City Fights Blogger On Display of Public Information 134
rokkaku writes "When the gadfly blogger Claremont Insider went searching for information about employee compensation on the city of Claremont web site, they never expected to find scans of pay stubs for all the employees. Nor did they expect the city attorney to demand that they remove copies of those pay stubs from their web site. They found it especially odd since, according to California law, the compensation of public employees is public information."
Pay stub != compensation (Score:5, Insightful)
You are very confused. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.
Yes, a California judge has recently ruled that the compensation of public
employees is public information. But all of the pay stubs that I have
seen in, oh, the last 20 years have more information on them than that.
Many pay stubs have the employee's social security number on it. Is that
public information?
Are all of one's deductions for various benefits also public information?
What about the ones dealing with health care?
Or one's marital status?
Or amount of tax withholding?
In fact, an employee's pay stub probably has enough information on it
to steal that employee's identity. Yes, the public has a right to know
what a public employee earns. The public doesn't have a right to steal
a public employee's identity.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But it is illegal to steal someones identity! Surely no one would break the law! The point is moot!
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
(But it is illegal to shoot someone until they are dead! Surely no one would break the law! This point is moot!
I know it's a MAJOR threadjack but I'm constantly thinking about my own view on gun ownership. The issues seem very different but we're talking about the same thing: improper use of resources. When do you say that someone can't have it because we fear (assume) something will go wrong?... bah my head hurts.
Re:Pay stub != compensation (Score:4, Informative)
See http://claremontca.blogspot.com/2007/09/labor-day_07.html [blogspot.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Until all this can be sorted out, we're posting the text of our Labor Day post minus the images in question. We maintain the city claims of confidentiality for the information posted on their website are baseless.
It does not mention if the text posted is the entirety of what was readable in the scans prior to their removal.
Re:Pay stub != compensation (Score:4, Informative)
Until all this can be sorted out, we're posting the text of our Labor Day post minus the images in question. We maintain the city claims of confidentiality for the information posted on their website are baseless.
It does not mention if the text posted is the entirety of what was readable in the scans prior to their removal.
"there were no Social Security numbers, no dates of birth, no personal identifiers. The documents only contained name and pay information"
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"there were no Social Security numbers, no dates of birth, no personal identifiers. The documents only contained name and pay information" Um, it might just be me, but isn't "name" a personal identifier?
Yes, names can be personal identification however doesn't the taxpayer have the right to know who works for them, and how much they earn?
FalconRe: (Score:2)
While this sounds a little pedantic because they govern the tax payer, they also work for those who don't pay taxes, for the area and environment in which they govern as well as anything else that they wish to effect by their governing. And more to your point, you have a right to know what the government spends but not necessarily how much everyone working for them makes.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And do you not know the meaning of the term not necessarily? I was addressing that absent a law, there is no right. The government doesn't work for the taxpayer and the tax payer doesn't hold the government to some relationship that isn't expressly permitted. If a law gives you the ability to know "who makes what", then it is a privilege not a right. As such, a simple law can take it away
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"there were no Social Security numbers, no dates of birth, no personal identifiers. The documents only contained name and pay information"
Two things.
1. AOL didn't think there were any personal identifiers in the search archives they released to the public either. Yet plenty of people ended up being tracked down from what was in that data. The point being, "no personal identifiers" is not a determination that you have t
Re: (Score:1)
AOL didn't think there were any personal identifiers in the search archives they released to the public either. Yet plenty of people ended up being tracked down from what was in that data. The point being, "no personal identifiers" is not a determination that you have the right to make about somebody else's data.
AOL's database also contained highly variable information. It is reasonable to assume that something containing only a name and pay information will contain only those from document to document. Internet searches, on the other hand, can contain anything.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Like it or not, the information was public. These are not employees of private corporations, they are public employees whose employers are the people paying the money that supports their paychecks and bene
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nice straw man, did you bother to actually look at what he scanned? There was no information about any of the things you mentioned(Except marital status, you could tell whether a girl was married by the Ms or Mrs.). All it had was a dollar amount of benefits given, Salary, and name.
From the article:
I'd be able to answer this question for you if I knew more about what "pay i
Re: (Score:2)
I'd be able to answer this question for you if I knew more about what "pay information" was on the stub. I work for a public university, and our salary is public information. However, our deductions are not. You have a right to know how much I earn (state taxpayers essentially pay my salary) but you don't have a right to see what I may be taking out as child support, medical, investment, transportation, garnishment, etc. That's included on a typical pay stub where I work, and by law is considered private information. I'm sure it's the same in California.
