Today, the Deseret News, Utah's second state-wide daily picked up the story of my security inspection. I was wondering whether or not they would. Sometimes when one of them gets scooped by the other, they don't publish anything until there's something more to write. Of course, if there isn't anything more to write, you can make the story more sensational and justify the "different slant" to the editor that way. That was the case here.

• The DesNews story contains several factual errors. For example, it says I was caught trying to disable to state web site, which I was not. It also claims that WebInspect is designed to "floods [web sites] with information and requests in an attempt to bring them down." This is also factually incorrect, as anyone could tell by reading the SpiDynamics web site.
• The story references this blog again and quotes from it extensively. I'm not seeing near the referrer traffic today though (ten times less than the Trib story). Maybe because its a holiday. Maybe because of placement.
• The story insinuates that this is somehow tied to the circumstances of my resignation. This is not true and, lacking any evidence, its easy to imply a connection and let the reader jump to their own conclusions. Long time readers of this blog have probably read enough to know that I resigned because of a conflict between private sector practices and public sector expectations. That conflict led to some severe spats with the Legislature. Legislative audits are not due process-based findings of wrong doing. Audits are a political tool.
• The story also implies that my statements about this happening while I was testing the WebInspect software is somehow less that genuine by putting \\"test\\" in "quotes." Readers of this blog will know that I've been reviewing software for InfoWorld for 3 months now. This was just another of the tools I'm reviewing. The review should appear soon.

When I was in the papers a lot before, I chose to not make statements about it on my blog for several reasons. One was that I was in the Governor's office then and they were in control of the story. I had an obligation to the Governor then that I felt overrode my own desires to handle the story the way I wanted. This time, I have no such obligation and so I'm being much more public about my feelings and responses to the news. Is this a mistake? Time will tell, but I believe that being honest and straightforward about it is the only way to make the best of an embarrassing situation.