Nightjack, the sequel: should we avoid the blogosphere at work?
Dear Lisa Greenwood,
Although a lot of people have lost their jobs during the recession, your sacking was not recession-related in the slightest. After posting an anonymous message about Hazel Blears on the internet at the height of the furore over abuse of the second home allowances, you have been fired from your job as office administrator at the Department of Children, Schools and Families. Was this really justified, and what does this mean for the rest of us?
You had apparently been angered by Hazel Blears avoiding capital gains tax, so on May 13, you wrote on the internet of Blears: “How dare you wave a cheque about on national TV, saying that you are sorry. You are only sorry that you have been caught. You are a disgrace (including all the other honourable members). Why haven’t you been sacked?” The anonymous posting appeared on They Work For You, a political website, but was traced to your work email account. Despite only being at the DCSF for seven months, you were brought before a disciplinary panel and fired on May 22. “A written warning I could understand, but I was shocked to be sacked,” you said. “It has been extremely upsetting that I have been sacked for having an opinion. When the expenses scandal broke we had all been discussing it at work, despite the civil service code. It was just the same in writing that everyone else had been saying at work and discussing openly in the office.” A DCSF spokesman said you had been found guilty of gross misconduct and had brought the Government department into disrepute. “The civil service has a clear code of conduct for its employees, which states that civil servants should be politically impartial and not act in a way that could damage the reputation of their department.”
After the outing of Nightjack, I think a lot of bloggers have got a bit nervous about their own activities. Even so, this takes things to a whole new level. I should start by saying that you were a complete muppet for using your work email to post these messages. By taking the basic precaution of setting up a Hotmail or Gmail account, you would still be in your job as it wouldn’t be traceable. I’m also not sure how word got back to your bosses – I suspect that someone at TheyWorkForYou decided to act after they saw your email address, but it still seems a little strange. Anyway, leaving all that to one side, if your posting was anonymous, how could it damage the reputation of your department or bring the Government into disrepute? Even if you did use your work email account, this information was not visible on the website and therefore was no threat to your employer. Suggesting that you had not been “politically impartial” is just bizarre, seeing as I’m sure your feelings had nothing whatsoever to do with the Labour Party and you were probably furious at all the crooked MPs. That said, the most troubling aspect of all this is that, even with your anonymity, your employer still felt justified in firing you. I’m sure there are many people who read and write blogs as well as leave comments while at work. From this incident, it appears as though we are all running the risk of losing our jobs if we say something that might contradict our employers’ opinions or express an opinion that our employer deems ‘inappropriate’. No doubt many civil servants and other Westminster employees are bound by political impartiality clauses and I daresay that some other employers might also take issue with people making strong-worded remarks about politicians using their work computer.
Nightjack wrote an incredibly popular and revealing blog, but ultimately this was not enough to stop someone from ‘unmasking’ him and getting him into serious trouble with his employer. One wonders how many protections bloggers and blog commentors have left if website administrators are allowed to start informing employers about their commentors’ email addresses, even when permission has not been sought to hand over this personal information (I’d be interested to see what terms and conditions apply to TheyWorkForYou). I cannot imagine the scale of carnage that would be caused if the Guardian started passing the email addresses of loony commentors at Comment Is Free over to employers. One wonders how many careers Guido, Iain Dale and Conservative Home could destroy if they went through their commentors’ email addresses as well. After what happened to you, I’m beginning to think that this might not as far-fetched as it sounds.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
“I should start by saying that you were a complete muppet for using your work email to post these messages.”
That’s all that really needs to be said, frankly. She has no-one to blame but herself.
Dear LFAT. When I was a servant of the Crown, of my own free will I took an oath of loyalty and signed the Official Secrets Act. I think that any Crown servant should accept that by doing likewise they have committed themselves to protesting against government action only through the official channels and in confidence. When I had gained knowledge and experience, I not infrequently did so. To do otherwise is a breach of trust and the breaking of a solemn oath freely entered into. Any Crown servant who feels morally obligated to break that trust should immediately resign, as they obviously feel unable to keep their oath.
In Ms. Greenwood’s position, she could have written privately to Mrs Blears and openly made her feelings known. This action would have been perfectly acceptable, though if it came to the attention of the head of department, a short interview without coffee, as to the advisability of an office administrator berating a Minister of the Crown may have been a possibility…..
