Anonymity, or free speech?

I’m not sure I share bloggers’ anger at the unmasking of Night Jack by the Times’ Patrick Foster - or, at least, I suspect this anger is misdirected.
I say this because Eady is right: there isn’t a right to anonymity. Indeed, anonymity can be downright pernicious, as it coarsens debate. People use it as a cloak for nasty abuse or simple witlessness, as  spEak You’re bRanes and the comments on any blog demonstrate. Forcing people to identify themselves would force them to invest their reputation in what they say, thus improving public dialogue.
This is true not just for blogging. Most anonymous tip-offs that newspapers get are not from public spirited citizens anxious to expose wrongdoing but fearful of their jobs, but from nutters and troublemakers with grudges.
The counter-argument to this comes from SepticIsle and the Heresiarch:

Important stories about official or commercial incompetence, bad practice - even illegality - will go untold because insiders will no longer feel safe to blog anonymously.

This is true. But let’s be clear what the best solution is here. It is not to give whistleblowers anonymity, but to give employees a right to free speech.
And herein lies a paradox. Night Jack - and the similarly defunct Sierra Charlie - did more to improve the esteem of the police force than every official pronouncement from chief constables and PR spokesman put together. Who ever came away from Night Jack's blog thinking less of the police? Who ever came away from listening to the unlamented Ian Blair thinking more of them?
So why stop them? If it’s because they jeopardized prosecutions by revealing details of investigations, fair enough.
But I suspect there’s a nastier motive. Bosses want to give the impression that their organizations are perfect. Night Jack and Sierra Charlie showed that they weren’t. This might have undermined their bosses’ self-image. But it served a greater good. They showed (some of? many of?) the police to be decent, intelligent men doing their best within an imperfect system. And so what if doing so revealed police forces to be occasionally and partially dysfunctional? All intelligent people know that all big organizations are imperfect. It’s only bosses’ prejudice that says otherwise.
However, in a free society the law should not protect the imbecilic self-interest of bosses. It should instead give bloggers, writing under their own identity, the right to say what they please. And if bosses don't like what their employees say, they should either persuade them of their error, or remedy their complaint, or just live with it. They shouldn't shoot the messenger.
What should anger us is not so much the unmasking of NightJack, as the fact that employers can curtail freedoms merely to protect their deluded self-image - and the law lets them get away with this.

Comments

[MatGB]

"Forcing people to identify themselves would force them to invest their reputation in what they say, thus improving public dialogue."

Yes, but you don't need to know someone's real name in order for them to have a good reputation. As it happens, I do know Unity (Ministry of Truth/LibCon)'s real name, but very few do.

But he has a reputation as one of the UK's best investigative bloggers. For a long time, Nosemonkey was completely anonymous, but he had a reputation and definitely improved public dialogue. DK and Guido were of course also anonymous for some time, not sure what affect they've had on public dialogue.

Thinking back through history, the Federalist Papers were just as influential when no one was sure who the pseuodonymous authors were, and what proof do I have that you are in fact called Chris Dillow?

My screenname is based on my real name--Matthew Grant Bowles becomes MatGB, but MatGB is where I invest most of my reputation online.

Overall, of course, I agree with you, the loss of these bloggers is a bad thing, and I hope we'll manage to progress, but for many (including many of my favourite blogs), the pseudonymity of the author is essential for their continued existence. Just as the anonymity of journalists sources is also essential.

The Times, once again, shows it has no standards or integrity.

[puro yanqui]

Back in the Internet's infancy, over twenty years ago, I sent a couple of rather tasteless jokes to an Internet newsgroup. They're still there, and they're among the first ten hits you get when you google my real name (I happen to have a virtually unique name). I wonder sometimes how many job interviews I've lost because of those, or because of a rather strongly worded letter I sent to the editor of a local newspaper fourteen years ago, which looks like it will live forever in cyberspace as well. I haven't changed my mind about what I wrote in that letter, but given how polarized politics in the USA have become, it's not something I would ever discuss in any public setting ever again.

If I am only free to express those opinions which I would want every potential job interviewer, or next-door neighbor, or schoolteacher in my child's school, to know about, then I'm not going to say much of anything until I retire. The risk is too great.

[TDK]

"It’s only bosses’ prejudice that says otherwise."

What a silly comment.

Of course most bosses know their organisations are imperfect. It's a truism, but there's a difference between a generalisation about all orgs and the specific failings of one. They don't want you to know because (a) it's their job to identify and fix those failings and (b) in the absence of a level playing field (ie all orgs' failings being exposed concurrently) their org would be under the spotlight.

The Execs job is to tell everyone outside the company: customers, suppliers, investors etc. that everything is wonderful; that the problems they've been faced with are unprecedented and unique. They are the make up artists hiding the wrinkles and whilst we all know the reality is somewhat less, it is silly to describe the boss doing his job that he is being "prejudiced".

Having said that, an interesting post and your recommendations void my (b)

[Cleanthes]

"I say this because Eady is right: there isn’t a right to anonymity. "

True, but only partly true. What's missing is that, whilst Jack night may not have a LEGAL right to preserve his anonymity, there is no public interest whatsoever in his identity being revealed and this action of the Times reporter, whilst legal, is utterly utterly utterly reprehensible.

Eady could have made this clear.

[john cramer]

And what do the bosses do if the blogger is wrong / malicious / revealing secrets that will cause commercial harm. ??

[puro yanqui]

"And what do the bosses do if the blogger is wrong / malicious / revealing secrets that will cause commercial harm. ??"

There is a lot of information which only is (and should be) available after you take somebody to court and get some kind of a search warrant. Once you have that, you can get the IP addresses he has been posting from, trace them to the appropriate Internet service provider, if necessary install monitoring software, etc. A careful and sophisticated hacker can beat those measures, but 99.99% of the population would get caught.

[ejh]

The real fault on this issue is probably not with Eady but with the Times who had no good reason to reveal the blogger's name and who are old enough and grown-up enough to know that this is likely to have an adverse effect on good journalism. However, as demonstrated in the Sunday Times' treatment of Girl With A One-Track Mind

http://girlwithaonetrackmind.blogspot.com/2007/01/three.html

Wapping has form on this question, and it's the form of unscrupulous bullies.

[Laurent GUERBY]

For reference there was a crackdown on public servant anonymous blogs in France a few years ago, I wrote at the time:

http://guerby.org/blog/index.php/2006/10/24/122-liberte-d-expression-et-fonctionnaires

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