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Google Censors the Claremont Insider
By Publius | September 13, 2007
Here’s the deal:
Our favorite local-blog-with-an-admitted-ax-to-grind, the Claremont Insider, digs into the city of Claremont’s website and strikes .pdf gold: “scanned-in bi-monthly pay stubs for all city employees going back several years.” The Insider writes up an amusing (and clearly fictional) account of how they obtained the stubs and posts the juice.
The city freaks out and starts muttering about “theft” and “investigation.” The Insider reveals that they found the information by simply using the city website’s search engine. Claremont’s city attorney contacts Google and asks for the post to be deleted.
Unbelievably, Google removes the post, telling the Insider that “we’ve received a complaint that your blog…contains confidential information…Accordingly, we have had to remove the content in question.” The Insider questions Google’s reasoning, and Google responds by dropping the confidentiality argument, this time telling the Insider:
We have removed your post due to the images of the paycheck stub of the City of Claremont, which in actuality is their copyrighted material. If you would like to reload the post that we removed, feel free to do so as long as you leave out the images of the paycheck.
The Insider complies with Google’s request; the city of Claremont disables its search engine and refuses to make its letters to Google public; Will Bigham reports on it all again in the IVDB; and the last thing we hear is that the city of Claremont thought about legal action in a recent closed session.
Four brief points:
1) What sort of legal action could the city possibly be thinking about? Suing themselves for making a stupid mistake?
2) The city attorney won’t publicly release the letters she sent to Google. Why?
Carvalho would not elaborate on her communication with Google and refused to release the city’s e-mail correspondence with the company, citing attorney-client privilege.
Carvalho said the city was withholding the e-mail correspondence because city litigation against Google remains a possibility if the company fails in the future to respond if the blog re-posts copies of the pay stubs.
I’m confused. She can cite attorney client privilege because she might sue Google? Wha….?!?
3) Google’s first argument (that the post contained “confidential” information) was so vague as to be meaningless. If the Insider had searched Britney Spears’ website and somehow found and posted her diary entries, I don’t think anyone would think Brit would have a legal case to put the “confidential information” back into the electronic box. But, of course, self-interested people are up in arms because the Insider discovered how our tax dollars are spent.
4) In our opinion Google’s copyright argument is a pathetic fig-leaf; as others have said:
“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Terry Francke, general counsel of Californians Aware. “First of all, I doubt that it’s a fact that the city copyrights the pay stubs. I don’t know why it would.
“And secondly, it’s not clear to me that the display of the pay stubs would violate the copyright act anyway. It’s simply displaying an image of them, it’s not making a copy of them.”
Francke added that if the documents are indeed copyrighted, the posting by the blog of the pay stubs would qualify as a “fair use” - meaning it would pass legal muster - because there is no market value lost by the publication.
“And what possible market value does the city have in the images of its pay stubs?” Francke added.
See also the Claremont Courier letter entitled “A Continued Legacy”; or read this comment about copyright law.
I can’t see any legitimate argument for Google to censor the Insider. If the city of Claremont lets its pants down in public, are we supposed to avert our collective eyes? Next time, put on a friggin’ belt, people.
As the California Supreme Court ruled recently, knowing how much we pay the public employees who work for us is in the public interest.
Don’t give me this crap about how it will somehow hurt the people who don’t make as much money as the big boys. (It won’t. That’s a time worn bureaucratic excuse from those who seeking to hide what all the faceless city employees are actually making.) What publicly releasing public employee salaries might do is wake people up to the fact that a whole lot of people down at city hall are being paid a nice chunk of change—people you’ve never heard of. I mean, just look at how many people are making over $80,000 a year on this list. Don’t give me this garbage about privacy. I have no problem paying city employees a fair wage, but we should know how much we are paying.
The bottom line?
1) It is a sad day when Google bows to pressure from a city attorney for no good reason and sells out one of its own blogspots. (Maybe the Insider should move to Wordpress?)
2) The city of Claremont should be mad at themselves for spilling the beans about how much they all make—not a local blog that merely committed the sin of searching a city website and sharing the info with the rest of us.
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September 13th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
I think that the Claremont Insider should set up a web page that allows any user to send an email request to the Claremont City Attorney requesting the gross payroll data for the City Attorney (or copies of invoices from their firm) so that dozens of us can request this important info.
September 13th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Big brother convinces big corporation to censorship and limiting freedom of the press. How charming.
September 13th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
A great illustration of everything that is wrong with local government…attempting to strongarm the public from viewing information which is clearly public. After all the money the City is spending on salaries is not OUR money and we have every right to know exactly how it is spent!
September 13th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Sounds like a case ripe for A-G!
September 13th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Well, I could actually see a confidentiality argument, especially if any stubs were for non-policy employees.
But the copyright thing is ludicrous. If I copyright my checks, can the bank make copies? Does the City of Claremont give written permission to their bank and to EVERY employee’s bank to make photocopies of these checks? Or is this “copyright” selectively applied after the fact? Stupid argument.
