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?

Comments

ANONYMOUS FIRST POST TROLL!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

pleaase don't oust me :(

please?

Re:ANONYMOUS FIRST POST TROLL!!!

[Torvaun]

No one else did either.

Uhhh

[QuantumG]

Does an American have the right to post political opinion online anonymously?

Sure.

May a government official breach that anonymity absent a compelling state interest?

Why yes. Everyone has the right to keep their identity a secret.. but no-one has the right to prevent others from discovering their secrets.

Re:Uhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

but no-one has the right to prevent others from discovering their secrets.

So does you proclamation apply to whisle blowers, people in witness protection, confidential documents, your SSN, trade secrets, etc.

People have a perfect right to protect their secrets, otherwise they wouldn't be secrets.

Re:Uhhh

[RodgerDodger]

Actually, that is not the case. Government officials in particular have a greater duty to protect your privacy than the average citizen, due to their access to greater-than-normal tools to violate it.

If, for example, Rep. Doogan abused his office to discover Mudflat's identity, then that would be a serious problem.

Re:Uhhh

[QuantumG]

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.

Re:Uhhh

[julioody]

Except he's a public official. I for one very much doubt he did this in his own time, or with his own money.

The blogger committed no crime, as from TFA. So what gives?

Hate to state the obvious, but that strikes me as a personal vendetta being pursued while the fine representative should be more concerned with matters of public interest.

Re:Uhhh

[dexmachina]

I agree, with one reservation. If Rep. Doogan discovered the blogger's identity using channels that would be available to anyone, then he was well within his rights to "oust him"...otherwise, you're effectively arguing that Mudflats' right to anonymity trumps Doogan's right to free speech. However, if he used his position as a government official to access information not available to the general public, then his actions were an abuse of power.

Re:Uhhh

[nedlohs]

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.

Re:Uhhh

[badasscat]

Except he's a public official. I for one very much doubt he did this in his own time, or with his own money.

But you're turning this around. Again, that's a question of abuse of power, which really has nothing to do with protection of privacy. Politicians can and do abuse their power in any number of ways to get what they want. Whether that happened here is a separate issue.

The question is "do you have a right to anonymity when making political editorials?" That's a different question than "do you have the right to make anonymous political editorials?" The answer to the latter question is "of course". The answer to the former question is "of course not".

There's no protection of privacy when making editorials, especially ones that by design are intended to hurt someone else. Whether or not that hurt is justified and the editorial truthful is immaterial - just as an accused defendant has the right to know his accuser in court, so too is it elsewhere in our society.

Look at it this way. Imagine if, instead of some random person, this blogger was instead a member of the Republican National Committee executing a covert strategy to take down this Democratic representative. Would their privacy be protected then? If not, why not?

There can't be a double standard for the obvious reason that you don't know who you're dealing with or what their motives are until they are unmasked. And both the accused and the public have a right to know that.

Anonymity has its uses, but this country has a much longer history - and a long legal basis - in people dealing with each other face to face, with all the cards on the table.

Re:Uhhh

[gyrogeerloose]

Can you actually state any *laws* to that affect?

I cant't cite any state laws but the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the right to anonymous speech as part of the right to free speech.

Re:Uhhh

[QuantumG]

Yup, but the supreme court has never said "you can't try to find out who that anonymous person is".. if you want to remain anonymous it's your responsibility to protect your identity.. you have no legal right to that. You can't contact the police and say "hey, someone is trying to find out who I am, stop them!"

Re:Uhhh

[religious freak]

There is no constitutional right to privacy. You can look and look, but there's nothing that says 'you have a right for the government to not look into your shit' (or any more respectful verbiage). The right to privacy has never been fully tested in the courts, in the opinion of at least some legal scholars.

Fourth Amendment reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

That does NOT say you are guaranteed to privacy outside your house, or that the government can't snoop through your activities... That means that unless there are laws in existence governing the type of circumstance AC found herself in, the government can do what it pleases and be legal.

