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Anonymous Blogger Outed By Politician
Snoskred writes with the story of a blogger who chose to remain pseudonymous, who has been outed by an Alaskan politician in his legislative newsletter. Alaska Rep. Mike Doogan had been writing bizarre emails to people who emailed him, and the Alaskan blogger "Mudflats" was one of those who called him on it. (Mudflats first began getting noticed after blogging about Sarah Palin from a local point of view.) Doogan seems to have developed a particular itch to learn who Mudflats is, and he finally found out, though he got her last name wrong, and named her in his official newsletter. The Huffington Post is one of the many outlets writing about the affair. The blogger happens to be Democrat — as is Doogan — but that is immaterial to the question of the right to anonymity in political speech. Does an American have the right to post political opinion online anonymously? May a government official breach that anonymity absent a compelling state interest?
Can you actually state any *laws* to that affect? Hiring a registered private investigator to discover the identity of a whistle blower.. yep, perfectly legal. Witness protection is more myth than fact. Confidential documents remain confidential until they are lawfully obtained by the people you want to keep them confidential from, then they no longer are. My SSN? I think I have one of those from back when I worked in the USA.. assuming that everyone else reading this has one or considers it a secret is a pretty big assumption. Trade secrets are exactly the same as confidential documents.. with the added fun of reverse engineering.. also perfectly legal as has been upheld by the supreme court dozens of times.
People have a perfect right to protect their secrets, otherwise they wouldn't be secrets.
No-one said they didn't.
How we know is more important than what we know.
But then it's not the exposing of identity that is the problem, it's the abuse of power and resources. It would be just as much an abuse if he then kept the knowledge to himself.
If I want to work out who is sending me anonymous emails I can look at the headers and notice they all come from an IP used by a local internet cafe and they seem to be sent at 10am each Saturday, nothing wrong with me going there at that time the next Saturday and seeing if there's anyone who's the likely sender. Nothing wrong with a policeman or a politician doing the same. As soon as the policeman or politician uses their additional powers (flashing a badge and asking to see the credit card receipts and user lists, etc) then we have a problem.
Free speech cannot exist without the protection of anonymity. Without anonymous speech, the fear of reprisal would chill discussion. Keep in mind that the Founding Fathers published many of their seminal documents under pen names, lest they lose their heads to the King.
At the same time, the government has an interest in identifying certain publishers. Libel or slander should not be protected because it is a crime that hurts its victims. The government has to balance the interests of protecting anonymous speech against the rights of victims to seek relief. These factors have to be taken into consideration when deciding whether or not to grant government power such as subpoenas to pierce the veil of anonymity.
Here, the posts do not seem to be libel or slander. However, we do not know if any government force was used to identify the blogger. I think that it is perfectly fine if the blogger was careless or was betrayed by a friend she told. But if the politician used his office to investigate or to subpoena the information, I would be bullshit mad.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
In case you missed it, there were these "town meetings" things held by McCain during the election where nice folk(whom I would personally term rabid) were screaming things like "Kill him!" about the senator's opponent. Remember that? When you have got those kinds of nutballs running around wouldn't YOU not want them to know where you live if you were writing about their precious leader? I know I would.
I think there should be an IMMEDIATE investigation. Not because he outed the blogger, but because i can't picture a rep doing the work required to find this out on his own, and I doubt very seriously he paid out of his own pocket to have it done. That makes it a misuse of government resources and an abuse of power. if he did abuse his power and privilege to get the identity of this blogger, then bust his ass. Because the last thing we need right now is politicians using their power to go after one of the last places we still have free speech. I agree that if he did the work himself and found out that is one thing, but how many here actually believe he did that? Nope, me neither.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Everyone has a right to face their accusers, american or not, politician or not. If someone chooses the internet as the ground to make accusations or critical comments then they should be ready to take whatever fair response comes from their target on the same grounds (internet). As a politician Doogan has to choose words carefully, he should participate to the point he defends his position and outlines why it's the right position, he should also consider that getting too caught up in an argument only makes him seem childish and not fit for his role. On another note, the alaskans I've met sure dont seem to the types to care if we know who they are or not, if they have something to say they are gonna say it and if we dont like it well thats our problem. LOL!