September 13th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
The nature of the beast is to hide as much information as possible to control the “correct” version of the “truth” coming from City Hall.
Lawyers-Or-Us
September 13th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
I should clarify…I do see an ethical case to be made, at least, against recklessly publishing personal information online. If the pay stubs, for instance, had social security numbers on them and other such info they shouldn’t have been posted.
The point here is that Google never explained what, exactly, was “confidential,” most likely because there wasn’t much of anything too personal posted except for the salaries and bennies.
I don’t really see why that info should be secret. And if the city made it public accidentally, well, tough luck Claremonsters…
September 13th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
Friends,
A couple points:
- The paystubs contained no personal information. We’re smart enough to know not to put someone’s Social Security number or date of birth up for the whole world to see. The only informaton was payroll, benefits, and names. We believe that is why Google backed off the confidentiality argument.
- With regards to Kevin’s point about non-policy employees, as one of the Will Bigham articles in the IVDB noted, Capitol Weekly, which covers the Sacramento statehouse, has a searchable database on its website listing state employee salaries, down to the lowliest, most humble clerk. In fact, you can search by job title. The recent State Supreme Court decision on the matter is pretty clear on the public nature of public employee salaries and benefits.
There really are two arguments here, one local and one global. The local argument has to do with the paystub business. The second, larger argument is Google’s response, which was nothing short of craven. Yes, perhaps a move to Wordpress is in the offing.
One thing’s for sure, the powers-that-be in Claremont clearly do not understand the fact that in the digital world their actions resonate far beyond the city limits.
September 14th, 2007 at 6:33 am
[…] Yea, right; what dictionary do you to define that premise, boys? Google Censors the Claremont Insider […]
September 14th, 2007 at 6:46 am
As Claremont Buzz notes at 10:54 pm, government salaries — whether to employees or contractors — by virtue of being PUBLIC money need to be available tp the public.
When did the “government” stop being us? We elect and pay these people to do our work and run the place because we are too busy making a living or having fun or whatever.
If anyone from the local governement is reading this — (and bigger fish, this goes for you too) do some remedial reading and re-educate yourself on what a government is supposed to do and how it should do it … on the citizens’ dime.
September 14th, 2007 at 7:13 am
I have suggested to many bloggers to quit using Blogger.com because of stuff like this and their enthusiastic assistance to the Chinese government in helping them arrest dissidents who use the internet.
September 14th, 2007 at 7:19 am
Looks like there’s another City Attorney whose background is going to need a scrubbing…
September 14th, 2007 at 7:48 am
As one who works for local govmint.. I was under the understanding that public employees’ salary and pay information was public information.. It may take a freedom of information act inquiry to get, but it shouldn’t be a secret.
Or is that just Texas?
September 14th, 2007 at 7:55 am
[…] Google Censors the Claremont Insider […]
September 14th, 2007 at 8:00 am
FOIA that bastard!
September 14th, 2007 at 8:11 am
It’s interesting that Google will fight the US government over terrorist related information, but some minor city government complain about some minor issue, and they bend over quicker than $#% through a goose.
September 14th, 2007 at 8:55 am
In Chicago the press has to print the names and salaries every once in while, because half of the people on our payrolls don’t even exist. I don’t see the difference here. People think they can bully electronic publishers because they don’t own a press.
September 14th, 2007 at 11:03 am
We’ve added the Claremont Insider to www.blognetnews.com/california so that even if Google caves again, they’ll always have at least one other outlet for their work.
September 14th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
[…] don’t find stories like this suprising. At all. Our favorite local-blog-with-an-admitted-ax-to-grind, the Claremont Insider, […]
September 14th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
What’s interesting is the “shooting from the hip” approach the City has used to deal with this issue. Instead of gathering the facts, assessing the situation, and responding appropriately, the City chose to blast off with a shot-gun defense of thievery, police investigations, copyrighted material, and the threat of litigation. Don’t they realize that they are major participants in the escalation of this story?
City of Claremont, it’s not that big of a deal. Salaries are public. Take your lumps, answer to your actions, correct your faults and move on.
September 14th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
Right on, Bob. Why do local government officials feel compelled to live up to stereotypes of local government officials?
September 15th, 2007 at 9:13 am
Just wondering….under what authority did the City Attorney contact Google with threat of litigation?
She is certainly not representing Mr. Parker the CM and any decision to pursue litigation, or any other legal action, is the that of the Council. I don’t see where the Council met and gave such authorization? Did I miss something?
September 15th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Good question, Gil…
September 16th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Where are the damages?
- 0 -
September 17th, 2007 at 8:18 am
[…] Google Censors the Claremont Insider […]
October 4th, 2007 at 10:01 am
[…] but the city also asked that Google “terminate” the entire Claremont Insider blog. Google did censor the post, but they left the blog […]
October 12th, 2007 at 7:48 am
[…] Sonia, we had our fun. We gasped, we laughed, we laughed some more. Then, we got a hernia from our laughter, and laughed at the […]