This definitely is not "much ado about nothing." I prefer the Verge article on this one though [1]. Relevant quote from the article: > They turned the case ov

This definitely is not "much ado about nothing." I prefer the Verge article on this one though [1]. Relevant quote from the article: > They turned the case over to Cole County Prosecuting Attorney Locke Thompson on Monday, December 27. Governor Parson then held a press conference on Wednesday, December 29, where he cited a state statute related to computer tampering and repeatedly suggested Thompson should use it to prosecute Renaud and the paper. It was just earlier this week that this was turned over to the prosecutor's office. This prosecutor is an elected official, and the Missouri conservative PAC has put their money behind this by placing attack ads against the reporter, and framing this as "holding the fake news accountable" [2]. Also, IANAL but if we're going by the letter of the law, the local Missouri computer crime section certainly does seem to include the actions of the reporter [3], even if the SSNs weren't Base64 encoded. Bad law, but the fact that the law is bad doesn't have bearing on whether they'll decide to prosecute. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/31/22861188/missouri-governor-mike-parson-hack-website-source-code https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/31/22861188/missouri-govern... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IBPeRa7U8E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IBPeRa7U8E [3] https://revisor.mo.gov/main/OneSection.aspx?section=569.095 https://revisor.mo.gov/main/OneSection.aspx?section=569.095