Accountability for one’s speech is important for society as it encourages people to be mindful of their words and forces people to engage others. Anonymous speech is also vital for society as it allows people to speak openly about their ideas and removes the audience’s speaker bias. I, however, think that traceable anonymity - the compromise between these two, at times conflicting, values - is an imperfect solution as it does not offer full latitude in protecting anonymous speech and proliferating ideas.
Solove cites some historical examples of anonymous speech which he acknowledges has been vital in the protection of society - extreme cases like Watergate. Traceable anonymity does seem like an adequate protection for most speech, even for some highly controversial speech as the process of tracking individuals is a long and difficult one.
Solove, however, approves of traceable anonymity, under which the law must decide when a speaker should or should be unmasked, whether revealing the speaker would or would not be good society. The issue I take with this solution is that, under extreme cases like Watergate, it does not afford complete protection for this speech as what is appropriate and good for society in these extreme cases can be highly difficult to judge, leaving less room in the Internet Age for future Watergates to be divulged.
Though the exposure of the Watergate scandal specifically may be a clear cut good, more generally the idea of finding and releasing the identities of individuals exposing highly sensitive information or producing highly controversial speech can conceivably create much harm, possibly dissuading future speakers from speaking anonymously even when they carry information important to the public interest. As Solove acknowledges, people, like those behind Allegheny Energy Service, could easily manipulate the system to discover the identity of an individual (though I do not defend the actions of the employee, Allegheny unfairly gamed the system to their advantage).
To propose another imperfect solution, we could handle anonymous speech not with law but with social norms. We, as a society, can realize that information we consume, particularly information announced anonymously, has been processed and skewed, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally by a people’s biases. Given a new piece of information, which could be highly controversial, we could realize that this information is imperfect and so more inquiry is warranted. [I realize this alternative is flawed as from a feasibility standpoint (everything is traceable online) and provides no level of accountability for what a person chooses to speak, among other issues.]
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Sorry for forgetting to post my question earlier. The idea of 'newsworthiness' came up in the reading - that certain bits of information are of greater importance than others - which helps us rank what speech is more or less valuable. But what determines newsworthiness? Though it's easy to claim that the misadventures of the cast of Jersey Shore is less important than the outcomes of Copenhagen 15, but what about foreign affairs versus domestic affairs? Cultural commentary and political analysis? Certainly some people prefer certain types of speech over others, but if that is the case, is newsworthiness an objective, shared measure?
ReplyDelete