Mr. Jesse Newmann, the Nashua Mayor’s “Right To Know Fixer” has a hair across his posterior. We used his balding brow image from his public LinkedIn account on two posts on GraniteGrok. He seems to think we needed his permission to use it but we seem to think otherwise.
The Screengrab is featured above these posts by Laurie Ortolano (who, via a lot of shoe leatherwork and numerous RTKs, unearthed corruption and nepotism in the Nashua City Hall Assessment Office), and Laura Colquhoun, who also uses RTKs to ferret out Nashua’s’ City secrets.
Problems?
He’s a public figure, a public employee (earning $100K/year to give those Nashua Citizens that have the “temerity” to demand answers from their government a hard time). He is also a public person that has been in the news, (and LinkedIn is a public social media platform where he made sure that the image was visible) … except, now he doesn’t want to be in the news and he doesn’t want his face seen
We understand.
Or, perhaps he’s just the quintessential unelected and unaccountable “faceless bureaucrat” that makes important decisions, but is beyond the gaze of the voters and likes it this way. I guess he’s never heard of the Streisand Effect.
Oopsies, because, boy, he’s certainly stepped “in it” now.
He sent us an email yesterday evening demanding that we remove his image from said posts (freely available from LinkedIn at the time of those postings). Like I said, “faceless.” Like in Orwell’s 1984 – he wants to be a worker drone.
For those of you not in the know, the Streisand Effect is as follows (and read this link – it’s a similar story to Jesse’s).
What is “The Streisand Effect” you ask? Well, as these two are about to find out, it is a blogger’s delight:
The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet.
It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose 2003 attempt to suppress photographs of her residence in Malibu, California, inadvertently drew further public attention to it. Similar attempts have been made, for example, in cease-and-desist letters to suppress numbers, files, and websites. Instead of being suppressed, the information receives extensive publicity and media extensions such as videos and spoof songs, often being widely mirrored across the Internet or distributed on file-sharing networks.[1][2]
So here is his email, below. Emphasis mine:
—— Original Message ——
From: “Jesse Neumann” <neumann.jesse@gmail.com>
To: Skip@granitegrok.com; Steve@granitegrok.com
Sent: 4/1/2021 6:42:59 PM
Subject: Material RemovalGood Evening Skip and Steve,
I am reaching out to request that you remove my pictures from your website. Despite the statement on your Policies and FAQs page, you do not have permission to retain “all rights and copyrights to all material,” specifically, material which is subject to (1) an existing and adverse copyright, and (2) personal rights of publicity. While we could debate the merits of the fair use doctrine in this context, I don’t believe it needs to rise to that.
I take no issue with you providing a forum for my detractors to make their voices heard. As a former active duty, and current reserve officer of the United States Navy, I take my oath to uphold the Constitution and the rights enumerated therein very seriously.
However, I do take offense at the unrequested use of my image. After all, the image is one that I intentionally set to be viewable only by logged-in LinkedIn users, with the intent that the image would be used exclusively for professional purposes unrelated to the personal attacks I often receive from two of your contributors throughout the internet and local media.
Frankly, I am a little surprised at the lack of common courtesy shown, particularly to a military veteran trying to serve his local community (notwithstanding Ms. Ortolano and Ms. Colquhoun’s overtly emotional opinions regarding my work). However, it is possible that I may have misinterpreted the values of Granite Grok. My apologies if I am mistaken.
In the future, feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.
Jesse Neumann, Esq.
Well, then – he’s done a “thinly veiled” call out of our values. For the record, Mr. Newmann, Esq., it’s all one word: GraniteGrok. And we’re willing to talk about “values” ALL DAY LONG if that is what you want. Just don’t do it on the taxpayer dime, please – they’re already paying enough from awful home assessments.
The City has had a problem in keeping its roads from falling apart and now it is about to do the boondoggle of a “theater” at the site of Alec’s Shows that is ALREADY 10s of millions over budget. Spend, spend, spend! Which, by the way, government spending more and more on stupid and extraneous stuff is CERTAINLY not one of our values.
Of COURSE, Nashua residents want to get to the bottom of all this spending and corruption. You ARE against frivolous spending and dirty corruption, right, Counselor Neumann? That you’re doing everything you can do speedily get all of the requested information requests from taxpayers into their hands at the speed of the Internet?
Yep, those are part of our values. We’ve got plenty more where those come from as well.
Anyways, I did respond to him last night but I have a meeting to go to so I’ll put up that email later on. As of the time of this writing, he has not responded to it even as I was just as polite as he was here. I asked him a few questions – but I have no answers from him.
I wonder if he’ll send some of his values along in his response after he has read mine?
To be continued. (…)