This week, Minnesota Public Radio was able to access state employee data on Lookout Services’ Web site without using a password or encryption software. Employee names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and hire dates were visible on the Web site for every state agency using the service.

This week, the state and MPR are being countersued for breach of contract, stealing trade secrets and “hacking.”

It’s bullshit, of course.

The Lookout Services Inc. countersuit is a frivolous lawsuit which attempts to intimidate and quash people from exercising their First Amendment rights regarding publicizing information about their site’s complete lack of security.

Let’s see what’s up:

• Lookout Services CEO Elaine Morley runs a law firm out of the same address (5909 West Loop S Fwy # 300 in Bellaire, TX) with her husband, Arden Morley, called Morley & Morley P.C.
• On LinkedIn, Morley & Morley P.C. claims to have 5 employees and Lookout Services, Inc. claims to have 10 employees.
• Morley & Morley P.C. shares at least two other employees with Lookout Services, Inc.: Alisha Campos and David Person. In related news stories, David Person is referred to as “the company’s attorney” and you can find Alisha Campos’ email address on the Lookout site in reference to customer service. (The demo has been taken down, but is cached by Google.)
• The Morleys are on Twitter, and have registered the following accounts: @Everifyandi9, @Lookoutservices, @L00koutservices, @ArdenMorleyLaw, @ArdenMorley, @Houstonlawfirm, @SugarLandLawyer, and who knows what else.
• The Morleys are Republicans, which was kind of obvious from their gross misunderstanding of the First Amendment, although Arden Morley is particularly fond of the Second Amendment (plus 137 other things, damn):
• The Morleys/Lookout Services Inc./Morley & Morley, P.C. were taken to court in 2008 for failing to pay their “computer consultants” nearly $20k. This is publicly-available information: [PDF]
• On the Secrets of the City blog, someone calling themselves “Ashley” with a Sugar Land, TX IP address posted the Lookout press release and comparisons to a journalist burglarizing a house, along with things such as, “The power of the press is enormous and virtually unchecked.”

When you get 36 local women-owned companies and nearly 1,200 women in one room at Minneapolis’ Graves Hotel, there’s only one possible result — high-energy shopping.

Best/worst part: it was written by a woman.

Personally, I don’t believe that newspaper sites should have comment sections. That’s what blogs are for, so nobody has to read the dumb stuff that you write! If it wasn’t written well enough to even be published in print as a letter to the editor, why should it go online? (Hint: “freedom of speech” is incorrect.)

Yeah, you bet if you leave a shitty remark anonymously on my blog, I’ll WHOIS your IP address. Which I already have done in the past, so my ex-boyfriends have learned to use proxies when visiting my blog.

The coverage of this case is, across the board, sickening.  Here are a few headlines:
George Sodini, Health Club Gunman, Went On Rampage Over Sexual Rejection
George Sodini’s Blog Tells of Years of Rejection By Women Before Gym Shooting
Gunman at Pennsylvania Health Club Was Bitter Over Women
Sex-Starved Aeoribcs Killer George Sodini Was Upset By Women
Failures In Love Bred LA Fitness Center Killer’s Hate

And the list goes on.  In each case, we see that Sodini is the victim.  Nowhere do we see a headline like this: Misogynist Commits Mass Murder or Three Women Murdered in Hate Crime. The articles are clear that Sodini hated women, which of course he did, but for the media, if Sodini hated women, then there must be a reason for it.  A good reason. If George Sodini, a proven racist, had murdered African-Americans simply because of their race, would we be asking why George Sodini hated African-Americans?  No, because what possible legitimate reason could he have?  There isn’t one.  He’s a racist asshole and that’s the end of it.  But apparently, there are legitimate reasons to hate all women.  The articles try to explain, in rational terms, why Sodini hated women, thus making his rampage seem like the next logical step given his mental instability.  If women hadn’t deprived him of sex, none of this would have happened.

[...]

For a moment, just imagine if George Sodini had had a girlfriend. There can be virtually no doubt that she would have been physically and emotionally abused during the relationship, because George Sodini hated women. If the woman had tried to escape from him, she would have been stalked and likely murdered. And after he killed her, he would have probably committed a mass murder of women anyway. The headline: Heartbroken Man Goes on Rampage After Being Dumped.

