Top secret blogger for CIA fired, shut down:
Christine Axsmith, a software contractor for the CIA, considered her blog a success within the select circle of people who could actually see it.
Only people with top secret security clearances could read her musings, which were posted on Intelink, the intelligence community's classified intranet. Writing as Covert Communications, CC for short, she opined in her online journal on such national security conundrums as stagflation, the war of ideas in the Middle East and -- in her most popular post -- bad food in the CIA cafeteria.
But the hundreds of blog readers who responded to her irreverent entries with titles such as "Morale Equals Food" won't be joining her again.
On July 13, after she posted her views on torture and the Geneva Conventions, her blog was taken down and her security badge was revoked. On Monday, Axsmith was terminated by her employer, BAE Systems, which was helping the CIA test software.
As a traveler in the classified blogosphere, Axsmith was not alone. Hundreds of blog posts appear on Intelink. The CIA says blogs and other electronic tools are used by people working on the same issue to exchange information and ideas.
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Well, I am not sure about this. Blogs are software. A blogging platform is just a tool. It can be used for very different purposes.
If her blog was supposed to be for work, she should have blogged her personal life and opinions elsewhere, on an anonymous Blogspot or something. I can see why CIA shut her down and I doubt she has a case if she sues.
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Why is her opinion on torture less work related than her opinion on the food in the cafeteria? Specifically, was she fired (and was it BAE or the CIA who initiated the action) for blogging a topic not related directly to her job, or was she fired for blogging a specific opinion. Would she have been fired for a pro-waterboarding blog entry?
That is why I wrote I was not sure about this. Nobody is talking. But if it is not a personal public blog but a work blog, they can tell her what to write and what not, and fire her if they do not like her performance. In other words, it is a job which uses a blogging technology, it is not blogging as WE know it and think about it.
Of course, we can and should be appaled if she was fired because she wrote a dissenting opinion - no organization will work well if it does not tolerate dissenting oopinon. But they still may have the right to fire her if they want to, appaling this may be or not.