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EFF Guide To Blogging Anonymously
jacksonwest writes "Annalee Newitz and Kurt Opsahl just published a great how-to on blogging anonymously. How To Blog Safely About Work (Or Anything Else), covering both the legal and technical aspects of blogging about your job and staying truly anonymous. A must read for those blogging from or about their office."
Most useful in Iran, China and may be in USA
If free speech is to mean anything, it must be done with a name and responsibility attached. Anonymous speech is really worthless, consider the quality and substance of AC posts on this site.
If you have something to say about your company, then say it. Have some balls and do what it takes to make change. Unless you're willing to put your name and reputation on the line, why should anyone take your speech seriously?
So you have a choice, skulk around in the shadows like you are some kind of lowly criminal looking to the world like you're trying to get away with something, or stand up and post proudly and make a big noise. If you want to be treated like a criminal, then act like one. The EFF has just posted your guidelines. If you want to be treated like a human being with something important to say, then post without fear.
Applies to restrictions on speech by the government. It does not mean your employer has to allow you to say anything you want about them and still retain your job. Speech can still have real consequences.
If someone spends a lot of time online under a certain pseudonym, to such an extent that he (and it's always a "he") earns a reputation and is known as a certain persona under that "fake" name, how is that any different than from posting under his real name?
On the internet, no one knows you're a dog. Just because someone's posting under what appears to be their real name, there is no guarantee either way. The pseudonym is just as good, if not better than the "real" name. It, at least, doesn't try to fool you into thinking that the poster is someone else.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Googling someone does not a background check make. If you googled my name you might get the impression that I'm an Irish athlete and mountain climber. Not so.
Forget google.
You need to do a background investigation on your hires - criminal and civil - check job history, references, and do a skills assessment.
I don't care if someone mouthed off on Slashdot, Boing Boing, The Well, or wherever. I care about whether or not I can trust them to do the job and play well with others. Googling someone won't tell you these things.
How about a guide to using some common sense?
I blog my ass off, but I sure as shit don't mention anything I shouldn't. I know the limits of the law in my area and what I could potentially get in the shit over. Occasionally I tread a pretty fine line between kosher and not-so-kosher (a recent issue over feral animals comes to mind), but I know where the line is that you just shouldn't step over.
What's so hard about just not being a dumb-ass these days? If you want to keep your job, don't blog about work. Simple.
Illegal? No way!
Not only is this a good idea, but not doing it as part of the hiring process would be irresponsible.
Thus proving once again that you haven't got the slightest idea what you are talking about. Stay in your little cage, code monkey. Let the HR people work out what's legal and not legal in regards to hiring decisions.
It's called discrimination.
Example:
You interview an ace programmer who's been out of the industry for a few years and he does really well with all the interviewing managers. One manager decides to take it upon himself to "background check" the guy. It turns out that the reason he hasn't been in the industry for a while is because he's been in jail for child molestation. Well, you don't want to work with this guy, of course. So the manager circulates the weblinks and everyone agrees to reject the candidate.
Next thing you know, the guy is filing suit against your company for discriminating against him for past crimes which he has already "paid for". Just as he was in jail, now your company is doing the bending over for him. All because one manager decided to step beyond the bounds of his role (and the law).
Snap back into reality and you realize that almost nobody is capable of making a decent living and maintain 100% of their principles. The society we live in generates the opposite.
It isn't human nature. It is the system we live in. Until that system might change you will always have the problem where your reputation in the business world changes significantly simply because you stand behind what is right. You see, there are too many potential haters out there which have the power to (and will!) ring your neck on a whim simply because they are religiously or politically against your ideas. The repurcussions(sp?) are limitless.
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
How do you know the search results pertain to your prospective employee? Both of the search results I get when I search for my name in quotes are about someone else with the same name as me. I believe he also happens to live pretty close to me.
The point is that anyone can eventually find your blog if your real identity is tied to it in some way. And there may be consequences. Family members may be shocked or upset when they read your uncensored thoughts. A potential boss may think twice about hiring you. But these concerns shouldn't stop you from writing. Instead, they should inspire you to keep your blog private, or accessible only to certain trusted people.
