Justices ruled 8-1 in a case called Doe V. Reed. Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented. They heard oral arguments in Washington, D.C., April 28.

The ruling dealt broadly with claims by foes of the new gay rights law that disclosing their names would violate their First Amendment rights. However the justices said the plaintiffs could go back to a lower court to try to get a specific exemption on other grounds – and the chief lawyer for people who signed the Referendum 71 petitions said he would do so.

Washington state officials praised the decision.

“This is a good day for transparency and accountability in elections–not just in Washington but across our country,” Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna said. “We’re pleased the Supreme Court ruled in favor of disclosure, upholding the public’s right to double-check the work of signature gatherers and government — and giving them the ability to learn which voters are directing the state to hold an election on a new law. Citizen legislating is too important to be conducted in secret.”

Secretary of State Sam Reed welcomed the ruling, too. But he said he understood the privacy conncerns “in the Internet era and the desire to participate in our initiative and referendum process without fear of harassment or retaliation.”

“I will continue to speak out for civility in our citizenship and will firmly insist that petition signatures not be used in a threatening or inappropriate way,” Reed added.

The conservative group that tried to block release of the signatures wanted the nation’s high court to uphold a lower court ruling that said signing petitions and referendum is constitutionally protected political speech – which by law is OK to engage in anonymously.

Protect Marriage Washington asked justices to shield the names of the 138,000 people who signed R-71 petitions in hopes of overturning the “everything but marriage” same-sex domestic partner law. In November Washington voters upheld the new statute. Gay rights groups have said they’ll post the petition signers’ names online, and some fear harassment or threats if their names are revealed.

State officials had said there are laws in place to protect people who might be threatened. When people sign petitions or referendums they are acting as legislators, McKenna said, because they are trying to enact or change laws.

Gary Randall of the Faith and Freedom Network said in an e-mail that plaintiffs will go back and seek an exemption for R-71 signers.

“The names cannot be released to the homosexual activists immediately,” Randall wrote. “This matter is not settled yet.”

‘Transparency and accountability’

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said it is vitally important that states be able to ensure that signatures on referendum petitions are authentic.

“Public disclosure thus helps ensure that the only signatures counted are those that should be, and that the only referenda placed on the ballot are those that garner enough valid signatures,” Roberts said. “Public disclosure also promotes transparency and accountability in the electoral process to an extent other measures cannot.”

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the court’s opinion.

“In my view, compelled disclosure of signed referendum and initiative petitions under the Washington Public Records severely burdens those rights and chills citizen participation in the referendum process,” Thomas said.

The decision could have far-reaching impacts, not just on the state’s initiative and referendum process, but also for other “open government” laws like the disclosure of who contributes to political campaigns, and how much they give. Legal scholars nationwide followed the case.

In September U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle ruled that releasing the petition names would violate those people’s constitutional rights. Settle said the petition signers were engaging in political speech – which people are allowed to conduct anonymously under the First Amendment.

However in October 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overruled Settle, saying signing a petition in public is not an anonymous activity and people should recognize that other petition signers could see their names and government officials will be verifying their identity.

The Supreme Court stayed that decision.

One of the attorneys for the group seeking to keep the names private, James Bopp, Jr., had said people have a right to participate in the political system without the government compelling them to identify themselves.

Bopp, the general counsel for the Indiana-based James Madison Center for Free Speech, said it’s appropriate for governments to check and make sure initiative and referendums have enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, but releasing that information to the public would violate people’s rights.

McKenna said Washington has a liberal public disclosure law and that most people in the state want access to records to keep government in check.

Roberts said that the court’s opinion deals with whether disclosure of the names on referendum petitions as a whole violates the First Amendment, not solely the case brought by Protect Marriage Washington.

The intimidation that anti-gay rights supporters fear is not present in other referendum issues like tax policy, revenue, budget or other state law issues, Roberts said. “Voters care about such issues, some quite deeply – but there is no reason to assume that any burdens imposed by disclosure of typical referendum petitions would be remotely like the burdens plaintiffs fear in this case,” he said.

