Attempted Suppression of Gainesville Sun Articles Regarding Past UF/IFAS System Hacking

UPDATE - JAN 2, 2010:
In what appears could be a violation of Florida Statutes regarding the custodial handling of public information records (see), some people have actually attempted to make all links to these Gainesville Sun articles disappear from the Google search engines by making any keyword searches which used to bring them up now FAIL.

I've asked a number of people across the globe to witness this, to back me up. They've seen the same thing happen on their own screens with these articles. It's verified.

People have a right to know about the dangerous activities of criminals in our society and the suppression of this information to PREVENT people from seeing it is just wrong. It prevents people from knowing who is living next to them, knowing who they are working with, the police (or anyone) from doing searches using the Internet, the Press from doing same. Looks like someone asked a "favor" of someone inside the Gainesville Sun and/or Google to have them actually suppress this information by removing any keywords which allowed people to find them, and no one has a right to do that. It is the manipulation of information and of the Press and it is wrong.

I also know that for something like this to happen, it has to happen by request from the owner of the document; and that owner is the Gainesville Sun. Therefore, I am making the assumption here that whoever tried to pull this off must have had a friend inside the Gainesville Sun, and that it was the Gainesville Sun which manually requested and/or removed all of the most easily thought of keyword connections themselves after a phone call from someone who didn't like the fact that those articles were found. This is extremely odd and inexplicable behavior for the Gainesville Sun and Google.

The articles themselves do still remain online (so far); just that they're very successfully HIDDEN. But now that they have removed the LOGICAL keyword methods of finding the articles there is now no longer ANY way for the general public to find the articles at all. In so doing this, the Gainesville Sun appears to have DELIBERATELY HIDDEN all references to these specific articles. That's not right. They are charged with being the custodial guardians of that information. By attempting to hide the article aren't they in violation of Florida Statutes? It's suppression of facts, suppression of freedom of speech, and contrary to the whole purpose of them having archives in the first place. Google and the Gainesville Sun don't want lawsuits accusing them of the suppression of the Press, or the suppression of speech, or the suppression of anything that the public actually has a RIGHT to know about. But there is appearance here of the Press actually making attempt to suppress itself and that is unbelievable. I'm SURE that this will be AS FAR as this whole attempt goes, however. They can't go any farther. Any farther risks them both getting into trouble and garnering publicity that they don't want. So my thoughts are that whoever requested the keyword links be removed probably got the "we'll remove the keyword linkage but Im sorry we CANNOT remove the articles, themselves - and this is as far as I can go" speech from their friend on the inside. They probably also added, too "...but if anyone complains or calls attention to this, then we may have to put them back." This is what makes me think, too, that whoever did this did it as a FAVOR and it could well be that upper echolon is not at all AWARE of this happening. I think I know full well who pulled this, too.

I don't think they counted on the existence of THIS web page, though. While they were making attempts to make the keyword searches fail for the archived articles, unfortunately for them, they could not do anything about my page - which points straight to ALL of the articles directly - because it belonged to me. Asking me to take it down would require them having a real and legit cause to ask me to take it down and, not having such, it would only make me angry and I might cause me to notice what they were doing. This probably explains why I got no such communication from anyone. But as it were, I noticed, anyway. This web page is my own property and I will NOT voluntarilly remove links to it in the search engines...especially now knowing that it appears to be the ONLY means left by which to find those articles.

This abuse of the Press is VERY, VERY interesting and watching the entire thing occuring and I WILL use this at some later date in the courtroom to show propensity for manipulating others and even the Press. Originally, using the keywords "Jeffrey Donald Capehart" would bring up one of the pages of the articles. It cannot now be found anymore by using even any commonly thought of keywords, or even any that are hard to think of. They can be found by using the article titles, but then if you don't know the article titles...how would you find them? This is what I mean. They can't do that. Yet they did. WHY would the PRESS try to HIDE stuff? They're not interested in stuff like that. FRIENDS on the INSIDE, doing FAVORS under the table...might.

The links on my own page DO still work, but people who try to find it in Google itself now no longer can. I will make formal complaint to Google and the Sun about this. People have a right to know, and this latest action is a little too much on the 'shady' side for me to believe that the Sun or Google will continue with it. I am sure they thought they were trying to do the right thing and that upon 'educating' them that they will do the right thing yet again, and put it back. If these people were MINORS and they committed the crimes, that's one thing. But they were ADULTS. They KNEW what they were doing, they KNEW that they were of the age to be considered adults, and if they didn't want this in the public record then they should NOT have engaged in what they did. But fact is, they DID do it, and hiding that from the rest of the public and preventing the public from being able to REFERENCE this information, or to be able to WARN THEMSELVES of the capabilities of these people, risks lawsuit. And I may just bring that on.

I AM adamant about finding out who attempted to do this, if not just so that we all know who would attempt such a thing, but also to protect Google and the Gainesville Sun from manipulative attempts at abuse of the Press such as this in the future. I will contact both and make attempts to have their tech people go through their logs to piece together an anatomy/calendar of what happened. Then we'll find out WHO did it. And hopefully, we can get rid of that bad apple (or apples) from having any adversely-influencing power Google and Gainesville Sun ever again. If possible, I would recommend that both agencies go as far as to file complaiints with the police, too, since what occurred appears to be a first-degree misdemeanor, too. Today a misdemeanor; tomorrow, what next? This whole thing is a potential publicity nightmare for both organizations and so I think they both need to team up together here to find out what happened so that 1) they can figure out how to prevent it in the future, and 2) so that they can put up the face that they knew nothing and were an unknowing part of it but that they care enough to investigate fully and to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law this attempt to manipulate their computer systems without their knowledge.

I feel that this is a very, VERY serious issue, here. It definitely needs to be addressed on a serious level by both Google and the Press. I appear to have uncovered a flaw in the workings of Google which allows unscrupulous employees to manipulate Google systems in such a way as to completely and effectively ERASE any entries that Google may have in it's database - without the knowledge of Google upper echolon, and without the knowledge of the Press entity making archives and information available. Apparently, just ANY employee can come along and make something disappear; and there are no alarm bells, no supervisors called to verify, confirm, or even so much as look over the shoulder of the employee engaging in such an activity. Currently, it appears to be FAR TOO EASY for people to make information disappear. And this could mean that Google and the Press agencies that they coooperate with may now have to sit down together and come up with some new and improved policies on the handling of information so that things like this cannot occur again. It could cost Google a lot of money to have to redesign their software so as to prevent this sort of thing from happening, and in TRAINING people how to operate with the new policies...all because one person tried to use a friend on the inside to do them a "favor" and try to make something disappear so that they could deceive the public about their past. Imagine if all an ex-con had to do was call up a friend inside Google and ask him or her to "block" keyword searches which might bring the public (or a potential next door neighbor) to web pages warning about their past criminal history and/or their current offender status. This is huge.

Granted, I can see from simple observation that Google already had SOME form of security measure in place to try to prevent this; but it was inadequate, here. Under current security policy, it would still be able to be effected on a daily basis, nonetheless; which still brought about the same effect of suppression even IF it had to be manually effected on a daily basis after a timer expired at the end of the day. The next morning, someone would simply reactivate it again. In my own suggestion, I put forth the idea that current policy is inadequate to protect against the unauthorized suppression of information, and that supervisors should manually investigate and approve such changes in the future, and especially that a GOOD AND REASONABLE REASON BE EXPLAINED before approving such a keyword change. Apparently, the currrent policy they now have is inadequate and allowed THIS to occur. A live person evidently needs to be placed inside the works here to prevent potential abuse in the future.

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