What tripe. What complete unadulterated tripe. Breeding a group of people who are convinced they're doing their thing for the world, yet who write anonymously behind the safety of a pseudonym or "Anonymous Coward" moniker?
Get some integrity people, and write with your real names. Stand up for what you believe in and put your name next to your thoughts.
Or are they not really thoughts worth standing up for?
RST
Considering his other comments, I'm guessing Microsoft.
JK.
On the other hand, do be careful with Google. If you google me, I've apparently built bike frames, been a tax attorney, am Colorado's premier one-legged skiier, made several games, founded a birdwatching society, and am several computer consultants. One or two of these people is actually me. I'm one of 9 or 10 of me online. Unfortunately, according to the phone book there are over 50 of me in the US alone, meaning that if you google my name you only have a 1 in 5 chance that I have anything online at all, and then a 1 in 10 chance of guessing which one I am. And I don't have a very common name. If your candidate is named "Tom Jones" or "Hong Li" or "Sanjay Singh", you're pretty much firing at random.
As a side note, I've always wondered if someone with your name could sue you for defamation for doing dumb things under your own name online...
The ______ Agenda
And you are the one to judge people's words? Let me get this 100% right. If you don't like what I say, then you can deprive me of my livelyhood? It must suck to be a capatalist in North Korea. Or pro-Tiwan in China. Or a socalist in the USA.
But there are many ways to write a negative web log that still tries to be completely fair and see things from the other person's point of view.
Fuck them. I don't want to see it from thier point of view. I want to vent.
One fellow in particular that I enjoy reading writes about his boss, problem clients, assertive sex partners, and demanding family members. He's fun to read because he's figured out that in most cases he is the "problem" rather than all of these people he writes about. He is, after all, the only common link between all of these problematic things. When he writes about a stressful change at work he's not bitching about "the worst decision his boss ever made" but rather "a change his boss made that eluded his understanding".
Your elude my understanding. :p
If you want to leak a secret wrongdoing, send it to a reporter's email address.
Dan Rather, You've got mail!
In all seriousness, we can't regulate free speech, no matter how fucked up it sounds. I strike that, we can, in some instances like when someone wants to blow shit up, or post naked pictures of your wife or sister. But when somoene wants to say how society is unfair, bad, backwards, blah blah blah, that is 100% protected free speech. And depriving someone of work is a millenium old way of killing people, better than jail or beatings. You make them lose their homes, their method of transportation, their ability to socalize. You turn them into a more bitter hermit.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Given the situation you've described above (and I certainly empathize, I have three children of my own), I think we must ask ourselves, how free is our speech? For many of us who live paycheck-to-paycheck, getting fired is as grave a threat as jail time. Is our speech free while our employer is permitted to exercise such authority, even while that same authority is denied to elected officials?
For all those who are going to jump on me, I'm not talking about blogging WHILE at work-your employer has a right to expect that you are working while they are paying you. What I dispute that they have is a right to expect that you will live by their rules for your entire life, even while "off" of work. If that is the case, they should be paying you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year-otherwise, once they stop deciding that your time is worth their pay, they have also decided to relinquish any form of control.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
"Free speech" is a nice little term that gets bandied far too often in a nonsensical way, by people who don't think about rights concepts in a particularly rigorous way.
If an employer's decision to censure or fire an employee based on work-related blogging is an infringement of free speech, then what about a person/group who decides to boycott a company because they disagree with that company's decisions? Or how about when there's a demonstration outside my window and I shut the window because I don't agree with them and don't want to hear it?
"Free speech" becomes an *abusive* concept when you deprive people of their rights to avoid associating with people they don't like, or to take otherwise legal actions (like not shopping at a particular store) based on their opinons about an entity. After all, isn't the constitutional guarantee of freedom of association embedded in the exact same amendment as the right to free speech?
"Free speech" cannot mean "speech without consequences from anyone". That would just be silly. I'll say what I want, and you'll decide whether you want to associate with me based on how you feel about it.
away from the employer's premises.