The chief justice added that Protect Marriage Washington could go back to the lower courts and try again on their specific concern in hopes of getting an exemption. “Upholding the law against a broad based challenge does not foreclose a litigant’s success in a narrower one.”

Daniel P. Tokaji, an expert in election law at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, said in a statement the State of Washington “has won this battle, but not yet the war.”

“…opponents of Washington’s domestic partnership law can still make the narrower argument that, in this particular case, disclosing the petitions would violate the constitutional rights of those who signed them,” Tokaji said.

Bopp said he would return to the U.S. District Court in Washington state to try to shield the names from the public.

“Supporters of traditional marriage have been subject to death threats, vandalism, and even the loss of their jobs merely for exercising their right to free speech,” he said in a statement. “We are confident that the District Court will agree that these tactics have no place in the discussion of marriage and will prevent the release of the personal information on those who support traditional marriage.”

Div. One in an unpublished opinion said that Richard Gibson’s action was not a strategic lawsuit against public participation because the posts describing his alleged character flaws and improper conduct were neither political speech nor speech on a matter of public interest.

Gibson, who has advertised his legal practice on Craigslist, filed suit against the unknown posters in 2008 after what he claimed were several years of alleged anonymous, derogatory postings on community discussion boards at Craigslist and on Google’s “Blogspot.”

He said the posts included his office’s mailing and e-mail addresses, his office telephone number and his State Bar number, and, among others, accused him of breaking numerous criminal laws, harassment and stalking, violating the California Rules of Professional Conduct, being mentally ill, threatening the posters with violence, expressing bigotry and using illegal drugs.

The posts also urged readers not to use Gibson as an attorney, threatened him with physical harm and encouraged readers to send him computer viruses, Gibson said. He contended the unknown poster or posters also made similar allegations in e-mails to apparently randomly-selected attorneys in Los Angeles County and in e-mails to Gibson about the postings.

Anonymous messages targeting Gibson on Craigslist have continued, with at least one having been posted as recently as Friday afternoon.

Gibson—who has no public record of discipline, according to the State Bar’s website—said the opinion confirmed that “harassing someone on the Internet is not a political issue, it’s a private thing.” He commented that “there’s a lot of anonymous stalking going on on the Internet,” and said that “if there’s any larger significance [to the decision]…it’s that…if you figure out who’s doing it, you can do something about it.”

Gibson ultimately amended his complaint to name Justin Swingle as a defendant after obtaining Swingle’s name through a subpoena. Asked why Swingle singled him out, Gibson said “it’s really bizarre…I’ve never met, never spoken, never done business with him.”

Swingle answered Gibson’s complaint with allegations that the attorney had deleted Swingle’s Craigslist posts by illegally “flagging” them for violations of the website’s guidelines or policies in an attempt to prevent Swingle from engaging in speech on political issues ranging from illegal immigration to religious bigotry. Posts are removed from Craigslist if enough users “flag” them, or if the website’s staff independently determines a post to be improper.

Swingle also brought causes of action alleging intentional infliction of emotional distress and violation of the constitutional right to free speech, and then moved to strike Gibson’s complaint, admitting that he posted some of the messages but arguing he was engaged in protected political speech.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Paul Gutman denied the motion because Swingle failed to file it within 60 days of Gibson’s initial complaint.

On appeal, Presiding Justice Robert M. Mallano agreed with Swingle that the motion was timely because it was filed within 60 days of an amended complaint naming Swingle’s trust as a second defendant. However, the justice denied relief because Gibson’s claims “are not based on statements made in connection with a public issue.”

Under California’s anti-SLAPP statute, which applies to suits aimed at preventing citizens from exercising their political rights or punishing those who do, a defendant seeking to strike the complaint must show that the challenged cause of action arises from protected activity, such as speech on a public issue. If the defendant meets this burden, the plaintiff must then show a probability of success in order to keep the case alive.

But Mallano said Swingle failed to meet the initial burden. Opining that the anti-SLAPP statute’s focus is the defendant’s activity that gives rise to the asserted liability, not the form of the plaintiff’s cause of action, and leaving for later the issue of whether Swingle’s comments were actually defamatory, he wrote: “Gibson’s claims are based on defendant’s alleged derogatory Internet posts, not on political statements.”

