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Comment by mullingitover | Hacker News Reader

This one's still fresh in my mind: "A Missouri newspaper told the state about a security risk. Now it faces prosecution"[1]

[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/10/14/1046124278/missouri-newspaper...

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Ah yes the government was putting teacher SSNs on the html client-side. Someone inspected element and found them and reported it. The governor went on a personal vendetta and tried to get him charged with CFAA violations which are no joke.

Made me realize we need way more coders in congress that understand basic technology. Especially with AI becoming a big part of society.

This is not the answer to this problem. Instead vulnerability researchers should share their findings with potential victims so they can sue rather than reporting to Republican state governments that will simply sue them.

What can the potential victims sue for specifically? Like what is the legal theory there? Which law has the state government broken and how would the plaintiffs get around sovereign immunity? Please to provide citations for the relevant statutes and case law.

I don't think understanding is the issue. It doesn't take a lot of tech knowledge to understand "the SSNs were all being sent, they were just hidden poorly."

What we need is fewer vindictive, fragile people in positions of power. Unfortunately this is an unsolved problem.

The problem with the people in power is that they were the ones seeking to be in power. If, instead, the mechanism was by lottery, thrusting the reigns of power upon any random citizen, the system wouldn't select for people who were also vindictive and fragile as a consequence of being egotistical enough to seek power.

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