Those photos were taken on one of the employer's planes, and thus, are not covered by that law. They would likely have had more trouble firing her if the photos were taken at home, and she wasn't wearing uniform, and rightfully so. But if you do something at work which is explicitly against your terms of employment, expect trouble.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Terrible example - in many places such practices are legal.
Now, the difference is when your personal activity they're considering is something totally lawful. For example, lets say your employer is very opinionated Mormon, and thus believes that alcohol is spiritually unhealthy (or is just otherwise rather prudish). They stumble upon your blog, where you describe your last drunken bender with your friends, how you puked up your lungs and were hung over for 2 days. Its all perfectly legal, but many people object to that kind of behaviour - and it's not constitutionally protected like race and suchlike.
That sort of stuff is none of their business in their professional capacity as an employer. They are perfectly free to ask you about your habits, read about them, whatever - but not to use that as a basis for hiring/review decisions.
Yeah, but think of it this way: she's a keeper.
Good looks are fleeting, but a good brain and a quick wit can last you a lifetime. Even if you are having championship sex with your number one girl, what's that come to - 2 hours of sex a day at a maximum? That's maybe 20% of your time with your lover. What about the rest of the time? You can keep your "maid in the living room, cook in the kitchen and whore in the bedroom" gals well away from me. I'll take the brainy chick every time. She's the one with whom I can get along.
I've dated many really good ladies who weren't very good company and weren't very great in bed. Many women less fortunate in the looks department have been amazing in bed and provided me with excellent companionship. As long as the face is attractive and the rest is at least passable, I'm fine. Give me a smart, creative, and funny lady.
The human brain is the biggest sex organ. Believe it.
I figure her SO is a lucky guy/gal.
Er. If I went around the office posting notices that my boss is an asshole, I'd expect to be fired. If I put the same message on a billboard across the street...I'd still expect to be fired. The fact is, most terminations aren't the result of incompetence--they are a consequence of interpersonal issues. If I were a manager, I'm not sure if I would want to work with someone who goes around calling me a jerk behind my back. I wouldn't want to continue to employ someone who felt I deserved insults and abuse, and who saw fit to post that for the world to see.
Similarly, posting trade or other corporate secrets online strikes me as a likely breach of an employment contract, or at least a gross lapse in etiquette. Again, I'd expect to be fired if I did that.
The grandparent poster didn't say anything about people fired for their political views--and I suspect that courts in the U.S. might tend to take a dimmer view of such actions by employers. Regardless, such cases seem to be in the minority of blog-related firings...at least among the stories that make it to Slashdot.
~Idarubicin
How do they know who a person is if they arent from their ISP or computer? What if you use wifi? what if its a college network? The NSA does not have unlimited tracking powers. They are good but lets be serious, there are ways to be annonymous online and offline. We all know the ways and we all know why its nearly impossible to stop.
I reason that as long as my employer isn't named, there's no real clue that identifies them in what I write, I can write as much as I want about what bugs me without it impacting on my employer or back on me. As my employer has a strict policy about public statements, it's also the case that pseudonymously or anonymously is about the only way I can comment about my life in general.
It's a straight choice - either speak without anyone realistically connecting events to my employer, or be fired. Some people, yourself, and a few opinionated but out-of-the-real-world F/OSS people, etc have recently suggested this is cowardly. You'll excuse me if I avoid taking advice from these groups as you have no idea of the precise circumstances I'm in.
I would agree it would show a lack of integrity if I published private information publically about my employer, attacking them, and ensuring everyone associated this private information with them (ie, if I worked for IBM, I wrote something like "My dumbass boss told me to cancel the XYZ project I've been working on which is going to totally fuck up our customers who were depending on this to deal with the bugs in XY. IBM sucks! Don't work here!"), then that'd show a lack of integrity. But writing generically, or commenting on what's public - stories in the news, etc - is hardly a sign of a lack of integrity.
What I will say is people who make sweeping attacks on entire groups of people without regard to their circumstances, ignoring the obvious, expecting people to value some third party's opinion about them more than their careers, has a seriously screwed set of values.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.