Sheriff's website showing PHP code, preferential treatment for county employees? | Hacker News Reader

Sheriff's website showing PHP code, preferential treatment for county employees?

sarasotasheriff.org

34 pointslate_groomer16 comments

Going through the code I found it interesting that there's a conditional in there that compares the inmate occupation to nearly half a dozen county positions (SHERIFF, JUDGE, PROSECUTOR, FIREMAN, etc.,), if the occupation matches any of those, then the script refuses to show the mugshot of the inmate. I wonder about the legality of that. You or I get arrested (not convicted, just arrested), our mugshots are posted for everyone to see. Doesn't seem fair.

Pretty interesting (and sadly not surprising).

Have you notified the local newspaper?

Seems a great story.

No, I haven't yet, maybe I'll submit it anonymously (who wants the attention this might bring).

I had been told by a friend that one of the guys I went to school with had been arrested and I should go take a look at his mugshot. Sure enough, I found his mugshot, even though his occupation is listed as "Fire Fighter" on the booking sheet. The coder accounted for FIREFIGHTER & FIREMAN, but didn't consider blank spaces...

Remind me to list my occupation as "Wet T-shirt contest judge" when being booked next time.

I'm curious about that too actually- I suppose from their view it's a safety thing for the officers- which, IMO, is reasonable. Police probably aren't the most popular people in prison, and posting a picture of their face doesn't help.

Should your job make you immune from some of the prescribed legal degradations that go along with being in jail? I mean, I'm sure the corrections officers make sure that some of the inmates know exactly what new inmates are in there for. Why isn't turnabout fair play here? I can see "corrections officer" mugshot not shown for the "safety thing", but why "fireman"?

This a booking photo not a cell assignment. Should be public if the others are.

I actually think the pics should not be public until after conviction for all.

Nice work finding this.

Florida has rather progressive open public records requirements.[0] However, there are/were [1] exceptions for personal information such as home address for public safety officials under a rather reasonable belief by the legislature that such officials are somewhat likely to be targeted for acts carried out in the course of their work.

[0]: http://myfloridalegal.com/pages.nsf/Main/DC0B20B7DC22B741852...

[1]: Having had a provisional Building Plans Examiner license at one time, my home address was shielded under the exception. Since the exception predates September 11, 2001 it is unlikely to have been removed in the wake of the changes that event engendered.

This is a great example of a political who most likely gave the contract for the web site to a company who would in return give him a cut of the profits.

I don't know about that, but look what the company is charging for their hosting: https://www.notiondesigngroup.com/notioncare.html Nice work, if you can get it. I would bet they are on the "Deluxe" package with the way Sarasota throws money around. FWIW, it's just a Joomla website using a RocketTheme template. Custom Website Design, right.

Mirror: http://pastebin.com/R8HUAt5q

I remember the days when most of the web was written like that.

Thanks god it is (for the most part) not the case anymore :)

Or http://web.archive.org/web/20150611220259/http://www.sarasot...

Why shouldn't the code for all government websites be public? This sort of thing should not be revealed only through a bug.

Not a panacea as they could run different code, and nobody might look at the published code. But those don't seem like reasons to not default to public code for public agencies.

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