Blogging is in the public interest
I blog under a pseudonym. Being a private person, I like to separate out my blogging life from my ‘offline’ life (though a number of people know my real identity and I have met many friends through blogging). I am lucky; I can blog without fear of reprisal because I know that even if my real name was published, it wouldn’t really matter. Others are not so fortunate:
“Earlier, Mr Justice Eady refused an injunction to prevent the Times identifying “Night Jack”, who won an Orwell prize for blogging in April. The judge said blogging was “essentially a public rather than a private activity”. The blogger’s lawyer had argued that preserving his anonymity was in the public interest.”
Whistleblowers are not protected in this country, whether they are corporate or public sector whistleblowers. Fine-sounding laws are meant to safeguard them, but they don’t work. Blogging provides (or used to) one of the few safe outlets for people to expose wrongdoing by. This is in the public interest. The ruling also asserted the odd idea that it was in the public interest to know as much as possible about a blogger: but the very joy of the blogosphere is that you do not have to read any blog you don’t want to.
The judge in the case, Mr Justice Eady, has a notable record of controversal rulings, many of which restrict freedom of speech. While the rulings have rightly been criticised, we also need to look harder at Parliament, given that they are the ones who make the laws which allow such rulings to be made. Yet we can expect little help from a body which is overrun with lawyers, given that they, and their fellow lawyers, benefit so much from the multitude of laws and rulings which are made.
Leon updates: Justin has some very interesting thoughts on the implications for this ruling here.
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Filed in: Blog, Civil liberties
Hear hear!
What the fuck is wrong with this judge. He has seems to have no sense of the common good, if this were a Hollywood flick we would find out he’s taking back-handers from some dangerous and shadowy organisation hell bent on installing tyranny.
Thanks Marvin. Let’s hope that we don’t say anything that gets us hauled up before him.
perhaps understandable for a court to out a blogger who defames under existing libel law or whose opinion crosses the line into criminality ie incites religious hatred. However, to loose one’s safeguards for simply expressing a reasonable if perhaps challenging political opinion seems the men in wigs have got it wrong again.
I disagree:
It’s nice for people to respect your anonymity, but you shouldn’t have any legal right to it. (Except, as is currently the case, if you’re a youth going through the justice system, or the victim of a sex crime)
No-one is forced to reveal their identity when they start a blog. It’s not against the law to have an anonymous blog. So let’s not bang the ‘Big Brother’ drum just yet. It’s just that if someone does discover an anonymous blogger’s identity, they should have the same right to disseminate information and comment as the anonymous blogger had.
Was The Times right or wrong to publish it? Legally, no. Morally, perhaps. But that’s besides the point.
I’ve argued this in more detail on my blog.
Glad to see that PP has picked up on this.
You mean ‘through blogging,’ I think.
Technically the Times has done nothing wrong (as David points out above). I think Anton over at Enemies of Reason had it right in this post:
http://enemiesofreason.blogspot.com/2009/06/where-did-i-put-that-cloak-of-anonymity.html
Totally agree. Given the repercussions when NJ is ‘outed’ (see Zoe Margolis for details!), I can’t help but see the Times’ behaviour as blood-sport for the Internet age.
Also just wanted to link this excellent post about the whole affair, on Heresy Corner. The Heresiarch puts NJ’s ‘outing’ in the context of others. Similar conclusions to yours are reached.
http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2009/06/exposed.html
Also just wanted to link this excellent post about the whole affair, on Heresy Corner. The Heresiarch puts NJ’s ‘outing’ in the context of others. Similar conclusions to yours are reached.
http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2009/06/exposed.html
Aaargh! Sorry ’bout the double post, my Firefox is behaving very strangely. I think it’s possessed!
Hmmmm…I’m conflicted about this, while I agree about protecting whistle blowers my view generally is the more public influence the more public scrutiny you deserve.
Blogs are public and can wield real influence…
…that said I guess a case can be made that public scrutiny must be suspended if it would curtail serving public interest?
Hmmmmm….
Outing is fair game where the blogger is spreading untruths, invading someone elses privacy (that is, intruding on their personal life rather than their public life) or behaving in a hypocritical manner.