Ok, went back to the original blog site, and found this post. [blogspot.com] In it, he takes a swipe at Google and the Claremont City Attorney, and then gives a blanked-out version of the pay stub scan: here. [blogger.com]
The four sections on the pay stub are: Earnings, Leave, Deductions, Benefits. There's also a section at the top for employee name & number (not SSN), gross pay, net pay. That top section (name, gross pay, net pay) is certainly public information; the taxpayers of Claremont have the right to know what the publ
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:Pay stub != compensation (Score:4, Insightful)
If we didn't have 20-30 posts that make no sense and 5-10 replies each that amount to RTFA, these comment sections would be damned short.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Except... (Score:5, Insightful)
(And love how the article is tagged "censorship"...)
Also, there is a lot of "public information" that isn't online and instantly searchable and accessible en masse. There are other issues here, which I'd hope someone who stops to think about it for a few moments can imagine.
And the bottom line is that anyone can still determine the compensation of a public employee if they wish to do so.
For example, the University of Wisconsin System [uwsa.edu] made its budget summaries, including compensation - known as the Redbook [uwsa.edu] available on the internet. However, now the personnel salaries are only accessible via computers with UW System IP addresses. Else,
Why? Because it was being abused. So now it's not universally available and publicly searchable on the internet. That doesn't mean the information still isn't "public". And before you say that the government's job should be to use technology to make access to such information easier, e.g., via putting on the internet, ask yourself if you'd want all information about you that is technically "public information" aggregated and made quickly and easily searchable by anyone on the internet on a whim, or if you'd rather that people have to actually have a legitimate need for specific pieces of information, and be willing to go through the processes to get it?
Would you want anyone to see images of your entire pay stubs, even if you work for a public agency and your compensation is "public"?
When things like the Redbook and Wisconsin Circuit Court Access [wicourts.gov] became more restrictive, most of the complaints I heard over time were from people who could no longer do the essential equivalent of casual stalking of individuals' salaries and civil, criminal, and traffic court records. Persons who still have a legitimate need for it can still easily get access to the information, and any member of the public can easily obtain any information they might need.
Further, this case seems a little odd...if all of the pay stubs were available on the city's web site, why did they have to aggregate them all? They were already publicly available, right? Obviously the city didn't intend for them to be displayed or obtained the way they were, and regardless of how much "their fault" it was, how incompetent they were at running their web site, or whether it was a data leak, even if it it is "public information" doesn't mean it needs to be, or should be, aggregated en masse on a third party internet site.
Also, while the individuals' compensation may be public, actual images of pay stubs may not be at all (and probably isn't). Again, even if the city had this out in the open through their error, that still doesn't mean it should be fair game for everyone until the end of time, regardless of whether some of the content of the image is "public information". A mistake is a mistake. The city isn't filing charges against someone for "hacking"; they're asking that images of pay stubs of city employees be removed from the internet. The public can still discover the compensation of the employees if they wish,
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like saying "free speech!!!" and then turning around and expecting someone to excercise that right only in their basement. At a whisper. When alone.
If it's public information it should be readily available. Furthermore, if it's PUBLIC INFORMATION how can you reasonable claim copyright?! That's pure insanity.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, run a quick query with some simple software and presto you now have the address, phone number, name of all public employees over 30 in area X,Y,Z making more than $80,000 per year. That's something I wouldn't want the average run of the mill "marketing" (read slimeball) drone to h
Re: (Score:2)
Once a large infrastructu
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
2. Images of entire pay stubs are not necessarily (and probably aren't) public.
3. Any member of the public may still obtain compensation information about employees from the city.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The Des Moines Register publishes a web extra [desmoinesregister.com] detailing the compensation for all state employees. (Right now it covers the 2005 fiscal year.) It is searchable by department, or by county, and you can even list them in order of salary from highest to lowest. For reference - the four highest paid state employees are coaches for the University of Iowa and Iowa State University.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Except the money goes towards stadium upgrades and other sports related items.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Also, we did not post every one of the 283 images. We posted two, one for the Claremont City Manager, and one for the director of Human Services.
