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Judge Rules That Government Can Force Glassdoor To Unmask Anonymous Users Online (arstechnica.com)
pogopop77 shares a report from Ars Technica: An appeals court will soon decide whether the U.S. government can unmask anonymous users of Glassdoor -- and the entire proceeding is set to happen in secret. Federal investigators sent a subpoena asking for the identities of more than 100 anonymous users of the business-review site Glassdoor, who apparently posted reviews of a company that's under investigation for potential fraud related to its contracting practices. The government later scaled back its demand to just eight users. Prosecutors believe these eight Glassdoor users are "third-party witnesses to certain business practices relevant to [the] investigation." The name of the company under investigation is redacted from all public briefs. Glassdoor made a compromise proposal to the government: it would notify the users in question about the government's subpoena and then provide identifying information about users who were willing to participate. The government rejected that idea. At that point, Glassdoor lawyered up and headed to court, seeking to have the subpoena thrown out. Lawyers for Glassdoor argued that its users have a First Amendment right to speak anonymously. While the company has "no desire to interfere" with the investigation, if its users were forcibly identified, the investigation "could have a chilling effect on both Glassdoor's reviewers' and readers' willingness to use glassdoor.com," states Glassdoor's motion (PDF). The government opposed the motion, though, and prevailed in district court.
Several former coworkers posted about how we don't allow non-Asians to take time off. I'm glad I didn't post anything about that.
Never put your real name on the internet. Use burner accounts for everything.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The company under investigation is Slashdot. The anonymous tipsters revealed their shady business practices including posting repurposed press releases on the front page ("slashvertisements"), inflating story count by posting the same story numerous times ("dupes") and fraudulently claiming to employ competent editors who are actually illiterate millennials.
Do you have a right to anonymity online? When we lived in the physical world instead of the virtual one, it was possible to express opinions and leak information through a media that was made of paper. Now, the online world provides all kinds of avenues to provide confidential information and criticism, but if the courts make it so protections don't apply online, then I guess people will have to return to the traditional methods.
I understand Glassdoor's argument about protecting the privacy of their users, and the chilling effect that losing pseudonymity would have.
On the other hand, it sounds like these users may be witnesses to a crime of fraud. That seems to favor the government's case for talking to them.
If only the users in question could be deposed in the case without having their identities revealed. IANAL -- Is there a way to do this?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Yes of course, the identities of the witnesses would need to be revealed to the defendant. I was talking about sealing the records from public access.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
It was Colonel Mustard in the Conservatory with the Candlestick.
Now hat I've testified, no need for a trial. Hang them all.
In the bigger scheme of things, a Glassdoor that allows leaks reduces fraud. But killing the site (and similiar sites) means that in future there will be no users to disclose.
Courts need to focus on the public good in general and not just on one particular case.
Any chance whistleblower "protections" could apply? Just wondering...
I was in charge of a very large library system. In 20xx (I don't want to be specific), the Chief Technical Archivist issued me a directive: Purge all logs with personally identifiable information after 7 days that the transaction closed. EG: Any books checked out, that record's PII was to be deleted after 7 days of checking it back in.
The patron's record showing how many books they checked out was to be purged as well - EG: reset to zero for any but books currently checked out.
Only aggregate data was to be retained. Daily transaction logs were to be purged immediately - which was a pain in the neck, because that meant the system had to be shut down for a full cold back up every day - which could not be kept for more than a few days. (I solved this issue by using RAID 50 and splitting the RAID mirror, then backing it up, then resyncing the mirror. That way it was "cold", but the system was down for only a few seconds.)
On my personal sites, I set the log files to /dev/null, and only log when I have a issue (technical or user).
Time to get our snoopy government out of our hair. They must be forced to stop shoving their nose in our crotch with indiscriminate abandon. Am I against prosecuting crime? Not at all. But I'm not in favor of our government being able to snoop into every breath we take, every penny we spend, every call we make, every text we have. "They hate us for our freedoms" - what a FSCK'ing JOKE.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
In the bigger scheme of things, a Glassdoor that allows leaks reduces fraud. But killing the site (and similiar sites) means that in future there will be no users to disclose.
Courts need to focus on the public good in general and not just on one particular case.
But the public good is served poorly if the claims that Glassdoor's users bring forward aren't tested in the courts.
