Anonymity and the free society

Appar­ently, the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment is trying to ‘close a loop­hole’ in the local elect­orial laws and force blog­gers to reveal their iden­tity if they post polit­ical con­tent. This arises from last year’s ker­fuffle over the John Howard Lies site.

I am uncer­tain how I feel about this. Sure, I want the Labor Party to be required to reveal if it is behind a site like that and the con­tent is elect­oral mater­ial in that sense, mostly so that when the Lib­eral Party is sneak­ing around behind a pro-life site, it is forced to do the same. But the implic­a­tion is that indi­vidu­als writ­ing online in a polit­ical con­text would need to do the same. Now, in a com­pletely open, demo­cratic soci­ety, iden­ti­fic­a­tion should­n’t be an issue. One should not fear dis­sent and dis­cus­sion because one should not fear incar­cer­a­tion without trial in places where tor­ture is known to occur. Unfor­tu­nately, in this soci­ety, that is no longer the case.

Through pro­jects such as Indy­media and WikiNews, I sup­port anonym­ous news report­age. I think it is espe­cially vital for the dis­em­powered and the whistle-blower to have access to such tools in order to expose those with more power than they. Without anonym­ity and a long-held journ­al­istic tra­di­tion of pro­tect­ing sources, Water­gate would never have been uncovered.

The key ques­tions here are whether a blog­ger is a journ­al­ist-equi­val­ent or a pr-equi­val­ent and if a journ­al­ist, whether only a source should remain anonym­ous or whether that pro­tec­tion should extend to the journ­al­ist in cer­tain circumstances.

Is it only the site that will require author­isa­tion accord­ing to the new law? if so, that solves some of the prob­lem. Like a licensee for a pub, one person can stand up and agree to take the risk, shel­ter­ing others. I think this will still dis­cour­age open debate in this coun­try and sup­press the truth even further…