Since retiring, I have endeavoured to make up for up for the lost years of self-enforced silence.
That a government minister or department has the time and resources to spend tracking down *anonymous* comments related not to the conduct of a Minister’s departmental duties but about their publicly-outed tax evasion shows just how petty and vindictive this Government has become. What would they have done if the comment had just turned out to be by a civillian, as the vast swathe of comments are? Would the minister’s department have found ways to penalise them using the not inconsiderable forces the state has arranged to oppress those who dissent?
My questions are:
1) How often does the Department(s) track down anonymous commenters on blogs that pique their interest?
2) How many times has this happened in the past 12 months?
3) What action gets taken to people who ARE NOT civil servants?
4) How long has it been illegal to pass comment on someone else’s probable crime and does, therefore, Blears accept her actions re CGT were illegal?
Problem with this story is that it is only in the Telegraph so far. Let’s face it, the Telegraph is reluctant to let the truth stand in the way of a good story. Also, there is very little fact here, only a quote from the woman herself and a very short statement from the department. The story is thin at best.
However, If the truth is purely as the Telegraph reported it, then it is indeed shocking that anyone has taken the time and effort to trace this message to an individual. Also, if the trace was initiated from ‘They Work for You’, then that web site has just signed its own expiry notice, because no-one on the internet would ever use it if they though they were opening themselves to government snooping by doing so.
If however, it was traced through ‘keystroke monitoring’, then this is apparently quite standard in the workplace and gives the rest of us little to worry about.
How quaint though, that Labour’s civil service is now worried about politicisation. They didn’t seem to care too much while they stuffing Whitehall with their cronies and fellow travellers!
Doing it during work time, and using a work email address, means I’m actually glad she’s been sacked. Being a civil servant, her wages come out of my taxes, and I’m not thrilled to discover I’ve been part paying the wages of Forrest Gumps British cousin for a few months.
It would be very interesting to see how she was caught though – I suspect filters in the emailing system that pick up ‘unacceptable’ content and ’sites of concern’ in the to/cc/bcc fields, and flag them up with a manager. Some councils use them, so I imagine Whitehall uses them with wild abandon.
Julia, my sympathy for this woman is limited, but my concern about where this leads is much more substantial.
GOH, she wasn’t breaking the OSA, surely! When someone is doing something anonymously, it seems to me that employers and websites have little justification (if, any) for getting involved.
Shaun, the issue of how the DCSF found out about this is very murky – I suspect that someone dobbed her in from TheyWorkForYou, which is extremely worrying. If other employers start taking liberal action too, a lot of us could be in serious trouble.
Tony, the website may well have done themselves damage, but my concern is that other website owners might get ‘leant’ on to start giving up names and emails of commentors who step out of line. What about if a blog owner gets annoyed with a blog commentor as well? I have a lot of email addresses recorded on this blog – what if I or any other admin got annoyed and decided to notify an employer?
All that will happen, LFAT is that the techno-arms-race will move on.
Already anonymising services such as TOR allow for browsing that is tremendously difficult to trace – look at the difficulty the Iranians are having, or the Chinese. The next stage will be an anonymising email service.
Keystroke loggers are more insidious but countermeasures to them will also be devised.
And then the surveillance tech will advance and round and round we go. THIS is the new arms race – not nukes and launchers – and this will affect us all, to a greater or lesser extent, for the foreseeable future.
Quantum computing and networking will kill it, hypothetically (and is already being tested for encryption by the US mil), because use of quantum entanglement (twinning) means totally secure, impenetrable comms can be deployed point-to-point.
The people behind TheyWorkForYou, PM petitions, FixMyStreet, etc. are supposed to be an independent charitable foundation but in reality they’re just another arm of the British government. He who pays the piper calls the tune. One of the conditions of free access to the Hansard and access to the PM’s office is probably that they’ll help police the use of the sites, report any civil servants getting above their station and provide information on trouble makers. Does anyone believe that when you submit your personal details to one of these sites, they aren’t made available to Whitehall departments?
Am a little surprised by the reactions here (which I guess must mean I am out of step). I can’t see that what she did, per se, brought the Department into disrepute: logically that was done when the disciplinary panel/Department promulgated the comment (or by their draconian action ensured it would be promulgated.)
