Blogging: Anonymous Or Not

When I began this blog five years ago, I chose to be public. You read me, Yisrael Medad, not some anonymous shadow.

It was and is restrictive but it's all me.

I was accused actually of being 'narcissistic' because I had so many pictures of myself on the opening screen page. Gee. Imagine, a blogger who is not narcissistic.

Well, read on:

Ruling on NightJack author Richard Horton kills blogger anonymity

Thousands of bloggers who operate behind the cloak of anonymity have no right to keep their identities secret, the High Court ruled today. In a landmark decision, Mr Justice Eady refused to grant an order to protect the anonymity of a police officer who is the author of a blog called NightJack.

...His blog, which gave a behind-the-scenes insight into frontline policing, included strong views on social and political issues, including matters of “public controversy,” the judge said.

...In the first case dealing with the privacy of internet bloggers, the judge ruled that Mr Horton had no “reasonable expectation” to anonymity because “blogging is essentially a public rather than a private activity”. Coming down in favour of freedom of expression, the judge also said that even if the blogger could have claimed he had a right to anonymity, the judge would have ruled against him on public interest grounds.

...Hugh Tomlinson, QC, for the blogger, had argued that “thousands of regular bloggers who communicate nowadays via the internet under a cloak of anonymity would be horrified to think that the law would do nothing to protect their anonymity of someone carried out the necessary detective work and sought to unmask them”.

The judge said: “That may be true. I suspect that some would be very concerned and others less so.”

But “be that as it may”, he added, the blogger needed to show that he had a legally enforceable right to maintain anonymity in the absence of a genuine breach of confidence, by suppressing the fruits of detective work such as that carried out by Mr Foster.

The uniqueness of this case, nevertheless, is that the commentary in the blog is the work of a serving Lancashire detective and, therefore, being a public servant, he was in a difficult legal situation.