Justices Frances Rothschild and Victoria Gerrard Chaney joined Mallano in his opinion.

Gibson told the MetNews that in the course of his case he discovered that Swingle “does this with lots of people,” and speculated that it was “a power thing.”

He said trial on the defamation action was the next step, but commented:

“It’s weird; [Swingle] admits it, pretty much. His only defense is to say it’s true.”

Gibson maintained that such an assertion would be inaccurate.

Swingle’s counsel, Jeffrey Agnew of Ramona, could not be reached for comment.

The case is Gibson v. Swingle, B217082.

Copyright 2010 Metropolitan News Company

Corbett, the Republican candidate for governor, was seeking to unmask the account holders ahead of Friday’s sentencing of Brett Cott, whom Corbett targeted in a political corruption investigation.

Corbett wanted to know if Cott was the one anonymously disparaging Corbett and the ongoing probe, Corbett spokesman Kevin Harley said in a telephone interview. Prosecutors believed that linking Cott to one of the Twitter accounts criticizing Corbett would show the defendant had a bad attitude that should earn him a higher sentence, Harley said.

Harley said they wanted to unmask the account holders “to show the court Cott was demonstrating a lack of contrition and remorse.”

On Friday, Cott was handed up to five years in prison for his role in the political corruption scandal known as Bonusgate. Dauphin County Judge Richard Lewis said he did not consider any online criticism in his sentencing decision.

The grand jury subpoena targeted Twitter accounts CasablancaPA and bfBarbie. Both received an e-mail from Twitter on Tuesday saying the company would respond to the subpoena (.pdf) in a week “unless we receive notice from you that a motion to quash the subpoena has been filed or that this matter has been otherwise resolved.”

The subpoena demanded “all subscriber information” regarding the two Twitter accounts, including “name, address, contact information, creation date, creation Internet Protocol address, and any and all login Internet Protocol addresses.”

The two had enlisted Public Citizen and the American Civil Liberties Union to fight the subpoena. They said it was an abuse of power by Corbett to use the power of a criminal grand jury to unmask his critics.

“It’s clear they were on a fishing expedition to see if these Twitter users were Cott,” Witold Walczak, legal director for the ACLU of Pennsylvania, said in a telephone interview. “That’s not only an abuse of the grand jury process but a real affront to political speech rights … The government just can’t go on fishing expeditions like that to unmask critics because it might be helpful on sentencing.”

Updated 15:30 with confirmation and comments from Corbett’s office.

An anonymous blogger critical of Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett plans to challenge a grand jury subpoena ordering Twitter to reveal the blogger’s identity.

“It doesn’t really matter why we are criticizing him,” said ”Signor Ferrari,” one of the two Twitter users targeted in the subpoena from Corbett, who won the Republican gubernatorial primary Tuesday. ”It’s our First Amendment right to criticize him no matter who we are,” he said in a telephone interview Wednesday. He uses that pen name on the CasablancaPA blog.

The bloggers received an e-mail from Twitter on Tuesday evening saying the micro-blogging service would respond to the subpoena (.pdf) in a week “unless we receive notice from you that a motion to quash the subpoena has been filed or that this matter has been otherwise resolved.”

The subpoena follows a string of similar efforts to unmask anonymous writers, with mixed results. A Louisiana politician dropped a defamation suit Tuesday against 11 anonymous commenters on The Times-Picayune website after the outlet refused to release their identities.

In August, however, Google unmasked the operator of the “Skanks in NYC” blog after being subpoenaed by an Australian model who claimed the site defamed her. And on Monday, a federal judge prevented Yahoo from revealing the identity of a message-board poster critical of USA Technologies.

While those efforts involved civil subpoenas, Corbett is apparently treating his online critics as potential criminals, using his power as the state’s top law enforcement official to issue a grand jury subpoena. The subpoena does not state what kind of crime the grand jury is investigating.

