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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."
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.
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
"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.
Heya, Beka... What if you've been raped by your dad and you want to let people know about the hell it's put you through, but you don't want all the attention and bs you'll have to deal with if you post it under your real name?
What if you work for a government agency, or corporate entity, etc, that is engaged in all sorts of chicanery? Would you post with your real name, and be fired on the spot, or would you post anonymously so you can be a "voice from the inside"?
What if you are an atheist in a strictly Muslim country? Or a drug user in a country currently engaged in a "War on Drugs"?
What tripe. What complete unadulterated tripe.
Empty words, since you didn't back up your opinion with any logic or reasoning.
Or are they not really thoughts worth standing up for?
What you fail to understand is that just because something is worth standing up for that doesn't mean that there won't be negative, unjust, or undesirable consequences for posting something. The world isn't fair or just, and until it is (ie: never), there will be a need for anonymity.