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Can Outing an Anonymous Blogger be Justified?
netbuzz writes "Absolutely, depending on the circumstances, yet a Florida newspaper's attempt to unmask 'a political group hiding behind the name of a fictitious person' has sparked outrage in some circles. Part of the reason for that outrage is that the paper posted to its Web site a surveillance video of the blogger visiting its advertising department, a tactic the editor says he now regrets. What's really at issue here is the right to publish anonymously vs. the right to remain anonymous. The former exists, the latter does not."
> Is that like how the Constitution provides specific grounds for revoking habeas corpus,
> but it's OK if the government ignores it because you don't have the right in the first
> place?
No. Aside from the fact that you do have the right to habeas corpus, this has nothing to do with the government at all.
> How can one claim that someone has the right to "publish anonymously" if a person cannot
> be anonymous?
You have the right to "publish anonymously". You have the right to be anonymous. However, no one is obligated to help you be anonymous. It's up to you to keep your identity secret. If you screw up and your secret gets out, tough.
I wouldn't do business with a paper that publishes surveillance videos of its customers, though.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The Constitution protects the "Freedom of the Press", but not the "Freedom of Anonymity of the Press". There are steps you can take if you want to remain anonymous, but no laws preventing someone from outing a blogger who doesn't keep his identity a well-kept secret.
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Absolutely. Journalism should not be the art of protecting secrets. The first amendment right to a free press does not have a caveat that states that people with hidden agendas are protected from exposure. As long as this is not a government mandated revelation of secrecy of a citizen, there is no issue at hand. The press has a right and I feel a duty to expose all that want to be a part of the public debate both for and against what I personally believe. The only reason the editor feels that this was a bad choice is that he doesn't have the requisite reproductive organs to stand up for what they did which was good reporting. There is no right to anonymity when to start to engage in the public debate. If you can maintain it, that is through your own efforts and not through some Constitutional mechanism.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
No, I disagree. The constitution does not give us our rights. We, as humans, have natural rights endowed from wherever it is that we came from. The listing of specific rights in the Bill of Rights and elsewhere in the Constitution does not limit our natural rights to what is listed. Remember, the Bill of Rights was added because some states were not willing to sign on without explicit enumeration of some of those natural rights. Originally, Madison didn't believe the Bill of Rights necessary. Thus, the question really isn't "does the constitution grant us these rights?", but "is this a right that already existed, but has not yet been enumerated?"
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
12112
These and their like are the only "natural" rights "endowed" upon you by the universe -- in fact, they are *forced* upon you.
Any other supposed rights (freedom of speech, freedom to vote, freedom to chase girls, a.k.a. freedom to pursue happiness) are fictions created by the mind of man as he negotiates his way in the company of other humans.
Now, I certainly enjoy having these rights (especially the one about chasing girls), but I'm under no illusion that they exist in nature external to homo sap.
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
Good try though. No, you're an idiot. If you actually knew anything about the history of the bill of rights, you'd know that the 9th was a concession to Hamilton and others, who believed that a bill of rights was unwise:
"I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?" -Hamilton, Alexander. The Federalist Papers, #84. "On opposition to a Bill of Rights."
The 9th (and 10th, for that matter) was included to address Hamilton's specific issues. But let us read the 9th amendment itself, and deduce its meaning based on what it actually says:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
See, I don't know where you get the hare-brained idea that the 9th has something to do with enumerated rights trumping one another. It very fucking clearly says what it means. Allow me to paraphrase:
"The fact that we chose to write down a Top Ten List of rights does not in any way imply that the people do not retain a multitude of other rights"
I'd sure love to see you cite a source for your laughable interpretation of the 9th Amendment. The 9th has been routinely ignored by many, but no sane person has ever claimed it meant other than what it says.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
You have the ability to say "No" (or to silently resists if you happen to be mute) to anyone who tries to deny you those rights that you claim are "created in the mind of man". The Constitution and the Bill of Rights simply tell the government where they do and don't have authority over its citizens, who in turn agree to submit themselves to that authority.
Your ability to resist imposed authority is as natural as the law of gravity, therefore the only time your rights don't naturally exist, is when you don't defend them.
There is lot that is not illegal. But, the paper's ethics must be called into question. Aside from threats to national security made in a blog, or confession to a felony in a blog, I'm hard pressed to see why outing someone who has chosen to write pseudonymously would be considered ethical.
Without the ability to publish, blog, speak anonymously, many of the world's tyrannical governments would not have been challenged, taken down, or seceded from. We, the U.S., did it to King George III and much of the public was influenced to support the effort, in part, through the publishing of anonymous, or pseudonymous tracts.
Yes, there are those who tried to uncover the writers, publishers, and distributors. But, in the end, whose interests do they serve?
I will put this forward, a newspaper that denies another's freedom to speak politically under a cloak of anonymity, should lose its right to exist. In other words, they protect the rights of others so their right is protected.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
What evidence or reasoning supports this?
The framers of the constitution believed that this was a "self-evident" fact -- something that would be understood to be true by any reasonable person upon considered reflection, requiring no evidence beyond that.
Now, that's a rather controversial idea. But, whether we accept the existence of self-evident facts or not, it remains true that the U.S. Constitution was written by people who specifically did believe that rights were not granted by government. Rather, that rights are inherent in persons by their very nature. A government can, in this view, protect your rights, ignore your rights, or even infringe upon your rights. But it can't possibly grant you any rights nor remove any rights from you, since that's not something within the power of government. Government is just a collection of people, with no ability to make fundamental changes to human nature by fiat. To assume otherwise is to assume collections of people are somehow able to wield god-like powers simply by virtue of acting collectively, and that's absurd.
So, whether one accepts this premise or not, one needs to read the Constitution with the understand that it was written with this point of view in mind, and needs to be interpreted accordingly.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."