Now, I personally think that the right to privacy implicitly exists in the constitution (our president shares this view), but many folks think this type of thing is just a guaranteed right to us as citizens... it's not.

Re:Uhhh

[xouumalperxe]

As recently as 1995 (in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission) the Court ruled that anonymous pamphleting is protected by the First Amendment

What that means is:

• Posting anonymous pamphlets is legal;
• You can't legislate to make it illegal (not american, can't recall whether 1st amendment rules at state or federal level);
• Since anonymity is legal, you can't ask law enforcement to help you find out who posted something anonymous (or do anything else about it, for that matter) unless there's something else about it that makes it illegal.

What it doesn't mean is:

• If you spread an "anonymous" message via SMS, it doesn't bar people from just saying "look whose caller ID it is!"
• If the speech itself is illegal (not sure what constitutes illegal speech in the US, but violence/hate inciting speech, or holocaust denial are recurring items elsewhere), anonymity doesn't suddenly make it OK because of the first amendment

Re:Uhhh

[Dun Malg]

There is no constitutional right to privacy.

Amendment IX - "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

It's the ignorance of folks like you that opponents of the Bill of Rights were afraid of. They feared people would think the Bill of Rights was an exhaustive list of our rights, even if one of them explicitly stated it wasn't (i.e. the 9th). The US Constitution protects all rights, even ones not explicitly enumerated therein. The Bill of Rights was essentially a "Top 10 List" they felt were especially important. If the Supreme Court says that the right to privacy is a basic right, they don't have to justify it as an extension of the 4th. They originally did (which I think was a mistake) but they really needed only cite the 9th.

Anonomity should not be required

[pwizard2]

I'm disturbed that an American would feel that they should have to be anonymous to post political speech. There should be no threat of reprisal whatsoever; in fact the politicians should be the ones who are worried about what the electorate thinks of them.

Re:Anonomity should not be required

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd guess that it isn't the politicians that one would be worried about.

Re:Anonomity should not be required

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only Common Sense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense_(pamphlet)

Re:Anonomity should not be required

[Vectronic]

Not directly, but indirectly.

Fear of saying what you want to because you might get fired, but why would the company have any reason to fear it's employees opinions unless the company could be harassed by politic(ian)s.

Same goes for the FBI, IRS and the rest of bullshit organizations, someone speaks out about what they think, and somehow that gives the FBI, or IRS the right to arbitrarily investigate you, the police to follow you, why?

The government is there to serve the people, the people aren't there to serve the government.

Re:Anonomity should not be required

[LoverOfJoy]

I don't know. If you worked in public relations, for instance, then I'm not so sure your boss would be happy about you also being a vocal political activist. It's not so much that he'd fear reprisals from the government. It could just as easily be boycotts of their products from people of the opposite political persuasion.

We saw this in action a bit with Proposition 8. There were websites listing the highest donors in the area and people boycotted their places of business and even vandalized property. That doesn't mean I would agree with any firings but I can understand wanting anonymity without fearing the government directly or indirectly.

Re:Anonomity should not be required

[hairyfeet]

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.

Re:Anonomity should not be required

[cbiltcliffe]

I can see where you're coming from, and it is a concern. However, we can only hope that most rational people will be able to see ad hominem attacks for what they are and filter them out from any real differing points of view.

If people were good at filtering out ad hominem attacks, then people wouldn't use ad hominem attacks, because they wouldn't work.

Unfortunately, people are idiots, ad hominem attacks do work, and "Think of the children! Why do you hate children? Are you a pedophile?" frequently does more to discount your argument to a crowd than any logical, well debated argument.

Re:Anonomity should not be required

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Unfortunately, it was a complete fabrication by the reporter who ascribed the comment to the anonymous crowd.

No it wasn't. The "Kill him!" is clearly audible at thirteen seconds into the video.

Jackass.

This is kind of stupid.

[rindeee]

He discovered her identity fair and square. Would you propose that one must pretend not to know who someone behind a publication is based on some arbitrary set of circumstances. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" and whatnot.

