I'm Bob Artner from TechRepublic. These days it seems likeeveryone has a blog, and that's true for government employees as much as it isfor employees at any other organization. What I want to talk about are some ofthe legal issues that are involved with government employee blogs. What do Imean? Well, look at a continuum here where we have the public's right to knowon one side. You come down on this side and we have the right to privacy. Bothof these are important. Both of these are critical in any democracy.
How does it manifest itself in an employee blog? Well, ifyou work for a state healthcare agency, and you were concerned about the levelof funding that the agency was receiving that was causing substandardtreatment, you could argue, hey, the public has a right to know about that. Ineed to blog about this and tell people about it. On the other hand, if I dothat and if I blog about it by using medical records or case histories frompeople who have been in the hospitals and had specific operations and I talkabout their treatment, I'm violating their right to privacy. And I can arguethat I'm violating this right to privacy for a greater good, the public's rightto know, but there's a tension here and what the right answer is along thisline really depends on the circumstances, and there isn't a firm yes or noanswer.
What about this whole issue of support and loyalty for anorganization as another continuum. As a person who manages, say for example ifyou manage a government agency, you should be able to say you know what? Ishould be able to expect that my employees support the organization, supportour goals and objectives and don't actively undermine them. On the other hand,someone who's blogging would argue-with some justification-hey, the whole pointof having whistleblower statutes is to be able to say, you know what? Iunderstand that I'm supposed to support the government's objectives and theagency's objectives, but, if those objectives are wrong and are corrupt orillegal or are actually harming people, I've got not only a right, I've got anobligation to be down here on this side and just standing on any soapbox that Ican and telling people about this.
What if you work for an intelligence agency or you work fora security agency, the police department or something. On the one hand, youcould say, I'm actually trying to help public safety. If the trains aren'tsafe, I need to tell people about it. And if my agency doesn't like it, or, youknow, tough. On the other hand, you can materially harm the public safety ifyou release information about how your agency is supposed to respond in acrisis, or release information that details vulnerabilities in infrastructure.
So you can see here that in the case of say intelligence orsecurity, that the stakes on this question get even higher. There are timeswhen it's going to be appropriate to be way over here and err on the side ofkeeping information secure. There'll be other times where we're going to say,you know what, shout it out, because the risk here to public safety and the riskof not talking are much higher than the risk of spreading that information.
So we're going to see this evolve over time, but that is thetension involved between government employee blogs.
