Anonymous Blogger Outed By Politician 300
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?
Re:Anonomity should not be required (Score:3, Informative)
It appears that the tactic of attacking the messenger and not the message is the most common form of "debate" in a lot of places at the moment. I can't solely blame the poor standards of US education for that problem.
An example that many here might have heard of was PJ of Groklaw fame being criticised in truly bizzare and irrelevant ways by another writer working on material from the SCO situation. When people go about stalking bloggers mothers it's worth being anonymous.
Re:Anonomity should not be required (Score:5, Informative)
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:Of course they have 'the right'... (Score:4, Informative)
You didn't read the parent to my post very carefully, then. He was referring to a lot more than just my name.
Seems like you didn't read it very carefully.
Of course they have 'the right' to protect their secrets - as in this case, their identity.
and...
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.).
I'm pretty sure there's a contractual agreement between the credit card company and the restaurant, which is set up to protect customers' credit card numbers. So, in that case, the waiter couldn't post your credit card number online. But, if he happened to know your name was Bob Jones (and he didn't get that information from your card), he could post your name and the fact that you eat there.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What right was infringed? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not American and technically you may be right that there is no constitutional right to privacy. However:
"The Constitution does not specifically mention a right to privacy. However, Supreme Court decisions over the years have established that the right to privacy is a basic human right, and as such is protected by virtue of the 9th Amendment. The right to privacy has come to the public's attention via several controversial Supreme Court rulings, including several dealing with contraception (the Griswold and Eisenstadt cases), interracial marriage (the Loving case), and abortion (the well-known Roe v Wade case). In addition, it is said that a right to privacy is inherent in many of the amendments in the Bill of Rights, such as the 3rd, the 4th's search and seizure limits, and the 5th's self-incrimination limit."
Re:How did he find out? It matters. (Score:1, Informative)
Here's the email that started this thing apparently:
Are you people nuts? You send me -- and everybody else in the legislature, from the looks of things -- Spam and then lecture me on email etiquette -- as if there were such a thing? Here's an etiquette suggestion: Abandon your phony names, do your own thinking and don't expect everybody to share your obsessions.
It was addressed to about 30 people who evidently had been emailing Doogan. After this Alaska Muckraker blogged about the email, with a list of net etiquette items.
I think to get the whole story here we need to know what emails Doogan had been getting from these people that led to his email.
I think one of the traps that people who frequent political blogs fall into is trying to get involved in politics without realizing they only have a superficial understanding of the issues, and I can't help but wonder if that was the case here. This guy is a state legislator in Alaska, he may not have any dedicated staff for managing his email, and I imagine that 30 people emailing with flavor-of-the-week issues could create more email than he's used to handling.
Since they all use pseudonyms, he has no means of responding to them other than to go to their blogs, a domain that they have total control over. Don't you think that would be more than just a bit frustrating?
Why the Bill of Rights? (Score:5, Informative)
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:Uhhh (Score:5, Informative)
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:
What it doesn't mean is:
Re:Anonomity should not be required (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, it was a complete fabrication by the reporter who ascribed the comment to the anonymous crowd.
No it wasn't. [vodspot.tv] The "Kill him!" is clearly audible at thirteen seconds into the video.
Jackass.
Re:Of course they have 'the right'... (Score:3, Informative)
Right to Privacy: Griswold v Connecticut (Score:1, Informative)
The supremes HAVE described a constitutional right to privacy (alternately, the right to be left alone) although not explicitly described in the Constitution. the case has to do with whether the govt can stick it's figurative nose into your private business (in this case, contraception)
Re:Of course they have 'the right'... (Score:3, Informative)
So, if you find out a secret that someone is making money off, you can't tell anyone by law? That seems ridiculous. Surely, you are only obliged to keep someone's secret if they have entrusted you with it in some way. If you've discovered it yourself then it's your decision.
Indeed, Trade Secret law is a way of punishing the crap out of you if you release information you have been entrusted with. The person you tell it to (e.g. a business competitor) is free to use the information however they like.
Re:Of course they have 'the right'... (Score:2, Informative)
Now you could argue that the whole rest of the post was about "in this case, their identity," but it reads as if that's a subordinate clause, and in the next sentence, "that secret" is, to this reader's eyes, deliberately general. If he'd meant "identity" he would have said "identity." Taken in context, the casual reader could very easily think that "I'd say they don't." applies to any secret (since that post was in reply to one making a point about secrets in general, and then that casual reader could make a post asking the obvious question about credit card numbers, and then get replied to and modded as a troll by some even more casual readers who can't follow threads properly, and who when called out out it, infallibly mark the specific, subordinate clause in a post as the most important text ever in the whole wide word. (tm)
Re:Anonomity should not be required (Score:1, Informative)
This is a lie spread by partisans as part of their bag of dirty tricks. It never happened. The Secret Service investigated and found no basis for the allegation.
You're thinking of the case where someone shouted "kill him" in response to Sarah Palin, who was actually talking about Ayers, not Obama. The Secret Service investigated and determined that Obama was not threatened by the person in the audience.
However, the previous poster was referring to the time that someone in the audience yelled "kill him" while McCain was speaking. The video is all over the web, and if you watch it it's clear that something unpleasant was yelled (watch McCain's reaction — he clearly wasn't expecting that response), although it's hard to tell exactly what the person yelled. Some have suggested it was actually "terrorist".
I can understand how you got the two situations mixed up. It's hard to keep up with all the examples of unruly idiots at Republican rallies.
Re:Uhhh (Score:3, Informative)
There are obscenity laws as well.
The truty is, it's not all that black-and-white anyway. There are degrees of "protected" when it comes to protected speech, and in any given case there's a seemingly-subjective 'weighing' of how "protected" the speech is against other concerns.
e.g. speech considered 'functional' is less protected than speech considered 'expressive' IIRC, and in any case speech considered 'political' in nature is always more protected than if it weren't political...
Re:Uhhh (Score:3, Informative)
if it takes so little time to completely distort the meaning of such simple words even in the face of so much supporting information on the meaning of those words (Federalist Papers, etc), then what can any of us do to preserve liberty over any length of time?
By following the words of I believe it was Thomas Jefferson.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Re:Uhhh (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, you're mistaken [wikimedia.org].
Re:Uhhh (Score:3, Informative)
...Things like "hate speech" laws, holocaust denial laws...
If the hate speech isn't true, is it slanderous? And if it is slander is it protected by the 1st amendment?
Hate speech is commonly things like: "ALL NIGGERS ARE SMELLY AND STUPID!" or something along those same lines. Hate speech typically isn't true, as it's motivated by irrational anger at an entire race, religion, etc.
Slander and libel are not protected as they result in harm to a specific individual. For either to be proven, it must be shown that a reasonable person could believe what's being said (or written) is true. The previous example would not be slanderous or libelous because it's not directed at a specific individual and no reasonable person would believe it's an objective and factual statement.