A what?

[zappepcs]

Just exactly who is going to decide what "... a compelling state interest" is?

Let me guess? The same people that will charge you with treason or terrorism?

Yes, I think anonymous speech should be protected... until it become defamation or slander. Both are pretty difficult slopes to tread when the figure being defamed or slandered is a public figure. On another note, a political figure is both public and a part of the government. They have even less right to any privacy regarding their lives than probably anyone else. Despite the allure of any resulting tapes, Pamela Anderson has a right to expect privacy... no matter who she is fucking. A political leader... not so much.

Of course they have 'the right'...

[Animaether]

Of course they have 'the right' to protect their secrets - as in this case, their identity. However, do they have a legal leg to stand on in trying to fight somebody who has made that secret public? I'd say they don't.

So, yes, anybody - politician or otherwise - should be perfectly allowed to blow somebody's 'anonymity' if there was no agreement between the two parties to maintain that anonymity (as in some court proceedings, witness protection program, etc. etc.).

Re:It depends....

[argent]

"Outing" the blogger disclosed some of the biases in her accusations.

Dude, we knew more about her biases from what she wrote in her blog than from knowing her real name.

"Mudflats" biases were on worn on her virtual sleeve, not hidden behind her pseudonym.

Re:What right was infringed?

[xenocide2]

Congratulations, you've so enshrined the Constitution so as to invite the very tyranny that was fought over two centuries ago. Anonymous speech is crucial to voicing intelligent opinion unfavorable to the powers that be. So much so, that the very people who built the Constitution you cherish dared not publish the Federal Papers under their actual names. Somehow, the entire nation has read the 9th amendment and looked the other way.

Well played, sir.

Why the Bill of Rights?

[Pfhorrest]

If there was nothing more important, why would it be in the first amendment, instead of in, say, the original constitution itself?

Because the original constitution was written on the premise that people had every right that the constitution didn't explicitly give government the power to curtail. Note the language there; the constitution grants powers to the government (which otherwise has none), not rights to the people (who otherwise have all of them). It was feared that explicitly enumerating rights might imply that such a list was exhaustive, ruling out any rights not listed.

The Bill of Rights was only added because many states only agreed to ratify the constitution once such a bill of rights was promised to be added. The ninth and tenth amendments were the compromise added to quell the fears of the list being taken as exhaustive (the ninth explicitly stating that the list of people's rights is not exhaustive, and the tenth explicitly stating that the list of the Federal government's powers is exhaustive).

And of the rights people were worried about explicitly enumerating, freedom of speech (and the press, and religion, and assembly, all bundled together) was priority #1.

Re:What right was infringed?

[hab136]

It seems to me that many Americans have become so self-centered with the constitutional rights we do have that we have started to claim rights we do not.

The Constitution is not a list of every right that ever existed or ever will. It's a document detailing what limited rights the people/states have given to the federal government; then to be extra clear, specifically mentions that the feds are not allowed to do certain things (Bill of Rights).

Let me repeat that: It's a list of rights that we give to the federal government, plus some specific restrictions on the feds. Not a list of *our* rights.

There is no constitutional right to privacy.

The Constitution doesn't give us a right to privacy or anything else - it doesn't grant rights, only recognizes some of them and specifically tells the federal government not to infringe those rights. It also says that not all rights are listed, but they still exist.

We have our rights by being born, both those specifically recognized in the Constitution and those not (like privacy).
When people talk about constitutional rights, they would be more correct to say "constitutionally-recognized rights".

There is no constitutional right to having healthcare. There is no constitutional right to having a job. There is no constitutional right to an education. You want those things? You earn them. The "pursuit" has been dropped from "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

You have the right to pursue these things, yes. They are not provided by the government, nor does current law say it should, so.. we don't.

Whether or not they should be provided by the federal government is debated. If the people want these things, the laws can be changed to support it (including a Constitutional amendment if required).