Welcome, visitors from the Janesville Gazette and the Gazette‘s online edition, GazetteXtra.com.
The April 14, 2008 Gazette has two stories on FREE WHITEWATER: City Officials Seek Blogger’s Identity and Blogger Keeps a Watchful Eye on Whitewater.
Gazette reporter Kayla Bunge describes what blogging is like, recounts responses here to this blog about life in Whitewater, Wisconsin, and presents different points of view on blogging. It’s a fair assessment, from a reporter and paper that understands this new medium, and presents different perspectives.
The Janesville Gazette is a modern paper. The Gazette has blogs of its own, and offers electronic features and an electronic edition that are as advanced as any other paper in our state.
New readers must be wondering about FREE WHITEWATER.
Who am I, and what is this small site about, by the way?
That depends on whom you ask. Some public officials describe me one way; I would describe myself in another. I blog about municipal affairs, and other topics, as a libertarian, and my website has sometimes been critical of certain police practices and actions, and government planning. Most of all, I have hoped for a better leadership for our police force for our city, and I know that one day we will have just that.
The real message of my site, though, is an uplifting one: the greatness of the American promise of individual liberty and the liberating power of free markets. I have been fortunate to grow up libertarian, am religious, have celebrated the joy of a citizen’s life, offered photos of beautiful spots in my town, cheered public accomplishments, offered classic American animation, and even what’s great about HP calculators!
In the end, I’m just a common man, like so many others — citizen, resident, property-owner, husband, and parent. Bloggers are from all walks of life, across the political spectrum, and are, I think, just modern-day pamphleteers.
I’ll also offer some responses to the comments of city officials in these latest stories.
1. What an official appreciates is less important than what the law requires. To think otherwise is to be seeped in entitlement and presumption.
These city officials don’t offer believable explanations; they offer tissue-paper excuses.
Of course anonymous speech constitutionally is protected. See the 1995 U.S. Supreme Court decision in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission:
“Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical, minority views . . . Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society.”
(As referenced on the EFF.org website, and linked through Justia.com.)
2. The effort to create a dialogue requires no more than sending an email.
3. Let’s be clear: There is nothing innocuous, or fairly innocuous, about running a license plate without a valid law enforcement purpose — it’s a violation of federal law.
Someone who respected privacy and civil liberties would not be running licenses plates on citizens.
Consider this case, from the Wisconsin Department of Justice website, in an official document entitled, “TIME System Newsletter,” Crime Information Bureau, from March 2006:
Are You Liable?
As TIME System users are informed from day one, information access is provided via the TIME System for law enforcement/criminal justice purposes only. Use of the system for other purposes is not only a policy violation, but also subjects violators to possible civil and criminal penalties, as the current case shows.
In the current case, a police dispatcher, two officers from different agencies, the town, and others, are being sued for allegedly violating the Federal Driver Privacy Protection Act.
The lawsuit stems from an incident in which a subject repeatedly attempted to obtain vehicle owner information from the police department, asking them to query a license plate. In the first phone call the dispatcher refused to release the information. About 20 minutes later, a male subject requested owner information from an officer. The officer had the dispatcher query the license plate, but refused to provide the information to the man, only telling him the vehicle belonged to a local resident. Less than 10 minutes later, an officer from another agency contacted the dispatcher and requested the same information. Initially the dispatcher refused to provide the information, but relented when he promised not to divulge the information. The second officer is a relative of the male subject who had earlier tried to obtain the information.
Unfortunately, about 30 minutes later, the male subject went to the residence where the vehicle was parked, kicked out a porch light, and threatened the vehicle owner with bodily harm.
TIME System users and their departments must ensure the system is being used only for authorized
purposes.
4. Traffic at FREE WHITEWATER? Up! Here’s a response that I can make happily — traffic is up significantly, month over month, even discounting spikes for recent news coverage. Not only has it gone up each month, it stays up — I am fortunate to gain new readers and keep them.
I’ll have more good news to announce in this regard in mid May, at the one year anniversary of FREE WHITEWATER.