And, sure, she shouldn’t be spending time at work firing off personal emails but in the hierarchy of punishments available and appropriate there must at least be a sensible degree of proportionality applied. On the face of it, that can’t be said here.
All looks a bit nasty and mean-minded to me (a metaphor for New Labour?)
Shaun, I can’t believe that the average blog commentor (whatever that means) will be up to speed on these issues, hence why Whitehall appears to have the upper hand – for now, at least.
Wonko, not going to disagree with your assessment.
Talwin, you’re perfectly entitled to your opinion too! I’m also very unclear as to what she has done that called for her to be sacked. I suspect that this was very much a ‘warning shot’ to other civil servants, rather than worrying about the punishment fitting the crime.
I’d probably lose a lot of readership if work blogging was not done but all the same – it seems a pretty insecure way to operate. I’ve always blogged from home or from friends’.
Shaun, I can’t believe that the average blog commentor (whatever that means) will be up to speed on these issues, hence why Whitehall appears to have the upper hand – for now, at least.
Dunno. It all depends on how it gets packaged or integrated – I mean, if I’d told you in 1969 that in 2009 billions of people would use digital technology to exchange messages in an uncontrolled fashion across a network inherently structured to survive nuclear strike, you’d have said I was on Acid. Which, I might well have been but I’d be right – teh interweb is that complex logistical package presented as an idiot-proof browser.
Well, she may be a muppet to have posted using her work computer but how can posting anonymously bring your employer into disrepute?
She didn’t reveal details about HMG, it wasn’t her SoS, she expressed an opinion about the conduct of a member of the Cabinet as any member of the public could and have done.
I think this is appalling censorship and intimidation of free speech.
And if she can be sacked for this – what about Mr McBride and his lurid email conversations??
“Am a little surprised by the reactions here (which I guess must mean I am out of step). I can’t see that what she did, per se, brought the Department into disrepute: logically that was done when the disciplinary panel/Department promulgated the comment (or by their draconian action ensured it would be promulgated.)”
Let’s be clear – she did nothing that, in a normal society, would merit more than a ‘be more careful’ chat.
But this government is what it is – using her work email was utterly stupid, particularly in an environment where the government is looking to crack down, frighten and harass people expressing opinions they don’t support.
grumpy old man, you seem to be suggesting that all public sector employees are effectively disenfranchised. would seem to be an extreem position to take. The ramifications of this story are wide and very concerning, particularly the implications for personal liberty
Plato has it right- given that she wasn’t revealing her identity, or making any mention of her walk, I don’t see how any reasonable government department could raise objections.
Even those who try to justify Nightjack’s outing* (because he obviously wasn’t discreet enough to fully hide his true identity & could be traced via his public postings) would have a hard time on this one.
We have seen some great demonstrations of solidarity on the blogosphere & this is another one which we should support.
*I am not one, I should have hoped such would be obvious. I can also say that if I had the power to out people I wouldn’t dream of using it unless that person was doing something incredibly drastic such as putting a child at risk. But someone like Lisa Greenwood, I don’t see how any sane person can support this action.
You wouldn’t get fired for writing a letter to a paper, why should you for a Blog Comment?
I’m sure such overreactions by the heirarchy will diminish as the Blogosphere becomes established.
Sooner or later corporates will stop blocking non-work e-mail, but until they do, people need to be allowed their say.
Certainly an odd one.
Although I work for a private company, I always use my University email address for comments as pure precaution. Surely it would have occurred to this silly bugger NOT to use her work’s email address when slating a (then) Minister of the Crown.
Still can’t help having some sympathy. The idea of being sacked as a result of having an opinion (widely-held in this instance) is quite frightening, but as we all know, the Public Sector is largely a law unto itself.
I know a couple of civil servants from the Pub who are as opinionated as they come, and are quite often right-leaning and incredibly un-PC. Is this maybe a result of being unable to discuss matters of an apparently “sensitive” nature in the office for fear of reprisal? Probably not, but still, these poor right-wing nutter civil servants all deserve our sympathies.
