ideonexus Blocked at the Coast Guard Base

In the interest of enabling attendees to speak candidly about personal conflicts they have experience between their professional or personal lives and their online persona, speakers were kept anonymous for this session (not sure how posting their names on the conference program affects this). It was suggested that all panelists should be referred to as {PZ1, PZ2, PZ3…} in honor of Science Blogs’ most controversial author, PZ Myers of Pharyngula fame, who couldn’t make it.

This session was also the most packed of all, and had some of the most interesting stories. PZ2 talked about how his employer wanted to put an editor on his blog, and how he expects to be fired any moment now for refusing to allow it. PZ3 talked about her employer took no interest in her personal blog until they thought they could benefit from its publicity. Another blogger talked about how he had to stop criticizing a company on his blog when he started receiving grant money from them.

One attendee talked about how someone dredged up an inflammatory post he had written years ago and submitted it to his present employer, demanding action. The employer, luckily, was sophisticated enough to realize the post was a personal one and did not represent the publication, but it does raise the idea of our online histories coming back to haunt us, not all of it under our control. Someone suggested that people should blog respectfully under their real name as a means of pushing the unfavorable websites down the search results.

I thought PZ3 had one of the most insightful observations, when she talked about the naivety of scientists, and their belief in intellectual honesty. It doesn’t occur to them that they can’t speak their mind.

“We need a bloggers union,” someone said, and someone else mentioned the Online News Association.

At the very end of the session, a moderator asked if there were any bloggers who worked for the Federal Government who had some stories to share. I didn’t think there was enough time left to squeeze in my experiences, but because I work for the Federal Government, on a Coast Guard base, I have to be extremely careful about my online actions while on my work computer.

Five years ago, I quite foolishly downloaded my ideonexus beta blog to my server at work to make some tweaks on my lunch break. It just happened that we were undergoing a security audit that week, and guess what they found when they looked at my computer?

I got pulled into the Project Manager’s office, where my blog, specifically a political rant, was pulled up in a browser window, being broadcast from my workstation to the intranet. After being properly chewed out, I was made to sign a statement that I would be fired if I ever screwed up like this again.

The real issue, I would learn later, wasn’t that I was using my workstation for non-work activities during my break, it was that I was using my computer to post political content that others could read. It is seriously illegal to use Federal property to promote a political ideology, and it would have been proper to fire me on the spot.

Recently, CGblog has me identified as an unofficial Coast Guard blogger; although, my blog really has very little to do with the Coast Guard, except for my post on Phytoremediation projects on base. This isn’t a big deal, as everyone at work knows I blog science and geekery for the local paper, but I do have two posts out there that could catch me some heat. One post brags about my ridiculously expensive tax-payer-funded chair and another jokes about getting away with having the Flying Spaghetti Monster on my desk.

Is there a Sword of Damocles hanging over my head?

Wiki for this Session

Science Online 09