Whistle While You Work?

Posted on January 12, 2006

An L.A. Times article says there is a new term for bloggers that reveal information about their employer in a blog: whistle-blogging.

When it comes to blogging in your office, lawyer Mike Oliver has a basic premise: Don't point and click too fast.
"If you're the employee and you're upset because you didn't get a raise or you're not getting along with your boss, the inclination now is to post your unhappiness on a blog," said Oliver, who has taught cyberspace law at the University of Maryland and is formulating a blogging policy for his nearly 40 technology-based clients. "But I find this highly dangerous for the employee."
When the Internet came of age in the mid-1990s, the first problem employees encountered was with e-mail, when some workers who circulated messages with incriminating information were fired.
Now blogging is a new source of employer-employee trouble. Typically blogs, short for "Web logs," are opinionated and personal posts on the Internet. They can take on a diary-type form and often feature frequent updates.

Most people that keep up with blogging are aware people have been fired because of their blogs -- this post lists a few of the more well-known blog-related firings. Some bloggers may have revealed company secrets they should not have while others may have been fired unfairly. At the same time there are probably many bloggers that blog frequently about work who will never get fired.

Blogging about work can be difficult for bloggers to avoid -- especially bloggers with personal blogs. Work is a big part of people's lives so it is an obvious conversation piece.

Even so, lawyer Mike Oliver's advice, "Don't point and click too fast," is probably the best practice for cautious blogging. The term whistle-blogger sounds very similar to whistleblower and the term sounds like it has more to do with bloggers who write critical things about their employer or reveal corporate secrets than the personal bloggers who just blog about what they do for a living.

For those who want to be whistle-bloggers the EFF offers advice for blogging anonymously, but keep in mind that anonymous bloggers are outed from time to time.