The woman poster was a muppet but that says more about the quality of the civil service than about the issue. The issue is that someone in government either routinely parses keystroke logs for politically insensitive activity (which has Human Rights and Security implications – after all if the security ignores 1 ‘friendly’ logger, it creates a f*ck-off shadow under which enterprising others can hide ‘hostile’ loggers) OR it feels the need to chase down anonymous commenters on matters of a Minister’s *personal* financial probity.
Either way, we should be worried about the country we are living in…
Not only has no-one ever approached TheyWorkForYou about this matter, the comment the Telegraph/Register quotes does not exist and never has existed on the site – so there’s no reason anyone would have approached us about it. We would never hand over personal data without the full force of law.
Matthew, in that case what the hell is going on with this lady getting fired? Please feel free to join in the debate!
Shaun, from what Matthew says your keystroke log theory is looking more likely but I’m intrigued to find out more.
GK, it sounds like you were a little smarter than the civil servant in question when it comes to using email addresses. I’m sure civil servants mouth off all the time about their bosses – for the Government to suggest otherwise is laughable.
Jackart, I hope you’re right about the overreactions dying off.
Asquith, apart from Iain Dale the blogosphere has been remarkably quiet about this story.
Keyloggers are mundane; they simply capture strings of characters – everything typed. Making sense of it is more interesting.
I think someone should do a speculative FOI for the search terms that flag up activity in those strings which attracts human attention. And if its the State which pays for this monitoring of Civil Servants, then why should they flag terms relating to the personal financial probity of any individual minister. What was it about this putative post that flagged it for attention? Was it the name of the
beastchipmunk? Was it the mention of money? Or was it the mention of ‘theyworkforyou’?There are serious questions here regarding the State’s IT infrastructure and overwatch that can be addressed by anyone with the time and money to FOI it to death…
Mysociety.org is denying the story, and there’s nothing to be found in any search engine caches.
I rather fancy the Torygraph has been hoaxed. Time to put the righteous indignation back in the box.
Shaun, well volunteered – good luck with the FOIs.
John, did you check the search engine caches? I have to say that this story is starting to look a little shaky…. Thankfully, the principles behind it are still worthy of discussion because someone, somewhere is going to be caught out – be it this particular lady or otherwise.
Haha well I’ll have a look at what’s involved and then have a whip-round for any required fee….
How dare you say that it is her fault she got sacked for merely sending an email from her work account? It is LUDICROUS that it even happend? Did she make ANY reference to her job or where she works or indeed any political reference? She actually makes a reference to ALL HONORABLE MEMBERS -Does this not make her impartial? I think YOU are the muppet for condemming her without reading the full story….I wonder if YOU work for the department for nazi’ism too…
As I understand it, the report by the Telegraph is inaccurate and a comment never appeared on a MySociety (or any other) website.
I haven’t spoken to Lisa G, but other people have done so. The sacking is real, but the “anonymous comment on the internet” stuff is untrue – unless she is telling porkies.
What hasn’t been established is how it came to the attention of the department, and how they managed to justify such a heavy handed sanction as sacking an employee for a relatively trivial offence.
In seriousness, this is way behind NightJack as a one-off event.
I expect that you may need to write a PS letter as and when (and if) more comes out.
[Update: It's out
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jul/06/telegraph-hazel-blears-expenses-civil-servant-sacking
]
Nicole, take a chill pill please – of course I can deride her for getting herself into trouble. Whether she deserved the sack or not is open to debate, but she certainly overstepped the mark.
Matt, thanks for the update. What a bizarre tale of misunderstanding!
Nicole – I sense your ill tempered blast was directed at me since I called her a muppet. Having read Matt’s guardian link about what she actually did, you are correct that I should retract that.
She’s not a muppet. She’s a moron and clearly, clearly not someone I would want involved with the administration of government. Someone who either:
1) Can’t tell what website they are on; and/or
2) Can’t see what email account they are referencing or using
Should, I think, be in some remedial education facility and not a government job with a gold-plated pension.
This doesn’t change the fact that the Labour witchunt against people who criticise it is deeply wrong. But as she worked for them, she really should’ve known what they were like. Except, as I say, she’s a moron.
And, FYI, I have an honest job in the private sector.
“She’s a moron and clearly, clearly not someone I would want involved with the administration of government.”
Sadly, I think you’ll find she’s probably one of the brighter, more IT literate members!