Additionally, the laws governing these matters are particular to each state. Wisconsin is not
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You are correct that Wisconsin is not like California; I wasn't implying it was similar in every legal respect. However, the information in my example is also completely public...but it's no longer publicly accessible on-demand on the internet, and there is no legal compulsion requiring the government - whether it is the state of Wi
Re:Except... (Score:4, Informative)
Sure: the government isn't obligated to go to any great length to make it convenient for the public to get public data, and they can even charge for what efforts they do make.
So?
That's not even remotely similar to the government forbidding a member of the public from exposing public information which he regards as scandalous to public scrutiny, which is what happened here.
Even the most slack-witted scan, which I just performed with about ten seconds' effort, reveals this:
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Mr. Prosser said, "You were quite entitled to make any suggestions or protests at the appropriate time, you know."
"Appropriate time?" hooted Arthur. "Appropriate time? The first I knew about it was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I asked him if he'd come to clean the windows and he said no, he'd come to demolish the hous
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Too much info (Score:2, Redundant)
Were these actual scans?
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
We would not have posted the 2 (out of 283) that we did if there were personal identifiers on the stubs.
Here is a link to a local newspaper's article on the public nature of the documents:
h [dailybulletin.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Your vision of personal and mine are evidently different.
"In Parker's pay stub, for the pay period ending Dec. 17, itemized earnings, benefits, leave earnings and deductions are listed and quantified by dollar amount."
I am a fed employee of grade XX-YY. A person of grade XX-YY Step Q makes $ZZ,ZZZ/ye
Re: (Score:2)
compensation != paystubs (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
Re: (Score:2)
The Dance of the Hierarchy-Worshipping Toadies-at-Large is playing *everywhere* these days, isn't it?
Your premises are false.
Ten seconds' effort, the simplest scan of TFA, would have shown you your premises are false.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Where, please, do they say anything concrete about what was on those images?
The city could have shut the controversy down immediately by saying anything along the lines of "at least one social security number was exposed on the images we asked Google to remove". Or home address, or anything at all concrete.
And note this, from the dailybulletin article:
They're just ignorant. (Score:5, Insightful)
Used to be the media kept them in better check, but if your local newspapers aren't suing the crap out of them every time they step out of line (and mostly they're not these days, because it's expensive), then they start power tripping and keeping secrets.
Re:They're just ignorant. (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.mercurynews.com/politics/ci_6732431 [mercurynews.com]
Oh absolutely. (Score:2)
When journalism all becomes corporate journalism, you stop seeing good papers sticking it to the man for freedom of information...The dollars it takes to sue come out of the budget of the editorial section...A "non-revenue generating business unit"...nevermind that the point of
the yro scolor scheme sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
All themes... (Score:2)
I've checked Linux, Games, Apple, and of course YRO sections, and all of them have this color problem in their respective CSS files.
Re: (Score:2)
Ha ha, you still use the default theme? I use the "Practically Text Only" which has barely any color fields. I'd go nuts otherwise.
Re: (Score:2)
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6
Recent Court Ruling (Score:2)
California Supreme Court decision, IFPTE, Local 21 v. Superior Court
Quote: "Significantly, the Court could have---but did not---limit its holding to employees earning over $100,000. While the justices no doubt were impressed by evidence of abuses and mismanagement concentrated at the high end of the public pay scale, they were careful not to ascribe any legal significance to the compensation threshold.
Similarly, the Court could have---bu
Bizarre legal argument (Score:2, Interesting)
>"It doesn't make any sense," said Terry Francke, general counsel of Californians Aware. "First of all, I doubt that i
Re: (Score:2)
And as an aside, commercial income does not invalidate fair use. The logical structure of the law is not clear, and only says that the purpose of use must be considered. If it were that iron clad, Governments and corporations could sue when the media releases leaked documents, as they are profiting off their "copyright".
Re: (Score:2)
I can create a form with text, that enables any number of processes to be handled well.
Unless it's graph paper... it's unique, and creative works.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
>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."
>
> They wouldn't. Why not? Because it's no longer necessary to register
> something for the author to claim copyright. That does not mean that it's
> not copyrighted.
You'd be right in most cases - individuals and organizations are granted copyright by default. But the general rule with respe
Re: (Score:1)
- We do not accept advertisements. We do have a widget that has ads, but that we receive no revenue from it; it simply comes with the widget. We've offered to remove it if it offends any readers, but no one responded, and we happen to like it because it's handy.
