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City Fights Blogger On Display of Public Information
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."
Dear Rokkaku:
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.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
(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 made its budget summaries, including compensation - known as the Redbook 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 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,