PRG Claims Google censoring open letter to Hillary Clinton

Hi, first post on ATS but I've been lurking for a few weeks. Just got this email from PRG. I tried a few different search engines including Google and it seems like the claim is true.

Press Release - May 6, 2008
Google Censorship

Washington, DC - On April 30 PRG published an Open Letter to Senator Hillary Clinton regarding Laurance Rockefeller's effort from March of 1993 through 1996 to convince her husband to release all government held files pertaining to UFOs and extraterrestrial life. This letter was published to the websites for PRG, American Chronicle, OpEd News and the National Ledger. It was also sent out to approximately 5000 television, radio, internet and print media.

PRG web location for the Open Letter at: www.paradigmresearchgroup.org/Open_Letter_Clinton-Hillary.htm

PRG watched carefully as the pages holding this Open Letter moved quickly up the search engine results at Google and Yahoo based on these search criteria:

open letter to Senator Hillary Clinton
open letter to Senator Clinton
open letter to Hillary Clinton

Within 36 hours the PRG and American Chronicle Open Letter to Senator Hillary Clinton pages were at or near the top of both the Google and Yahoo search results.

At that time the Google search listings for the Open Letter to Senator Hillary Clinton published by PRG were stripped (or blocked) from the Google search results. Fortunately, this did not take place with the Yahoo search returns.

Efforts by PRG to reach Google to determine why this had happened have been fruitless.

Blocking the Google search engine from listing the web pages which contain the PRG Open Letter to Senator Hillary Clinton is a pure act of political censorship.

Given Google's behavior as regards its presence in the People's Republic of China - compliance with severe content restrictions - this act of censorship raises deeply serious questions.

First and foremost it raises the question of what other pages containing political speech not acceptable to Google are being blocked from Google search listings within the United States?

PRG is seeking pro bono legal assistance from 1st Amendment specialist attorneys in order to open a dialogue with Google to resove this matter.

Contact: Stephen Bassett
Executive Director
202-215-8344
[email protected]

[edit on 6-5-2008 by flybynight]

[edit on 6-5-2008 by flybynight]

wow! Nice post Star and a flag! Yep, I'm not hip on Google anymore since their in bed with the all the 'alphabet agencies'...as one member puts it. As a matter of fact, i barely read my gmail for the simple fact I loathe them snooping around in my mail ..

great first post !!

reply to post by flybynight



Yeah, I also just opened my email box and had this message from Steve Bassett.

However, if you google 'Hillary Clinton, open letter, PRG, extraterrestrials' or any other combination of similar words into google search, then the Clinton letter comes up fine, as does this thread on ATS and Bassett's response. So maybe they fixed it, or maybe there is some other reason, but it definitely works OK now.

Cheers

Stephen Bassett seems to be right about this, in that the specific pages displaying the letter text to Senator Clinton do not come up in google searches, at least not high in the ranking.

This is the PRG press-release page:

www.paradigmresearchgroup.org...

However, it is easy for anyone using the google search function to find the letter text by following any of a number of secondary links.

But yes, he does have a point. Some censorship seems to be in force at google. Why they bother when the text is in any case easy to locate in a couple of minutes is, however, not easy to understand.

Good post and goes along with what i've been stating about Google's censoring of US citizens in their searches.

China wants Obama, and Google is heavily influenced by the Chinese (Google censors searches for China in China and for China in the US).

Believe it or not, you're seeing it first hand with this post.

[edit on 6-5-2008 by jetxnet]

I have had some dialog about this with Stephen Bassett this morning and yes, it is a very big deal.

The important points are:

1. Nothing PRG has posted previously on the internet has been blocked, but this definitely has

2. This open letter to Senator Clinton is a very big deal. Her long-time interest in the ET disclosure issue is not understood by the general public as the MSM has never focussed on it

3. It is a BIG problem for her. Look what they did to Kucinitch just for admitting he saw a UFO, and he was never into the ET issue up to his neck like the Clintons

4. If the request to block the listings came from someone inside the Clinton campaign, and it has been acted on, then this is a very, very, very big deal indeed. It's a violation of the First Amendment for one thing. It should be the lead on all the MSM news channels

Stephen has the bit between his teeth now, and legal proceedings are in motion.

This could turn into a very big story.

Watch this space.

I'm not a big fan of Google, and I agree about censoring China sites for purely monetary gain, but it's their site. They can show or not show whatever they want to as results. It stinks to high heaven, but it is their site. A good way to combat this is don't use their site at all. Use an alternative. They care about traffic. Traffic and Google ads is how they make their money. It is a business. Don't go to their site if you don't like them. It is in no way a violation of the First Amendment.

it would be ironic if this story ends up getting a lot of press because of the google censorship. I think Steve is licking his chops on this, we'll see if he can get the media to jump onboard with the google angle which will indirectly get the Hilary story more exposure.