- There were no personal identifiers on the stubs. No Social Security numbers, no dates of birth, no home addresses or phone numbers, no dependents. The payroll info and the names are all public records in California.
Re: (Score:1)
Don't Give In (Score:4, Informative)
Public Information (Score:3, Insightful)
Generally you WRITE a REQUEST for this information, not snoop around and find it. Bad on the City to leave stubs lying around as that's just more stuff for identity thieves to pillage.
Re:Public Information (Score:4, Informative)
Second, there was no personal information for ID thieves to use on any of the paystubs. No Social Security numbers, no dates of birth, no personal phone numbers or home addresses. Only the employee's name and payroll information. All of this information is public information in California - other states may have different laws, but this is the state of affairs in California.
The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, a local newspaper that has been covering the story, has a copy of the same .pdf file the blog used. The paper published an article on this topic today:
http://www.dailybulletin.com/news/ci_6888125 [dailybulletin.com]
Censorship Issues (Score:1)
Who knows,
Position Pay ranges versus individual pay stubs (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
There were no Social Security numbers, no home addres
Public Emploees Records (Score:2)
I also question what was on the stub, the address, and empID perhaps? That stuff shouldnt be published.
Re: (Score:2)
Blame the negligent Government Employee who let the documents become available in the first place.
Re: (Score:2)
Not A Big Deal (Score:1)
No, the people involved didn't give the best explanations but that's probably because they (wisely) decided to act before consulting
Re: (Score:2)
"there were no Social Security numbers, no dates of birth, no personal identifiers. The documents only contained name and pay information"
myopic view of the public service (Score:1)
That context includes things like the number of people reporting to you (or in your tree), educational requirements, duties, length of service, etc. etc. etc.
Many of these people could be in private industry where they could earn more with the skills and experience that they have. If you want to get the best people to run you city/
You insensitive clods! (Score:2)
I'd love it if everyone just got their gross pay and a 1099. Especially "public" employees.
Let them have the joy of filing quarterly taxes... all that paperwork keeps their public service brethren employed.
Wow, that is one clueless lawyer (Score:3, Interesting)
First, he seems unaware that if something is copyrightable, copyright is automatic. So, if paystubs are copyrightable, the city would not have to do anything special. They would be copyrighted the moment they are printed.
Second, he says that they aren't copying the paystubs, just making images of them to display, so it would not fall under copyright. An image of a document is a copy as far as copyright law is concerned, so that's strike two.
finally, he says that this would be covered by fair use because there is no market value in the pay stubs. Affect on market value of a work is just one of the four factors considered in determining whether a use is fair use. Strike three.
Lawyers who do not specialize in copyright often make mistakes, but this guy seems to be setting some kind of record here!
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe they had a colorful background image of a beautiful young woman running through the grass towards a gazebo with a unicorn in it?
It is totally obvious here that the city was trying to suppress factual information. You can't do that with copyright.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought it was hard to pass t
Re: (Score:2)
Let's assume she's right and that communication did contains privileged information. The attorney-client privilege exists solely for the benefit of the client and covers information the client shares with their attorney.
That is, she is saying that she sent Google information that the City shared with her in confidence.
But IS it copyrightable? (Score:2)
The only thing I could imagine that remotely approaches copyright would be the layout of the fields on the paystub, so the fact that the NAME is in the upper left and the Gross Pay is below it rather than to the left would be the only element of the work that required some level of originality. Didn't this type of argument already get thrown out in the old "Look a
This is the problem... (Score:2)
Fast forward to today. We've been making laws for 231 years, +/- my errors in American History and Math. There are so many, I repeat so many, laws on the books that it's unreasonable to expect any single person to know and obey them all. Even big organizations sometimes slip up an
State Employees (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Simple Courtesy..... (Score:2, Interesting)
I mean for example, just because I have the right to access public employee information doesn't mean that I have to go around publicly displaying the employee's pay stubs.
Some people might disagree, saying that we should be able to find out what people are being paid (as ALOT of public officials get paid six, sometimes seven, figures just to play golf and ski), whic
Libel (Score:2)
I am a City employee and... (Score:2, Informative)
NJ not exempt, deal. (Score:2)
I'm on the list. I've checked some of the numbers for my facility and they're accurate. You're told your information is public record when you're hired. Hopefully it keeps people a little more honest. Doesn't mean crap if it can b
GEvil ? (Score:2)
Censorship = Violation of Civil Rights = Lawsuit (Score:2)