The subpoena to Twitter was dated May 6 and required Twitter to respond by May 14 with all identifying information it has on the Twitter accounts of bfbarbie andCasablancaPA, which is also Signor Ferrari’s handle on Twitter. The deadline had been extended, Signor Ferrari said.

“We have a constitutionally protected right to speak anonymously,” Signor Ferarri said.

The Twitter account of bfbarbie is not affiliated with the CasablancaPA blog, said Signor Ferarri.

Bfbarbie could not be reached for comment. That account, along with Signor Ferrari’s, is highly critical of the attorney general.

CasablancaPA’s tweets include, “Is it wrong to mix campaign work with taxpayer business? Apparently not when Tom Corbett does it.”

The subpoena, first reported by TechCrunch, demands “all subscriber information” regarding the two Twitter accounts, including “name, address, contact information, creation date, creation Internet Protocol address and any and all login Internet Protocol addresses.”

Signor Ferrari said in the interview that the CasablancaPA blog, which also targets the attorney general, is produced on Google Blogger’s platform. Google has not sent a notice stating whether it was subpoenaed in the matter, said Signor Ferrari, who was planning to move to quash the subpoena.

Twitter did not immediately respond for comment.

A spokeswoman said Corbett’s office was not immediately prepared to comment.

Copyright 2010 Condé Nast Digita

SAN FRANCISCO – A federal judge in San Francisco has quashed a baseless subpoena aimed at outing an anonymous online critic of Pennsylvania corporation USA Technologies after the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) successfully argued that the First Amendment shields the identity of anonymous speakers who engage in lawful speech.

“All too frequently, companies turn to the courts in misguided attempts to chill speech and ‘out’ their critics, believing that those critics lack the resources or will to defend themselves,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. “The First Amendment ensures that vigorous debates about matters of public concern can continue unabated, a fact that the court correctly recognized.”

EFF represents Yahoo! user “Stokklerk,” who criticized USA Technologies and its CEO, George Jensen, Jr., on a Yahoo! message board, drawing attention to plummeting stock prices, high compensation rates for executives, and a consistent lack of profitability. Other anonymous posters had similar complaints.

In response, USA Technologies filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania alleging that the statements violated federal securities regulations, because they were part of a “scheme” for the authors to “enrich themselves through undisclosed manipulative trading tactics.” USA Technologies also alleged that the online posts — which characterized USA Technologies’ executive compensation practices as, among other things, “legalized highway robbery” and a “soft Ponzi” — were defamatory. Pursuant to that lawsuit, USA Technologies issued a subpoena out of the Northern District of California to Yahoo! demanding the critics’ identities.

In her ruling, Judge Susan Illston agreed with Stokklerk and quashed the subpoena, recognizing “the Constitutional protection afforded pseudonymous speech over the internet, and the chilling effect that subpoenas would have on lawful commentary and protest.” Judge Illston further found that none of the statements at issue were defamatory in context and were instead “protected opinions” under the First Amendment.

“We’re gratified that the Court saw it the way we did,” said David M. Given of Phillips, Erlewine & Given LLP, which served as co-counsel with EFF in the matter. “The First Amendment principle at stake in this case is paramount to preserving the free interchange of ideas and opinions on the Internet.”

For the full ruling:

http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/usatechnologies/USAT-order-051710.pdf

For more on this case:

http://www.eff.org/cases/usa-technologies-v-stokklerk

From the start, Internet users have taken for granted that the territory was both a free-for-all and a digital disguise, allowing them to revel in their power to address the world while keeping their identities concealed.

A New Yorker cartoon from 1993, during the Web’s infancy, with one mutt saying to another, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” became an emblem of that freedom. For years, it was the magazine’s most reproduced cartoon.

When news sites, after years of hanging back, embraced the idea of allowing readers to post comments, the near-universal assumption was that anyone could weigh in and remain anonymous. But now, that idea is under attack from several directions, and journalists, more than ever, are questioning whether anonymity should be a given on news sites.

The Washington Post plans to revise its comments policy over the next several months, and one of the ideas under consideration is to give greater prominence to commenters using real names.

