Technology

Missouri Admits It Fucked Up In Exposing Teacher Data, Offers Apology To Teachers -- But Not To Journalists It Falsely Accused Of Hacking

3 years ago

Anonymous $np3LcwuhSi

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211110/11331647915/missouri-admits-it-fucked-up-exposing-teacher-data-offers-apology-to-teachers-not-to-journalists-it-falsely-accused-hacking.shtml

As you'll recall, last month, journalists for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch revealed that the state's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) website was exposing teacher and administrator social security numbers in the HTML source code. This came years after state auditors had highlighted that DESE was already collecting information it should not have been collecting. Bizarrely, DESE and Missouri governor Mike Parson, rather than thanking these journalists for helping to protect the teachers, accused them of being hackers and promising to prosecute them. After people mocked him, he doubled down on the claim and a PAC closely connected to Parson put out a bizarre add playing up the evil "hacking" by the "fake news" media, along with ridiculous talk about "decoding the HTML source code."
Except that, now, DESE has (much more quietly, and with much less bombast) apologized for the data breach and offered credit and identity theft monitoring to teachers:

Missouri Admits It Fucked Up In Exposing Teacher Data, Offers Apology To Teachers -- But Not To Journalists It Falsely Accused Of Hacking

Nov 10, 2021, 8:25pm UTC

$np3LcwuhSi

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211110/11331647915/missouri-admits-it-fucked-up-exposing-teacher-data-offers-apology-to-teachers-not-to-journalists-it-falsely-accused-hacking.shtml > As you'll recall, last month, journalists for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch revealed that the state's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) website was exposing teacher and administrator social security numbers in the HTML source code. This came years after state auditors had highlighted that DESE was already collecting information it should not have been collecting. Bizarrely, DESE and Missouri governor Mike Parson, rather than thanking these journalists for helping to protect the teachers, accused them of being hackers and promising to prosecute them. After people mocked him, he doubled down on the claim and a PAC closely connected to Parson put out a bizarre add playing up the evil "hacking" by the "fake news" media, along with ridiculous talk about "decoding the HTML source code." > Except that, now, DESE has (much more quietly, and with much less bombast) apologized for the data breach and offered credit and identity theft monitoring to teachers: