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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."
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?
How can one claim that someone has the right to "publish anonymously" if a person cannot be anonymous?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Or am I off my rocker?
sigfault (core dumped)
When I think of "anonymous bloggers", I get this image.
Or, I recall that "Multiple Theology Degree, exquisite super-intelligentsia" Essjay. Oh, thats right.. He's a redneck hick who lives about 80 Mi south of me (Louisville, KY).
Anybody can say whatever they want, but due to the "Credibility" of the internet, it usually means something is going to be believed. Not good, as most people haven't the logic or intelligence to discern real from fiction.
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.
Can Outing an Anonymous Blogger be Justified?
Absolutely, depending on the circumstances
No editorial slant on this FP, no-sir-ee!
Many of our fundamental "rights" in the modern world very much depend on not only having anonymity before doing something, but after as well.
In particular, and I expect the FP author had this exact situation in mind, when the exercise of speech/publishing relates to the commission of a crime. But in all but a few situations (defamation or lying to a grand jury come to mind), the crime and the speech exist as entirely separate concepts, with the latter protected.
Even when the speech does break the law directly (defamation), you need to consider how much credibility an anonymous source really has. If I say "The PS3 sucks", I may have defamed Sony, but no one will care. If US VP of marketing for SCEA says the same thing, it would make headlines (at least in the geek news community).
If I cheat on my taxes, that breaks the law. If I brag about it anonymously - The bragging doesn't break the law, and I have every right to maintain my anonymity in the bragging. If the IRS catches me for the crime itself, no foul; If they hunt me down like a dog and then find out I just bragged but have filed accurately, they have wasted time and money and potentially injured me financially or reputation-wise in the process, despite no actual crime occuring.
Anonymity has a dark side, but without an absolute right to it, we may as well let the government install "The Eye" in our living rooms right now.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
So it can "absolutely" be justified, yet it is also "depending on the circumstances".
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
Why is it obvious/implicit that you don't have the right to remain anonymous, save in a society where you have no rights?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Try Batman Begins or Passion of the Christ. (Posting as an anonymous for obvious reasons.)
Does that include journalistic sources? If someone were to follow up on Woodward and Bernstein and expose "Deep Throat", would that be fine by you? After all, he had his secret agenda as well... (Anger at not being promoted to be head of FBI after Hoover left).
Damn skippy it would! The country spent nearly 35 years trying to figure that Deep Throat was William Mark Felt, Sr. Every journalist interested in Washington politics wasn on the hunt for the identity of the real Deep Throat. Journalists that keep secrets from the public are betraying their audience. Sometimes the audience puts up with it like in the case of Deep Throat.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
There never, ever, has been an absolute right to anonymity. The day people have that right, is the day that society will cease to exist.
Society exists because of law and peer pressure to conform to its rules. Where anonimity is guaranteed, peer pressure cannot exist, and law cannot be enforced.
There are restrictions on what government can do to invade your privacy, but privacy and anonimity are two different things. In fulfilling its duties to you, government necesarily has a lot of information about you. Because this information is required by the government, there are also restrictions on accessing that information by other parties. Because of these government restrictions, people mistakenly think those restrictions can and should carry over to everyone. There is a mistaken belief that all people are or should be restricted from determining information about another person. This is patently false and rediculous on its face. Who is to say that the blogging groups right to private criticism of a public figure is more important than my right to find out the motives behind that criticism? Who is to say that opening my eyes to observe someone else is a crime? Is there some sort of "I want to remain anonymous" flag that people have? Like the broadcast flag? You go around wearing this flag, and this makes it so no one is alowed to observe or recognize you.
The blogger(s) waded into a public debate. They can do what they want to try to remain anonymous, but the newspaper along with any other member of the public has the right to do what they can to find out who it is.
In short, YOUR RIGHT TO ANONYMITY ENDS WHEN YOU DO ANYTHING THAT SOMEONE ELSE CAN OBSERVE. If you want to stay anonymous, don't do anything.
What makes anonymity sacrosanct? Someone does something to be anonymous, their perogative. If someone else does something to expose their identity, that's their perogative, too. If what they do to expose them isn't itself wrong, then they haven't done anything wrong. If they use public info (eg. cameras recording public appearances) and deduction, there's not wrong. The exposed anonymous might not like it, but there's no intrinsic, universal right to anonymity just because they want it. And in fact exposing hidden players in public acts is the primary responsibility of newspapers and other periodical publishers.
I wish there were a lot more outrage about newspapers keeping some people anonymous. Anonymous sources used to spin news, lie to damage coverage and public knowledge. When the source isn't actually anonymous at all, to the reporter (or their editors), but is anonymized by the newspaper, creating more ignorance rather than more knowledge. Especially when that anonymity makes unaccountable some people who are reliably wrong, lying, or just predictably spinning.
Newspapers have a glorious future working to expose trolls in our new mediasphere full of cheap and easy cover. We need more exposure, and more support for it.
--
make install -not war
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.
I think this discussion can be more enlightened by considering some particular hypothetical cases.
In this case the anonymously-posting group whose member was exposed was critical of a prominent county politician.
Suppose the anonymous poster(s) had been critical of the Chinese government's suppression of Falun Gong or occupation of Tibet.
Suppose the anonymous poster had been Salman Rushdie, at the height of the "Satanic Verses" flap, and the outing included his address.
Suppose the time was shortly before the American Revolution and the posters were people like Samuel Adams, William Molineux, Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, and Paul Revere.
Think about what happened to people like Yuri Orlov, Alexander Litvinenko, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Wang Xiaoning, Nathan Hale, Theo Van Gogh.
I could add names for hours. And, yes, only some of these particular critics of the powerful did so anonymously, so don't bother pointing that out: This list shows what can happen to critics and why they might want to be anonymous.
Maybe this guy won't be sent to a gulag, poisoned by thallium, vanish into the Chinese prison system, or assassinated on the street in broad daylight. But would you be surprised if he is the subject of continual harassment from now on - at least until he moves to another county?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You are correct that there is no "right to life" enumeration in the Constitution. However, there is one in the Declaration of Independence. Add that to the 9th Amendment and you do have a right to life. The founders were religious men and these documents reflect that. The right to life was enumerated as one of their main reasons to sever the ties to England. They believed the right to life was granted by a higher power so its enumeration to the Constitution was unnecessary besides being already covered in the document that started this nation to begin with.
From the Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
I'm hard pressed to see why outing someone who has chosen to write pseudonymously would be considered ethical.
Because it's a question of public interest: Is the person a single entity acting on his own or a front for a political group or "think tank"? In short, is it grass-roots or Astroturf?
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
A small matter is that the Constitution and Bill of Rights are the legal documents. The Declaration of Independance is an opinion piece, rhetoric, propaganda . . . agreed to by many, but more of a vision statement than binding law. Sorry if this is pedantic, but I recently bumpped into this again and always find it interesting.