Comments by "MarcosElMalo2" (@MarcosElMalo2) on "Website Had Flaw 10 Years Before Reporter Saw It" video.

The real problem here isn’t the flaw, but the thin skinned governor trying to escape responsibility. Vulnerabilities exist. Sometimes they exist for years before being discovered. Back in 2011, many organizations were playing catch up. Some organizations didn’t have human resources specifically devoted to security or a security mindset. The correct response would be to accept responsibility and outline the steps taken to mitigate the mistake and steps being taken to prevent future vulnerabilities. Praise should have been given to the reporter and newspaper for holding the story until the flaw could be fixed. That could have been the end of the story. The governor might have taken a small hit for one day, but I doubt most voters would really understand the issue. The governor could even have parlayed the incident into a political positive: “we made a mistake, we took action, and by golly, we will not let this happen again! Hooray for us, being responsive to a crisis!”
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I think it’s likely that the governor just went off on his rant without consulting anyone with any expertise in the matter. The people that could have corrected him didn’t know a correction needed to made until after the damage was done. After that point, how much effort would YOU make for a politician with such a flawed moral character?
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The most basic remedy is to vote the governor out of office at the next election. No need for litigation or impeachment.
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No to the first part of your suggestion. Yes to the second part—which is what a newspaper should be doing as a matter of course. Litigation is long, expensive, and takes more work than penning a few incisive editorials. If successful, what result might be achieved? Monetary damages less than the cost of litigation? Vindication? Vindication in the court of public opinion is better payback.
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@nicholas_scott You’re right. There wasn’t even a World Wide Web before 1991 or 1992. Few people even had internet access, nor were the majority of computers networked. It borders on ignorance to judge by current standards. The main issue here isn’t the incompetence of the website developers. It’s the moral character and intelligence of the governor. The website flaw was corrected, but you can’t fix stupid—although you can vote the stupid person out of office.
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@Skank_and_Gutterboy Good point. The pugnacious doubling down on his error is not something you can ignore.
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There was a time that there was no best practice, and even after network security had matured to the point of having best practices, it took many years to educate IT professionals, and even more to educate the people that managed them. The real flaw here is not the website, but the governor. And there is already a corrective mechanism in place that we call elections.
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@veramae4098 Oh, goodness. He was quite good early on, but Campbell’s gone off the rails over the past six months. Sadly, he’s shut down criticism from experts for errors he’s made in his videos—even from experts who he’s previously had on his channel. He’s tried to support his theories with retracted studies. That might sound like an innocent mistake, but then he didn’t link to the paper on the publisher’s site. He used a link to the study that didn’t carry the retraction notification. You trust John Campbell at your peril. He’s no longer a reliable source. He’s not open to correction.
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Perhaps the newspaper and reporter could bring a civil suit, but why? What result could they achieve that couldn’t be more effectively achieved with the power of the press? Are you thinking monetary damages? How much harm to their reputation occurred, and how much is it worth monetarily? I’d say none at all, but even if there was, its monetary value would be very small. If you feel that the governor should have some consequences for making false statements, that’s what elections are for. Just because you can sue doesn’t mean you should sue.
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I’ll just say that even if you can sue doesn’t mean you should sue. A newspaper has a powerful weapon in its editorial pages before needing to litigate. A lot of people are quick to recommend litigation when it’s not the wiser course. And litigation is not easy or cheap.
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@richardtodd6843 Your first point is very good. There’s a difference between having an axe to grind and the normal adversarial/keep-em-honest position of the press towards politicians. Engaging in unnecessary litigation might even get the reporter removed from reporting on political stories. It turns the story into something beyond straightforward reporting—which I guess is fine if you’re writing a Hunter S. Thompson type piece about your legal battles with a politician.
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@mballer it’s always a conspiracy with you people. Don’t ascribe to malice what is clearly incompetence.
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@mballer Yes, you blamed the programmer’s incompetence on “the deep state”, a conspiracy theory. As far as who “you people” are, did that hurt your feelings? The “you people” in this case refers to adherents to the alternative reality of conspiracy theories. What did you think it meant? If you’re not a conspiracy nut, and meant “an out of control government bureaucracy” or “big government”, say that instead of using the vocabulary of lunatics. If that’s all you meant, we might actually be in agreement. If you misspoke, my apologies.
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But why? What actual harm did the reporter or newspaper suffer? The obvious remedy here is to vote the governor out of office at the next election, rather than run to litigation at the first opportunity. If the newspaper wants to fight back, they have plenty of arrows in their quiver before resorting to the litigation arrow. It’s less work and less expensive to publish editorials and analysis pushing back on the governor’s unfair and unfounded criticism.
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