Missouri governor rebuffed: Journalist won’t be prosecuted for viewing HTML

Enlarge / Gov. Mike Parson at a press conference on May 29, 2019, in Jefferson City, Missouri. (credit: Getty Images | Jacob Moscovitch )

A Cole County prosecutor has rebuffed Missouri Gov. Mike Parson's request to file criminal charges against a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter who identified a major security flaw in a government website by viewing publicly available HTML code.

Post-Dispatch reporter Josh Renaud had been facing the threat of prosecution since his discovery that the state website's HTML source code exposed the full Social Security numbers of teachers and other school employees in unencrypted form. Renaud merely viewed the website's HTML and converted the Social Security numbers into plain text, and he gave the state time to close the gaping security hole before publishing his findings. Despite Renaud helping the state improve its security, Parson called the journalist a "hacker," sought criminal charges, and threatened a civil suit.

On Friday, Cole County Prosecutor Locke Thompson issued a statement saying he has closed the investigation without charges:

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