The real story here is not lonely men (there are plenty of lonely women as well), but instead, the real story is male violence against women and girls, which occurs every second of every day in the form of domestic abuse, molestation, harassment, rape and murder. There is no rational, legitimate reason for this hatred of women, yet it is widespread in our culture and everyday, women die as a result.

(via)

For those who don’t remember, Torossian’s firm was hired by Agriprocessors after the May 2008 immigration raid. In its capacity as Agriprocessors PR agency, it impersonated Rabbi Morris Allen and other Agriprocessors critics online – starting right here on FailedMessiah.com.

Yes, that would be THAT Rabbi Allen, of Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights.

You know, I’d love to do Birthright once I finish my conversion. This just should not have happened. Birthright should have known better. It’s disappointing. As long as Birthright is being represented by that trashy firm, I can’t find a reason for anyone to support them, refer young Jews to them, or to sign up to take a trip with them.

You can read more about everything 5WPR and Agriprocessors over at FailedMessiah, or everything sleazy and 5WPR at Gawker.

Today, I woke up and read this:

A man was found shot to death at 2 a.m. today when police responded to reports of a shooting in the 5300 block of Chicago Ave. S. The man was found in a stairwell, and was dead at the scene, police said. The man’s identity has not yet been released. No one is in custody and police are asking that anyone with information on the shooting call the Minneapolis Police Department tip line at 612-692-tips (8477).

Living two blocks away, I naturally grab my camera and go down to see what happened. I hadn’t heard anything during the early morning hours, certainly not a gunshot.

KSTP interviewing the man who lives kitty-corner from the apartment complex the shooting happen.

WCCO filming the front of the apartment complex, which boast an available 1BR for rent. I wonder if there is a “dead man in stairwell” discount.

I decide to go around the back of the apartment building, where the dead man was found in the stairwell.

Nothing too out-of-the-ordinary–no puddles of blood, police, or really anyone around.  I noticed a ripped piece of police caution tape in the parking lot and went to the back door. As I got closer, I realized that the window and doorknob had been dusted for fingerprints.

Crime is very rare in this neighborhood, although it happens. Much has been made of Minneapolis’s low homicide rate this year. This is the city’s 8th homicide.

Edit @ 10:21PM: The man has been identified as Paul Fisher.

Management’s buyout memo asked for “up to three” metro columnists and “up to one” editorial cartoonist, which seems a classification limited to Steve Sack.

The buyout roster also includes up to two reporters and/or editorial writers and up to three photographers and/or videographers.

Finally, KK‘s baffling employment comes to a close. Too bad it also means that legitimate journalists will meet the same fate.

This is a mild example, but this person frequently shits out useless and terrible comments. This was on an article about observers of a van on fire, full of disabled people in wheelchairs unable to get out, who rescue them before the fire department came. Other comments lament how the blacks/Mexicans/liberals are ruining America, calling for the newspaper to include the race of persons involved in stories featuring crime, taunting the staff writers about budget cuts and layoffs, and so forth.

An editor at the newspaper, Nancy Barnes, finally addressed the commenting issue last month:

We don’t edit the comments — doing so would create a legal liability for the paper. However, we do have software that filters bad language, and we have a part-time employee whose job entails deleting comments that don’t pass community standards. We also put in place a process where readers can flag inappropriate comments and vote for comments they find useful and relevant. And users who want to post a comment need to register.

If their comment rating system had any purpose, such as featuring the most popular comment or allowing users to ignore comments underneath a certain threshold like Slashdot’s system, there wouldn’t be as much of an issue. However, you seem to be able to rate other comments for no discernable reason and their “featured comment” is entirely random.

The newspaper has chosen to ignore the problem, hoping it will simply go away if they disable commenting on certain stories. However, this leads to people bringing bigotry into the comments for completely unrelated pieces.

Oh, and a post-script to “dgbrong”: if the Star-Tribune was so PC, why do you think they are still using “illegal” as a noun?