The New York Times, The Post and many other papers have moved in stages toward requiring that people register before posting comments, providing some information about themselves that is not shown onscreen.

The Huffington Post soon will announce changes, including ranking commenters based in part on how well other readers know and trust their writing.

“Anonymity is just the way things are done. It’s an accepted part of the Internet, but there’s no question that people hide behind anonymity to make vile or controversial comments,” said Arianna Huffington, a founder of The Huffington Post. “I feel that this is almost like an education process. As the rules of the road are changing and the Internet is growing up, the trend is away from anonymity.”

The Plain Dealer of Cleveland recently discovered that anonymous comments on its site, disparaging a local lawyer, were made using the e-mail address of a judge who was presiding over some of that lawyer’s cases.

That kind of proxy has been documented before; what was more unusual was that The Plain Dealer exposed the connection in an article. The judge, Shirley Strickland Saffold, denied sending the messages — her daughter took responsibility for some of them. And last week, the judge sued The Plain Dealer, claiming it had violated her privacy.

The paper acknowledged that it had broken with the tradition of allowing commenters to hide behind screen names, but it served notice that anonymity was a habit, not a guarantee. Susan Goldberg, The Plain Dealer’s editor, declined to comment for this article. But in an interview she gaveto her own newspaper, she said that perhaps the paper should not have investigated the identity of the person who posted the comments, “but once we did, I don’t know how you can pretend you don’t know that information.”

Some prominent journalists weighed in on the episode, calling it evidence that news sites should do away with anonymous comments. Leonard Pitts Jr., a Miami Herald columnist, wrote recently that anonymity has made comment streams “havens for a level of crudity, bigotry, meanness and plain nastiness that shocks the tattered remnants of our propriety.”

No one doubts that there is a legitimate value in letting people express opinions that may get them in trouble at work, or may even offend their neighbors, without having to give their names, said William Grueskin, dean of academic affairs at Columbia’s journalism school.

“But a lot of comment boards turn into the equivalent of a barroom brawl, with most of the participants having blood-alcohol levels of 0.10 or higher,” he said. “People who might have something useful to say are less willing to participate in boards where the tomatoes are being thrown.”

He said news organizations were willing to reconsider anonymity in part because comment pages brought in little revenue; advertisers generally do not like to buy space next to opinions, especially incendiary ones.

The debate over anonymity is entwined with the question of giving more weight to comments from some readers than others, based in part on how highly other readers regard them. Some sites already use a version of this approach; Wikipedia users can earn increasing editing rights by gaining the trust of other editors, and when reviews are posted on Amazon.com, those displayed most prominently are those that readers have voted “most helpful” — and they are often written under real names.

Hal Straus, interactivity editor of The Washington Post, said, “We want to be able to establish user tiers, and display variations based on those tiers.” The system is still being planned, but he says it is likely that readers will be asked to rate comments, and that people’s comments will be ranked in part based on the trust those users have earned from other readers — an approach much like the one The Huffington Post is set to adopt. Another criterion could be whether they use their real names.

But experience has shown that when users help rank things online, sites may have to guard against a concerted campaign by a small group of people voting one way and skewing the results.

A popular feature on The Wall Street Journal’s site lets readers decide whether they want to see only those comments posted by subscribers, on the theory that the most dedicated readers might make for a more serious conversation.

A few news organizations, including The Times, have someone review every comment before it goes online, to weed out personal attacks and bigoted comments. Some sites and prominent bloggers, like Andrew Sullivan, simply do not allow comments.

Some news sites review comments after they are posted, but most say they do not have the resources to do routine policing. Many sites allow readers to flag objectionable comments for removal, and make some effort to block comments from people who have repeatedly violated the site’s standards.

If commenters were asked to provide their real names for display online, some would no doubt give false identities, and verifying them would be too labor-intensive to be realistic. But news executives say that merely making the demand for a name and an e-mail address would weed out much of the most offensive commentary.

Several industry executives cited a more fundamental force working in favor of identifying commenters. Through blogging and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, millions of people have grown accustomed to posting their opinions — to say nothing of personal details — with their names attached, for all to see. Adapting the Facebook model, some news sites allow readers to post a picture along with a comment, another step away from anonymity.

