Posted on 02/11/2005 7:19:23 AM PST by Lazamataz
Recently, two Freepers who have some measure of prominance outside the forum have been damaged by liberals and/or Democrats. Jeff Gannon has resigned as a White House reporter, and the individual who goes by the name NCPAC has left his position in Maryland.
J. Gannon wasn't necessarily damaged by anything he posted here, but NCPAC was damaged by the work of a Democrat mole or a Washington Post reporter who revealed his freepmails.
It should be possible to post on this forum with anonymity and to be able to really discuss what's on your mind without worrying about Democrats trying to ruin your professional life, so, in order to help prominent Republicans who may wish to be an active member of Free Republic, I'm formulating some suggestions that I would like to have new users see.
This is what I have so far, as far as guidelines to help our prominent freepers avoid damage in the future:
If You Are A High-Profile Individual In “Real Life”….
If your daily job is such that you are a high-profile individual – as example, an official in a Republican campaign, or a state official in a Republican administration, or a rightward-leaning reporter – please read this article and take these suggestions.
- Please don’t reveal your identity. Please don’t drop hints as to who you are. Please don’t succumb to the temptation to show off a little and thusly compromise your anonymity.
- Know that there are Democrat operatives (and now, it appears, Legacy Media reporters) who pretend to be loyal conservatives. They will attempt to get you to reveal damaging information about your candidate, your administration, or your media enterprise.
- This is for ALL Freepers: Never reveal any personal contact information. Please don’t post (or share in Freepmail) any email accounts, private phone numbers, addresses, or places of employment – unless you really know and trust the person to whom you are revealing these things.
- Know that Freepmail can be, and sometimes is, exposed publicly. Please, never say anything in Freepmail that you would not want posted on the public forum. Please, people, add whatever you think might be helpful, and I will post the result as a new article.
Under a couple of different screen names. I did once change names because I thought my screen name was too easy to figure out. That was during the Clinton years when it won't have surprised me to have a knock on the door from my local FBI.
I am positive there are real highly trained and DNC paid posters that simply lurk and stay under the radar monitoring this site looking for dirt and to see what stories and articles are being hit hard.
If you have a family and a career and you work for a large company that might be influenced by political pressure you could be excused for not being so brave.
Yeah, I know.
With the Dan Rather memos last year, the MSM was thoroughly embarrassed by FR, and they went after Buckhead for it.
They're also angry over their growing irrelevance, so they'll be guning for anyone who posts here, the more well known first.
They will, of course, be happy with anyone of us that they nail in any way shape or form.
We'll just have to remember to keep our wits about us in the middle of our cracking wise.
Goes double for the handful of Dems that post here because the mainstream Dem party is out of touch.
Excellent advice.
However, I've wondered over the years whether we could change our 'handle' without losing our sign-up date and FR-Priority#. Although I realize if this became commonplace it would lead to a lot of confusion here since we've gotten to know FReepers under certain names and we ALL would have to constantly start all over in our relationships. Annoying also, would be the extra work by Jim Robinson to reenter people in the database if this became common practice.
Bump.
Houston, you have hit the nail directly on the head.
I, too, have helped in party politics for years and years. In all my years of experience I've observed that the people who are too anxious to let you know "Who" they are and "What" they know will sooner or later be sorry they laid their cards on the table. It's a sad, but true, fact that information is Power. Some people feel they MUST share their information in order to demonstrate how powerful they are. But then in other situations, the Powerful Individual may have FACTS available to them, which they use in casual debate here at FR. When someone challenges their factual statement, in FReepmail, or otherwise, they reveal their identity in order to substantiate the facts.
Howlin, great thread. It's sort of strange to think that someone who has attained notoriety, would need the advice you're listed. But unfortunately, there are some who do. Thank you for putting it out there.
Ping
The prominent Freepers are the ones I am looking to protect with this post, but this is a very good idea for most other Freepers. Thanks!
YOu have freepmail.
Is anyone working on that? What if MD4BUSH used an anonymizer?
Meaning what?
What relationship does your comment have with my semi humorous lame post #91
I was slogging through the DUmp around election time, and they had posts bragging about firing employees over political views.
So yes, they do react as you said.
Made me wonder if it could be prosecutable, but one would have to prove it which makes it extremely difficult.
The burden of proof would be hard to achieve in that case.
LOL. Is that you in the next van over?
Know, we mistn't! ;)
I know ... I know ... Sometimes I think I'm a person of impotence.
I don't think I'm famous enough to worry. When the suits with earpieces show up at the Festival, I'll start to fret.
Sounds good. Many places are blocking proxy avoidance and anonymizer technologies these days in an effort to stop people from accessing external e-mail accounts. Those tend to be the most likely places that new viruses get introduced onto what were thought to be protected systems so that's why the push.
Even so if there's someone in an IT department that wants to see what you're doing bad enough they can do it.
Many PC's being rolled out to users these days contain remote access software. It's supposed to be used to help the user in the event of system problems. Someone from IT can remotely access the system and fix your problem. Those systems are SUPPOSED to notify the user that someone is requesting remote access and then the user has to authorize that remote access. The only problem is that both features (notification and authorization) can be turned off.
This means that not only can someone gain access to your system without you knowing or granting it but without the average user EVER knowing it's even happened unless they are sitting there watching their computer suddenly start doing it's own thing.
In other words, while out of the office either take the pc (assuming laptop) with you or make sure it's turned off and you are logged off.
With remote access EVERY drive you have is available to the person remoting. This includes your hard drive.
And always assume that if you are on a network that someone with the right security rights potentially has access to what you're doing. They may not use the ability but don't think they don't have it.
Additionally, Jim could offer a secure mode with our browsers when posting. This would stop any traffic snooping via corporate networks; however, it would still leave screen capture technology untouched.
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