There's a story up on Daily Kos right now about the rather vile Michelle Malkin. Did you hear about the protests at UC Santa Cruz against military recruiters? It seems that she got a copy of a press release sent out by some of the students involved — which had their contact information listed on it — and posted it on her site. They got tons of hate mail and phone calls, asked her to remove it... and she posted it AGAIN. Lovely.
And yet... I can't quite work up a rage against her for this one. The people calling and emailing death threats? Hell yes. But...
The students DID put their contact information on a press release. They made themselves public. And you're taking a risk when you do that.
I've put together fliers in the past, and each time, I debate with myself about how much contact information to include. If I stand behind the information, I should be willing to put my name on it, right? But when you put yourself out there for all the world to see, you can't count on the world being entirely sane.
I wrote a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle about the war. All that appeared in the paper was my name and the fact I lived in Oakland. Well, some other letter-writer who couldn't get in the paper tracked down my home address (my old home address, it turned out) and wrote to me personally, taking me to task for my views. Not threatening, but not exactly comfortable, either. (I dealt with it in my own way)
I've had other incidents that made me aware of illusory our privacy is. Anybody could be reading this blog. Anybody at all. So whatever I write, I have to be prepared for the world to see, even though odds are the world doesn't really care (plenty of blogs in the sea!)
So I guess what I'm saying is that perhaps those students didn't think so much about these things before... but I'm guessing they will now. And I think they should get lawyers to inform their harrassers that what they are doing is illegal. And perhaps their lawyers could make the case to Michelle Malkin that if anything happens to those students, she risks being charged with being an accessory to a crime...
But reposting contact information that somebody already made public? I wish I could share other people's ire on that one, but I just can't.
At the end of the day, we all are stuck with the responsiblity of protecting ourselves.
