Apparent Attempts to Censor the Progressive

Another attempt of dubious merit has been made to have content published on the New Britain Progressive disappear from the online world.

At issue is a “complaint” to Google reported on March 12, 2019 to have content “deindexed”. Pages that are “deindexed” by Google are removed from Google search results, effectively making them invisible on the Internet.

In the “complaint,” in the name of Ken Haas, someone claimed a “copyright violation”, because the Progressive published a quote that has been attributed to Haas, saying, “You do know I have access to ALL city records. Including criminal and civil, right???”

Ken Haas is a Conservation Commissioner in the administration of Republican Mayor Erin Stewart. Since Haas is a public official, publishing a quote attributed to him is not a copyright violation, apparently making the “complaint” illegitimate.

The quote in question was discussed in an opinion piece by Bobby Berriault, that was published on the Progressive in 2016, “Stewart Conservation Commissioner Accused of Abuse of Power.”

In that opinion piece, Berriault said,

Members of the community were having a conversation about the Tilcon deal that the Stewart Administration is pushing, regardless of community sentiment.  Hass interjected in this facebook conversation, threatening to embarrass one of the participants, who is a member of New Britain’s community, using government resource’s.  Hass said, “You do know I have access to ALL city records. Including criminal and civil, right???”.

Berriault’s opinion piece was the target of another deindexing request made to Google, which was the subject of a column by UCLA School of Law Professor Eugene Volokh, published on the The Volokh Conspiracy which, at the time, was published by the Washington Post and is now published by Reason.

Volokh’s column, “Apparent forged court order for the benefit of a New Britain (Conn.) volunteer city commissioner,” discusses a request to Google to deindex Berriault’s opinion piece and a Change.org petition, both critical of Haas and calling for his removal as city Conservation Commissioner. Volokh noted that “the request was accompanied with what looked like a court order in Haas v. Berriault. The order purported to be in a libel and false light invasion of privacy lawsuit…”

“The trouble,” Volokh wrote, “is that there is no such case. There is no such court order. There is no Connecticut Superior Court Judge named John W. Darrah.”

Volokh cited an Illinois case, presided over by federal Judge John W. Darrah, and noted that, “The purported Haas v. Berriault order seems to copy some parts of the real Darrah order, including the case number, the general format of the title, some of the language and Darrah’s signature.”

The alleged “Court Order Complaint to Google” with “Ken Hass” named as the “Sender,” along with the most recent “complaint” came to light because they were posted on the Lumen Project website by Google.

On its site called, “Legal Removal Requests“, Google says that,

Transparency is a core value at Google. As a company we feel it is our responsibility to ensure that we maximize transparency around the flow of information related to our tools and services. We believe that more information means more choice, more freedom, and ultimately more power for the individual.

As part of our efforts to remain transparent, a copy of each legal notice we receive may be sent to the Lumen project for publication and annotation. Lumen is a joint project among U.S. law schools that seeks to provide resources about free speech online and intellectual property law. It’s also a database of requests to remove content from internet platforms.

As of the publication of this article, the opinion piece on the New Britain Progressive was still available on Google, so Google appears to have dismissed the de-indexing requests.

In his column, Volokh said that, though the request was in Haas’s name, “it is of course possible that this was done by someone else,” but added that, “I called Haas to ask about what happened here, but he told me he had no comment.”

Similarly, other than Haas’ name appearing in March 12th reported, “complaint,” and that the person making the “complaint” alleges copyright over a quote attributed to Haas, the New Britain Progressive does not have proof that it was Ken Haas who filed the “complaint.”

The person who made the “complaint” alleged that the alleged “copyright violation” was that the quote was, “Text from a post that was on a private and personal Facebook profile.”

However, Berriault responded that, “Commissioner Haas’s comment was posted on the comment thread on someone else’s Facebook status, and his comment was made publicly available by him for all to see.”

Berriault added,

I call on Mayor Stewart to remove Commissioner Haas from his position in the Stewart administration. There is no place in New Britain City Hall for any person who threatens members of the public or files fraudulent complaints in a effort to censor the press. The people of New Britain deserves better from our public officials.

The March 12th, “complaint” is one of a string of legally dubious attempts to use complaint procedures to have the content of the New Britain Progressive removed from the Internet.

Editor’s note (3/20/2019): The article was updated to reflect that the Google does not appear to have de-indexed the opinion piece.