Otherwise privacy is a free speech matter: without privacy we censor ourselves out of fear of the consequences.
Mr Justice Eady does produce some “interesting” libel/privacy judgements. I think this is the third one this year to which my reaction has been WTF?
I think Shatterface has got it about right. If an anonymous blogger is telling outright lies then they deserve to be exposed. However this is just another attempt to silence dissent, which is a free speech issue. I am not at all in favour of a culture where employment law can be used as a tool to silence comment on organisations and that is very, very prevelant.
A few tips to anyone who wants to protect their ID;
1. Setup blogs under email addresses you don’t use for any other reason, stick to free ones like hotmail or gmail, and don’t register it with your real details.
2. There is software available on the internet, and as far as I know it is legal, and you can use it to mask your IP address.
I think the security services can still track you down, but your average tabloid journalist, not a chance I think.
Having said that I don’t really care. I say what I say, and I’ll say it to someones face.
However I do have mixed feelings about this. If someone is breaking the law, then the law has the capablity and the right to track you down.
However do you deserve privacy as an individual, in say this case, or that case where it was exposed a self styled security expert was posting hateful comments on ummah.com to then sell the story to the papers? We all pretty much supported his outing. We generally don’t support this outing.
Why? I think the reason is where we draw the line between right and wrong. I think it varies from individual to invidivual, and I don’t feel comfortable having someone legislate on that.
hang on, the times did this? are these not the same journalists that are meant to protect the identity of their sources?
but suddenly it’s OK for them to expose bloggers?
i am very disappointed if i’ve understood this correctly.
b’shalom
bananabrain
Yes BB, thats exactly right.
And onward the march to an increasingly regulated internet…
(By the way, this dovetails nicely with restriction of ‘undesirable’ opinion on the Net, and perhaps with a longer-term objective of dumbing down the Net as a knowledge resource in favour of the corporate media model. Anyway, the cynic in me thinks “You lot worry about Islamic Extremism/Iran etc. while these fuckers strip your freedoms…it worked with the Credit Crunch and MP Expenses didn’t it?”).
the cynic in *me* thinks they’re thinking “bugger the bloggers, they showed us up for the slipshod ephemeral hacks we always were, but at least we get paid for it.
b’shalom
bananabrain
The Times, or rather its sister, The Sunday Times outed the sex blogger Girl With a One Track Mind, the week after she gave them an interview under her pseudonym with a guarantee that she would remain anonymous. The next week they ‘outed’ her.
At least three police bloggers have been forced to stop blogging and take their past posts down or be disciplined, and one actually emigrated.
all that really goes to show is what lazy, unethical, cynical and ultimately untrustworthy creatures journalists are, even the so-called “proper” journalists. in my experience of dealing with them you’ll be lucky if they’ll even check their spelling, let alone if they’ve got their facts right.
b’shalom
bananabrain
I’m surprised no one’s torn into Rupert Murdoch over this…
BB it also shows how far up the wire decisions like this must be taken in terms of editors and broader managerial guidelines.
Leon, I didn’t even think of the Murdoch angle yet. He was talking up paid subscriptions for all news websites a while back a.k.a “Google News stole our Headlines”.
Daniel Finklestein replies
The comments are worth reading.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/17/nightjack-blogging-anonymous-whistleblowing
http://www.bluemoon-mcfc.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=127470 Nightjack get your complaint in first
P Foster would have done well to read this when he was confronted at his door by the boys in blue
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1531307/Student-barred-over-sex-film.html Patrick Foster Peeping Tom
Interesting link Marvin. The comments were wonderful.
In general, societies benefit from having ‘whistleblowers’. This doesn’t mean that everything they say will be right, rather that we need a system that allows people to reveal information ‘in the public interest’ without fear of prosecution/harrassment.
Now, you can argue how this law should be drafted, but the one thing that is clear from this case the the way the Times behaved: there was no public interest in knowing his real identity.
This was shoddy of The Times, and quite usually predictable of the Judge, and I think he was well wrong innit.
I am so upset that I typed Sergeant wrong!