I get that Glassdoor's mission isn't to expose the malfeasance of companies its users once worked for -- it's to offer a clearing house for comments on the culture of companies, to benefit potential new employees. But surely, the worst of those companies will undergo a special kind of scrutiny that includes what we're discussing here. Whether Glassdoor likes it or not, they will need to cope with companies that break the law, and whose former employees talk about it on their site.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Given how unreliable witnesses are compared to actual documented evidence, and given that the company in question is likely to attack the credibility of the witnesses based on the fact that "they said mean things about their former coworkers anonymously like the KKK!", why is the government so insistent on this?
These prosecutors act like spoiled children.
"You can't go into that door"
"I DEMAND TO BE LET INTO THAT DOOR!!!"
"There's nothing in there! And if you open it, you'll let the dog out and I'll have to chase it down the street!
"NOWNOWNOWNOW!!!"
The right to anonymity of these people must be guaranteed by the state. Same as if they were mafia stoolies. With an added penalty to redress the loss of revenue to Glassdoor by having people turned off engaging in its process in case they are outed, in the case that the anonymity of the witnesses is broken.
This may mean that anything directly from these people is inadmissable, but that can still be used to investigate something that IS admissable evience.
To corporations and the government, the trial at the center of all this is simply a means to an end, a convenient opportunity to accomplish the underlying goal: Destroying Glassdoor and setting in place a heavy disincentive for anyone else thinking of attempt to start a similar kind of service that reveals what many powerful people and businesses would wish to be ignored by everyone. It also serves government power-creep in eroding citizen's personal privacy rights & expectations.
Seeing as there is a rotating door between many mid- to high-level government positions and private-sector industries and corporations, it makes perfect sense that that they would team-up to destroy Glassdoor and make an example of them.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
the extent of those consequences has traditionally been very tightly controlled by law. I can't, for example, fire someone for expressing their belief in Judaism. There's also tremendous protection for newspaper sources that all go out the window when it's on the internet.
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I've only worked at one place that even considered Glassdoor, and it was considered a joke. A website where disgruntled employees went to bitch about why they got fired. I can't imagine why there would be a grand conspiracy between big government and big industry to bring it down. Besides, that is not their modus operandi. They are more likely to collude to co-opt media such as this, and have it send the message they want, like they do with our mass media.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Let's look at possible hypotheses.
Hypothesis: Government investigators want to talk to certain individuals about crimes they likely witnessed. To this end, they get a subpoena to get the identities of the probable witnesses, after which they will talk to them as part of the investigation. Note that this is not any sort of power creep, as the government has always had the power to subpoena information relevant to a criminal investigation.
Hypothesis: Government, for some strange reason, wants to eliminate or discredit Glassdoor, and tries to do so by serving a subpoena to get the identities of eight commenters, presumably thinking that this will discourage people from leaving comments on Glassdoor.
Pick the one that looks the simplest, has the least dubious constructions, and is overall the likeliest.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
http://webreprints.djreprints....
http://www.santacruzbynight.com/index.shtml Santa Cruz By Night Vampire Larp
You cannot expect that any identifying information you provide to any website (or any business, online or not) will be kept confidential.
It's the law.
Let's look at possible hypotheses.
Hypothesis: Government investigators want to talk to certain individuals about crimes they likely witnessed. To this end, they get a subpoena to get the identities of the probable witnesses, after which they will talk to them as part of the investigation. Note that this is not any sort of power creep, as the government has always had the power to subpoena information relevant to a criminal investigation.
Hypothesis: Government, for some strange reason, wants to eliminate or discredit Glassdoor, and tries to do so by serving a subpoena to get the identities of eight commenters, presumably thinking that this will discourage people from leaving comments on Glassdoor.
Pick the one that looks the simplest, has the least dubious constructions, and is overall the likeliest.
The two goals you stated are not mutually exclusive. Using some otherwise-ordinary and unremarkable prosecution, investigation, etc that would occur in any case, to simultaneously accomplish some other, possibly totally unrelated goal and/or advance some agenda, has been a pretty bog-standard practice in the US for decades.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Yes, but the hypothesis that doesn't include any government hostility is quite sufficient to cover all the evidence. Therefore, assuming that the government does have it in for Glassdoor is a multiplication of hypotheses, which William of Ockham warned against.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes