Unmasking Bloggers

 The Mountain Goat Report found out Wayne Hoffman, currently a spokesman for Congressman Bill Sali, registered the Idahoan.

Kevin Richert contacted Hoffman and here’s what he said:

Contacted Wednesday, Hoffman said he registered the site domain in December, and was an active writer on the site at the outset, before joining Sali’s staff. “My contributions have been few and far between since March,” he said.

Why the anonymity? The idea behind The Idahoan was to have a collaborative group of contributors, Hoffman said. Hoffman disputes MountainGoat’s main criticisms — the suggestion that one person, perhaps Hoffman, is running the conservative blog, and the suggestion that Hoffman is blogging on government time.

Now, one of the commenters over at Bubblehead tries to cast doubt on this:

Hoffman admits he registered the domain name, and contributes, but implies there are others who also contribute. Interestingly, all the posts are by someone logging in as “The Editor”, which means that either all the contributors have the same log-in (unlikely), or Mr. Hoffman just lied to (or “mislead”) Kevin Richert.

Yeah, no group of people has ever written under the same name! Has anyone ever head of the Federalist Papers co-written by Madison, Hamilton, and Jay, all three as Publius? You want to cast aspersions on Hoffman’s honesty, then proof is much better than supposition.

Now the issue that’s raised in this whole thing is the idea of anonymous blogging. Many bloggers in Idaho are anonymous. But even those bloggers who aren’t anonymous have information they’d rather keep to themselves. Most guard their real occupations and/or their familial situation and keep it close to the vest. A legitimate question is how far should one tread into the personal lives of bloggers? It’s one that I think most folks will find pretty chilling. Taken to an extreme, it can have a massively chilling effect.

There are many questions that remain unanswered. Not only is MGR anonymous, but so was his tipster. Who was the tipster tied to? On July 17th, Larry Grant complained about the Idahoan being an anonymous blogger. Fifteen days later, the Idahoan is anonymous no more. Coincidence? Perhaps, but the motives of the tipster are unknown. Is it another candidate for Congress on the Democrat side hoping to extract a pound of flesh?

The bigger question is: why do Bloggers feel the need to mask their identity and other information about themselves? The answer can be found in the character of Zorro. Zorro wore a mask to protect himself and his family from the recriminations. Our Founding Fathers often published materials anonymously to avoid arrest by a tyrannical government. With the bloggers, it’s much the same thing.

People mask themselves and details about themselves to protect themselves from violence, workplace discrimination, threatening phone calls, acts of terrorism, angry shouting matches, and family recriminations. People do it on the left and right. The sad thing is that it’s done and that it’s necessary. That’s what our politics has deteriorated to.