More thoughts on pseudonymous writing

This is probably the last thing I'm going to say about pseudonymous blogging. I plan to leave the issue behind forever. Or at least for a few days. The "argument" between DrugMonkey - PhsyioProf - BlaBlaBlaBlog ("the clique") and me has become sterile and senseless, primarily because the clique has ruined it. PalMD over at Denialism Blog has noted that this is a terribly pedantic debate, and I would argue that it is only terribly pedantic on a good day. The other day's it is just terrible. By the way, PalMD's post is excellent, I highly recommend it. (But Pal, please see below, because one of the issues you bring up is problematized and I'd love to have your opinion on it.)

I now realize that the proximate reason the clique has ruined the discussion (I have no clue of their loftier goals) is that the "in your face" gonzo approach is unsuitable for scientific issues, where individuals are often asked to consider the possibility of 'truth' of multiple conflicting ideas over, sometimes, very long periods of time. We might consider the possibility that constantly screaming one form or another of "you were wrong and I was right" is not the right style for progressive intellectual discourse. But I digress.

Here is what I wanted to add to the discussion before I go off and do something interesting.... (I'm thinking of having my nails done today).

There have been times when I've wanted to be pseudonymous, since I've started blogging. Each of these occasions involved me learning something that I could not relate as an identified individual because there would be some negative repercussion.

My daughter is in a public school. Religion is floating around in this school, as in most public schools I suspect, and the promotion of religion happens a lot, often subtly, often with the promoter not necessarily realizing what is happening, sometimes with the promoter doing this quite intentionally. Julia reports these things to me, but only with the understanding that I will never do anything unilaterally about it. She wants to handle these things herself. If I blogged about these things, there could be trouble for her. Blogs are kind of random. They are a political action tool in some cases, a bulls in a china shops in other cases.

If I had a pseudonymous blog, I could write about these incidents as they happen, using fake names, not mentioning the location, etc. There are probably nearly a half million elementary schools, over a hundred thousand middle schools, and fifty thousand high schools (I am making these numbers up as I go along) in this country, so anonymity of the participants would be easy to work out. But on my current blog, you could easily figure out who the individuals are.

My wife teaches in a public high school. Many of the things she experiences are private and protected, but things can be (legally, ethically) said between a husband and wife, with the understanding of secrecy. But where I felt very strongly motivated, I could mention some of the things that happen to her, in some detail, on a pseudonymous blog, and might well do so if that served a greater purpose. On a pseudonymous blog, leaving off names, locations, and offsetting the blogging with the event's timing by a few months would easily make any incident untraceable, and thus not be a violation of anyone's privacy.
I am a teacher and administrator (and a few other things) at a major research university. I could talk! Actually, I can talk, and I do. But there are things that I could talk about that I don't talk about because such talking may create messes that I don't want to deal with. But if my blog was pseudonymous, I could bring day to day experiences into my writing in a more direct and to some extent detailed way.

If only I was pseudonymous, I could write so many more blog posts!!! Indeed, over the last six months or so, I have in the back of my mind considered the possibility of setting up a second blog somewhere that is pseudonymous.

But then, just the other day, I brought this thought to the front of my mind for more serious consideration, and realized that I could not do this.

One of the reasons for pseudonymous writing is to protect the identity of individuals mentioned in the writing. Indeed, at the University, I (and every other employee) have to receive training to avoid violating privacy rules. If you work at a University and think you are lucky that your institution does not require this training, think again. It does, you are simply unaware of it, and you are heading for trouble! Start reading the "junk mail" the administration sends you.

We hear about protection of individual identity all the time in relation to pseudonymous blogging. Part of that is protecting the blogger him/herself from attack. My own personal view is that a) this is somewhat overblown of a reason in many (but not all) cases, and b) there is a huge sex difference in the likelihood of attack (women receive much more negative attention, threats, etc, than men). So it is complicated. But I'm not going to second guess anyone's individual decision in this regard.

But the other part of identity protection has to do with protecting the individuals, and possibly institutions, one is writing about. This argument, however, is inadequate and should be reconsidered by anyone using it, in my opinion.

Here's why: What happens when your identity is blown? That could happen any time and you may not have that much control over it. Suddenly, the pseudonymous protection of identity is no longer working, and the pseudonymous blogger is now responsible for the identification of private data, description of events, etc., linked to individuals. This is like keeping institutionally held private data on your laptop, and the laptop gets stolen. Suddenly individual's social security numbers, home addresses, whatever, are "out there" because of a decision you made.

A medical blogger who provides enough information to identify a patient minus key information related to the blogger's identity is doing something that any blog-aware institution would probably say is a violation. Do you see what I'm saying? Let's say that the following pertains:

Identity of a patient = Something Said in a Blog + Identity of Blogger

Now, if we remove either the thing said in the blog or the identity of the blogger, we can't identify the patient. The pseudonymous blogger might be relying on the removal of the identity of the blogger, thus protecting the identity of the patient.

Imagine the blogger thusly blogs for five years, and discusses issues related to to 200 patients over that time. Then, suddenly, the blogger is outed. Now, with the Identity of Blogger coefficient is added to the formula, and private information about 200 patients is now on the internet.

Personally, I do not read the medical blogs too much, but I doubt that there are too many instance which would play out in this simplistic way. But I do want to ask these questions: Are the pseudonymous bloggers out there only protecting their own identity by being pseudonymous, or are they also attempting to protect the identity of other individuals? If the latter, is this good enough? Are these pseudonymous bloggers putting data on a metaphorical laptop that may some day be left in the taxi cab?

There are a handful of pseudonymous bloggers who's identity I know because they've let me know. There is one pseudonymous blogger who's identity I don't know, but could probably figure out very easily, because key facts were inadvertently given to me by a third party as part of private communications. I'm thinking that this is a very leaky system. It would be pretty easy for a pseudonymous blogger to get outed by someone whom they've pissed off sufficiently (by someone who does not care about the implications of release of private data pertaining innocent third party individuals). Or, a pseudonymous blogger may simply out her/himself not realizing the implications.

If a blogger is pseudonymous in order to protect private data of others, that blogger must also make sure that things like their "blog spot" (or whatever) account are private and untraceable. No one can know the identity of a blogger. Spouses become ex-spouses, and bad things can happen. Tech support people always have access to secret data, but are the tech support people related to the pseudonymous blogger's web presence trained the same way that support staff are trained, say, in the medical records division of a hospital?

And so on.