilarious (sorry teachers). Parsons isn't particularly responsible for the fact that the hacked, archaic (because nobody thought about security back then) systems were easy to get, but he is responsible for his stupid reaction.
I'm not a lawyer but there is liablity here. The state had a responsibility to safeguard teacher information. To the degree that didn't happen, the state can be sued. Damages may be incidental but suing the governor for the failure might be a good move.
States enjoy sovereign immunity. Which means they can't be sued unless they consent to it. Which requires a statute establishing such consent, and what kinds of cases may be pursued.
I have no idea if Missouri has such a law.
The Governor is trying to cover his butt and his administration for gross incompetence. Can someone please explain to me why this is the kind of character that republicans just love to vote for?
As the country becomes more technical and complex, the politicians become more simple minded. They are now so simple they don't even who to even hire to take care of really simple tasks. One can trust them with no sensitive information especially in digital form.
Unfortunately technology has allowed mistakes in security much larger and available to evildoers both domestic and foreign. Missouri is going to have to make things square with it's teachers somehow.