Catching Up

RIPPLES IN AN e-POND

Paystubgate continued to spread over the Internet this weekend. Locally, M-M-M-M-M-My Pomona picked up on it and had these things to say in their Saturday post:

Slashdot has gotten hold of Paystubgate (the flap over Claremont Insider's posting of paystub information gained from the city's website, and the city's subsequent demand that Google remove the post). 122 comments in 12 hours, as of now.

.....

I generally take Claremont Insider with a grain of salt; the rhetoric is often too hot-headed to be all that persuasive. But the way that the city of Claremont has responded to the whole affair suggests I review my credence-giving policy toward the Insider. Somehow I imagine that wasn't what the city had in mind, but it's just desserts.

We also received this note from Dave Mastio, an editor at the BlogNewsNetwork, a news aggregator:

Check out www.blognetnews.com/california -- the city of Claremont can stick it.

We don't take down the result of legitimate reporting by blogs.

Best,

Dave Mastio

Looking back a little further, there was this post last week on El Opinador Complusivo:

Blogger, Google y censura

Un blogger local no le pierde pisada a las autoridades de la ciudad. Postea como anónimo y tiene loco a City Hall. Miren lo que pasó esta semana, cuando la ciudad se quejó directamente a Blogger y la empresa retiró el post del autor del blog. Hora de mudarse para los muchachos del Insider.

CLAREMONT MAYOR GOES FISHIN'

Saturday's Courier carried its usual Claremont City Council report for the council's meeting last Tuesday night (the article isn't posted on-line).

Reporter Tony Krickl noted that the city is using outside IT professionals to confirm how the Insider obtained the documents. We see this as a positive development, and we're looking forward to the city's apology for having falsely accused the Insider of theft.

Of course, once they have the proof of the sourcing (their own public website), they'll bury it so deep Vulcan Materials Co. won't find it.

The article quoted Mayor Yao threatening a lawsuit against the Insider:

"I think the task before the council is to find where the leak took place and move on with the business of running the city," Mayor Peter Yao said. If suing is part of that process to find out where that happened, we are not afraid to use that as a vehicle."

Pardon our ignorance, but doesn't that sound like a fishing expedition? Doesn't the lawsuit usually come after the investigation is done and a cause of action is established? Since the city has already been informed of the source of the information, they know or will soon know that they themselves are the source of the leak.

The Krickl article also showed that the city continues to harp on the issue of privacy:

Some of the pay stubs contained private information, city officials say, such as social security numbers or figures on how the employees choose to distribute their pay into various retirement funds or savings accounts. Although none of that information was posted on the blogger's website, city officials are concerned that it could be in the future.

So here the city is acknowledging that none of the information we posted in our original "Labor Day" post contained private information. The city also falsely claims that some of the pay stubs had social security numbers on them.

As you saw in our Sunday editorial, the stubs do not have any fields for social security number or any other personal information. And as to the city's claims that we might post other pay stubs in the future, they have not contacted us to request the information back, nor have they written us with the specific information that they consider confidential.

If nothing else, this entire matter has been a great illustration of exactly why we have been critical of the city in the past. Claremont has too often operated under an irrational, illogical process that is at odds with the town's fluffed up, sanitized self-image.

One thing's for sure, you won't see this stuff on Huell Howser.