“There is a younger generation that doesn’t feel the same need for privacy,” Ms. Huffington said. “Many people, when you give them other choices, they choose not to be anonymous.”

Both Plain Dealer Editor Susan Goldberg and Saffold’s attorney, Brian Spitz, declined to comment on the case Wednesday.

Spitz, in an interview with ABC News, acknowledged for the first time Wednesday the possibility that Saffold posted comments under the moniker “lawmiss,” which was set up on cleveland.com through an e-mail account used by the judge. Saffold last month denied leaving any lawmiss comments, and her daughter took responsibility for all of them.

The suit, filed in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, claims that newspaper violated cleveland.com’s privacy policy by printing personally identifying information. And the lawsuit claims The Plain Dealer acknowledged that using and publishing registration information breached the users’ expectation of privacy.

Cleveland.com’s privacy policy was written by Advance Internet, a separate entity affiliated with The Plain Dealer. The privacy policy states, “We may also provide access to our database in order to cooperate with official investigations or legal proceedings, including, for example, in response to subpoenas, search warrants, court orders, or other legal process.” The policy goes on to state: “In addition, we reserve the right to use the information we collect about your computer, which may at times be able to identify you, for any lawful business purpose. . .”

The site also reserves “the right to use, transfer, sell, and share aggregated, anonymous data about our users as a group for any business purpose, such as analyzing usage trends and seeking compatible advertisers and partners.”

A Plain Dealer online editor looked up lawmiss’ e-mail address – which was accessible through software used to post stories to the Web site – after lawmiss posted a comment about the mental state of a Plain Dealer reporter’s relative.

The newspaper found the link to an e-mail account used by Saffold and others, and reported for the first time March 26 that more than 80 comments had been made on cleveland.com by lawmiss. Among the postings were comments about cases before Saffold. The judge acknowledged in an interview last month that such comments would have been improper if she had made them.

Goldberg said last month that the issues raised by lawmiss’ comments outweighed any privacy interests of the poster. Goldberg noted that comments made were not about trifling matters. The posts related directly to two death-penalty cases involving Saffold as judge — the 2008 murder trial of former Cleveland firefighter Terrance Hough Jr. and the case of Anthony Sowell, accused of killing 11 women.

“What if it ever came to light that someone using the e-mail of a sitting judge made comments on a public Web site about cases she was hearing, and we did not disclose it?” Goldberg said last month. “These are capital crimes and life-and-death issues for these defendants. I think not to disclose this would be a violation of our mission and damaging to our credibility as a news organization.”

The day the story was published, Sowell’s lawyer requested that Saffold recuse herself from hearing the Sowell case, arguing that the lawmiss comments showed bias. Saffold has not made a decision.

In the lawsuit filed Wednesday, Spitz argues that the newspaper’s online editors looked up the lawmiss user registration information as a vendetta, because of the remark left about a reporter’s relative.

“Despite encouraging lively debate and opposing opinions, Defendants used tactics to discourage comments that opposed their editorial viewpoint, including, but not limited to selectively removing opinions that were not favorable to Defendants, and allowing personal attacks against their targets to remain,” Spitz writes.

Saffold told the newspaper last month that she had nothing to do with the lawmiss comments.County records show that three of the comments were left at the same time as someone using Saffold’s court computer was visiting cleveland.com.

ABC News reported in an online article Wednesday that Spitz said Saffold might have used the lawmiss handle to comment on stories unrelated to her cases, including stories on the Cleveland Browns. Spitz said he is still combing through the comments with his client.

He acknowledges in the suit that the judge and her daughter shared the cleveland.com account. But he argues that the AOL e-mail address linked to the account was created by Saffold’s former husband, Oscar, for the whole family to use.

The suit claims the newspaper called upon legal experts and the Ohio Supreme Court’s disciplinary counsel to inquire about the ethical implications of Saffold’s participation on cleveland.com. And the newspaper gathered all of the comments posted by lawmiss for readers to peruse.

