Read an interesting story this morning about a lawsuit from a Texas company accusing a Minnesota Public Radio reporter of hacking into their web system. Read the full article to get a good idea on what all went down, especially the last 3 paragraphs which I feel really get to the heart of this somewhat complex issue. Here’s the last quote from the CEO of the Texas company who had weaknesses in their website:

“… in our contract, we had 60 days to fix any problem. But there was still an unauthorized intrusion, and that was wrong.”

If you ask me, you had completely dumb weaknesses in your site. Just because you offer 60 days to fix something doesn’t mean you get a free pass from even the most assinine security issues. They fucked up.

I’m not a judge, but my kneejerk reaction to this lawsuit would be to have the Texas company thank the reporter for reporting the weaknesses in their web presence; a service tendered for free. The reporter should learn that this isn’t such an easy thing, to just twiddle with a website and call it good. She was stepping into murky waters and should exercise more caution in the future, but at least it does not sound like she had malicious or self-serving intent. And the general public and every employee and customer of that company should thank the reporter for exposing an issue that likely would not have been fixed otherwise.

I would hope this doesn’t even progress past the prosecutor.