Ah, I think I recall the story you're referring to: reporter Josh Renaud of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch discovered that a public web site was exposing Social Security numbers of teachers in Missouri. He notified the site's administrators, and later published a story about the leak after it was fixed.

The governor of Missouri at the time, Mike Parson, called him a hacker and advocated prosecuting him. Fortunately the prosecutor's office declined to file charges though.