The Plain Dealer’s stories about lawmiss have been controversial with many cleveland.com commenters, who believed they were anonymous when posting on the Web site. Cleveland.com is affiliated with Advance Internet, which now blocks the newspaper from access to the e-mail addresses of commenters.

Even as the lawsuit criticizes the newspaper for revealing the e-mail address linked to lawmiss, it says it expects the defendants to identify all anonymous commenters who criticized Saffold on cleveland.com. The suit lists those commenters as John Does and says they also are defendants.

Spitz, whose law firm is based in South Euclid, filed at least one similar lawsuit in the past, claiming the breach of an online user privacy policy. In July 2008, he represented an elder-care nurse, who said her life had been destroyed after the proprietor of celebrity gossip Web site perezhilton.com divulged her personal and contact information.

Diane Wargo sued Mario Armando Lavandeira, Jr. in U.S. District Court in Cleveland for $25 million, arguing that Lavandeira posted her full name, email address and the name of her employer, and encouraged readers to harass Wargo for disagreeing with his opinions.

The case was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.

Anonymous online comments are linked to the personal e-mail account of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold

Goldberg noted that comments made were not about “trifling” matters. The posts related directly to two death-penalty cases involving Saffold as judge — Sowell’s and the 2008 murder trial of former Cleveland firefighter Terrance Hough Jr. — as well as a recent vehicular homicide case.

“You can argue we should not have uncovered lawmiss’ identity,” Goldberg said in an interview, “and maybe we shouldn’t have. But once we did, I don’t know how you can pretend you don’t know that information. How can you put that genie back in the bottle?

“What if it ever came to light that someone using the e-mail of a sitting judge made comments on a public Web site about cases she was hearing, and we did not disclose it? These are capital crimes and life-and-death issues for these defendants. I think not to disclose this would be a violation of our mission and damaging to our credibility as a news organization.”

Goldberg said she learned of Saffold’s connection to the cleveland.com posts Monday and, after consulting with other editors and the company’s lawyers, decided to reveal the judge’s ties.

The newspaper traced the identity of lawmiss after someone using that moniker left a comment about the mental state of a relative of reporter Jim Ewinger. The comment was removed for violating cleveland.com’s community rules, which do not allow personal attacks.

Users are required to register with a valid e-mail address before posting at cleveland.com. Upon learning of the Ewinger issue Monday, an online editor looked up lawmiss’ e-mail address, which like all others, is accessible through software used to post stories to the Web site.

Monitoring e-mail addresses is not a common practice, Goldberg said. But the information has been accessed before by online editors, who have banned people for violating the community rules or the site’s user agreement. Both were written by Advance Internet, a separate entity run by The Plain Dealer’s parent company.

How the newspaper obtained the information troubles Bob Steele, a journalism ethicist with the Poynter Institute and DePauw University. Steele questioned whether editors were justified in exploring lawmiss’ identity as there was “no immediate, profound danger to someone” and “no clear suspicion of judicial misconduct” at the time the investigation began.

“It does raise the question of the wisdom and fairness of the newspaper using the registration system of the Web site for reporting purposes,” Steele said in a telephone interview.

The newspaper’s decisions could have a chilling effect on conversation at cleveland.com, said Rebecca Jeschke of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online privacy rights group.

“I would think twice before participating in a message board where I had to give my e-mail address knowing that management could access it at any time,” Jeschke said. “It seems appropriate in this case, but … it’s hard not to imagine scenarios where it’s abused.”

John Hassell, vice president of content at Advance Internet, said company officials are taking steps to block reporters and editors from seeing e-mail addresses in the future.

“We take privacy very seriously and believe our users should feel confident that private information shared with us will not be made public,” said Hassell in a statement.

Other news organizations already hide such information from their editorial staff, said Steve Yelvington, a strategist for Morris Digital Works, the online division of Morris Communications. The company runs 13 daily newspapers in Florida, Georgia, Texas and other states.

“We are careful to firewall our business records from our journalists,” Yelvington said.

In The Plain Dealer’s case, “there’s a legitimate question about what your user community expects of you,” he added. “There’s potential for people to feel their trust has been violated.”

