Uhm, yeeeaaaahhh. Even if it could be defined as "Hacking", there is a such thing as "White Hat Hackers" who serve to find things like Zero-Day Vulnerabilities and notify the appropriate people.
That said, if there was any sort of crime at all, it was in that the reporter chose to first publish it in the news rather than first report it to the local government. There's nothing in the article that states that this reporter ever attempted to notify governing officials of the vulnerability before running the story.
Which, in my mind, makes what he did morally wrong... but technically legal. It'd be a bit different if he first notified the government, and then was threatened to fuck off and stay quiet, and thus significantly more controversial.
What he did instead was to make the vulnerability widely known, denying the local government a chance to fix it before actual "Black Hats" could capitalize on the vulnerability and steal the Social Security credentials of educators.
In which case, Governor Parson would have been better off pursuing a civil suit on behalf of these educators to this effect - that no matter what the State's culpability in the matter was, the reporter was reckless in exposing this vulnerability to the general public without giving anyone a chance to fix it first. Even if you could consider the news report itself to be the "notification", it's extremely unlikely that the government could react fast enough to secure the vulnerable data before Black Hats could get to it.
To put it in a metaphor, it'd be like as if someone working for the state left an armored car, with the educator's payroll inside, unlocked and unattended in front of a bank... which is bad, sure. But then, someone comes along, checks to see if the doors are unlocked, and upon seeing that they are, throws them all open and screams to everyone present, "HEY GUYS! CHECK THIS SHIT OUT!"
Yeah. Not technically a crime, but extremely uncool.
That said, if there was any sort of crime at all, it was in that the reporter chose to first publish it in the news rather than first report it to the local government. There's nothing in the article that states that this reporter ever attempted to notify governing officials of the vulnerability before running the story.
Which, in my mind, makes what he did morally wrong... but technically legal. It'd be a bit different if he first notified the government, and then was threatened to fuck off and stay quiet, and thus significantly more controversial.
What he did instead was to make the vulnerability widely known, denying the local government a chance to fix it before actual "Black Hats" could capitalize on the vulnerability and steal the Social Security credentials of educators.
In which case, Governor Parson would have been better off pursuing a civil suit on behalf of these educators to this effect - that no matter what the State's culpability in the matter was, the reporter was reckless in exposing this vulnerability to the general public without giving anyone a chance to fix it first. Even if you could consider the news report itself to be the "notification", it's extremely unlikely that the government could react fast enough to secure the vulnerable data before Black Hats could get to it.
To put it in a metaphor, it'd be like as if someone working for the state left an armored car, with the educator's payroll inside, unlocked and unattended in front of a bank... which is bad, sure. But then, someone comes along, checks to see if the doors are unlocked, and upon seeing that they are, throws them all open and screams to everyone present, "HEY GUYS! CHECK THIS SHIT OUT!"
Yeah. Not technically a crime, but extremely uncool.