Charges won’t be filed in DESE data breach incident

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)

A Cole County prosecutor will not file charges against a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for the alleged data breach of the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website.

Prosecutor Locke Thompson said in a release while reviewing the case that it would not be in the best interest of taxpayers' money to pursue misdemeanor charges in this case.

Thompson added the case has been closed and that the issues have been "resolved through non-legal means."

Gov. Mike Parson had threatened legal action against the Post-Dispatch and the reporter who exposed the flaw on the website.

The Missouri Department of Education said it has fixed an issue that allowed access to some educators' social security information.

Due to the breach, Missouri offered credit and identity theft monitoring services to 620,000 current and former educators that may have been affected.