Those are concerns Goldberg said she shares. In a May 2009 column that appeared in the newspaper, she encouraged “freewheeling conversation” on blogs and stories at cleveland.com. She also wrote that she was not in favor of requiring posters to use their real names because she feared that, given the culture of the Internet, doing so would stifle online conversation.

Some people agree with Goldberg’s decision.

“Ordinarily, if you encourage anonymity, it should remain that way,” said Lewis Katz, a Case Western Reserve University law professor. “But if a person is abusing the process, and the person’s identity is available, I don’t see why [the newspaper] should not identify the person.”

The Saffold connection made the identity even more relevant to the public, Katz added.

“I think it is part of the people’s right to know,” he said, echoing Goldberg. “It raises the possibilities of improper comments by [Judge Saffold] or someone affiliated with her certainly using her e-mail address making these comments. And I think that reflects on the judge.”

Though he disagrees with the newspaper’s methods in discovering lawmiss’ identity, Steele, the journalism ethics expert, said he also understands the reason for reporting it.

“Should The Plain Dealer be shining light on this? I say yes,” Steele said. “I don’t think The Plain Dealer could walk away from the puzzle with so many pieces turned face up right now.”

Copyright 2010 cleveland.com

A sharp-eyed reader noticed an odd editor’s note at the bottom of an INDenver Times account about the CU Buffs’ 24-0 victory over the Wyoming Cowboys this past weekend. It reads: “Comments have been turned off on football stories involving CU to meet the university’s requirement for giving media credentials to Web site reporters and photographers.”

Turns out this line means precisely what it says. According to Dave Plati, CU’s director of sports information, the university will not provide press passes to websites lacking a print or broadcast component unless they disallow pseudonymous posts or anonymous comments — an absolutely standard function in the Internet age.

“Credentials are a privilege, not a right, which a lot of people don’t realize,” Plati says.

Plati doesn’t go into detail about the roots of this policy, which has been in place for most of this decade. “I’m saving it for my book,” he jokes. However, he does reveal that the university began using this approach after being sued by a website representative who’d been denied credentials — a case that dragged on for several years before CU prevailed. Still, he doesn’t see the method as one that ignores the way the web has developed. Rather, he believes it’s among the best ways CU can encourage people writing about the Buffs to exercise some responsibility.

“All kinds of rumors get put up, often by fans of opposing teams,” Plati says. “The other weekend, Hawk [CU football coach Dan Hawkins] wasn’t wearing his wedding ring at a press conference, so someone started a rumor that he’s having marital problems. Well, guess what. Hawk’s wife took the ring in to get it repaired.

“To me, it’s just a matter of being fair and accurate,” he goes on. “Why should I credential you if your name is Ralphie 2000 or something like that, and you won’t tell us who’s criticizing us? Comments were created for intelligent, back-and-forth banter. But when they turn into talking about a coach’s marital status or insulting coaches and players’ personal lives, that’s when I draw the line. To me, that’s not legitimate media.”

Plati acknowledges that TV stations and newspapers like the Denver Post allow anonymous comments on their sites, creating what he calls “a little bit of a gray area” as far as CU’s credentialing policy is concerned. But at least staffers there all use their real names when they write, and he feels most of the operations take greater care in overseeing and filtering comments, to make sure nothing that’s slanderous or simply too outrageous stays online for long. Of course, “even if it was only up for five minutes, you never know how many people saw it or commented on it before it was taken down,” he notes. But it’s better than nothing, in his view.

Because most local sports websites don’t have the resources to cover games in person, Plati says few of them even bother asking for credentials. “It’s not like I’m turning down people all the time,” he points out. Moreover, some larger sports websites, like Scout.com and Rivals.com are fine with CU’s policy, he says, and have received full credentials as a result. He isn’t sure how many other colleges or universities mirror this procedure — but he’s confident CU isn’t the only one to see posts and comments offered under bogus names as unacceptable for credentialed media sources.

“If you want to do it, fine,” he maintains. “But we don’t have to credential you.”

Copyright 2009 Village Voice Media