Judge Rules That Government Can Force Glassdoor To Unmask Anonymous Users Online (arstechnica.com) 130
pogopop77 shares a report from Ars Technica: An appeals court will soon decide whether the U.S. government can unmask anonymous users of Glassdoor -- and the entire proceeding is set to happen in secret. Federal investigators sent a subpoena asking for the identities of more than 100 anonymous users of the business-review site Glassdoor, who apparently posted reviews of a company that's under investigation for potential fraud related to its contracting practices. The government later scaled back its demand to just eight users. Prosecutors believe these eight Glassdoor users are "third-party witnesses to certain business practices relevant to [the] investigation." The name of the company under investigation is redacted from all public briefs. Glassdoor made a compromise proposal to the government: it would notify the users in question about the government's subpoena and then provide identifying information about users who were willing to participate. The government rejected that idea. At that point, Glassdoor lawyered up and headed to court, seeking to have the subpoena thrown out. Lawyers for Glassdoor argued that its users have a First Amendment right to speak anonymously. While the company has "no desire to interfere" with the investigation, if its users were forcibly identified, the investigation "could have a chilling effect on both Glassdoor's reviewers' and readers' willingness to use glassdoor.com," states Glassdoor's motion (PDF). The government opposed the motion, though, and prevailed in district court.
This will kill the site (Score:1)
Several former coworkers posted about how we don't allow non-Asians to take time off. I'm glad I didn't post anything about that.
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A union can also help with the understaffing problem.
By converting the understaffed problem into an overstaffed problem?
Re: This will kill the site (Score:1)
The answer to this conundrum is that you are an idiot or a liar or most likely both.
Re:This will kill the site (Score:4, Interesting)
They'll have to change their policies to remove their own ability to identify anonymous posters.
Teach your children (Score:5, Insightful)
Never put your real name on the internet. Use burner accounts for everything.
Re:Teach your children (Score:5, Interesting)
Never put your real name on the internet. Use burner accounts for everything.
If these users had used their real names, they would not be "anonymous users". The court ruled they can be unmasked anyway.
Re:Teach your children (Score:4, Insightful)
If they were actually anonymous users, the company won't be able to unmask them. Most likely they were registered users that posted anonymously. And if they used their real names, they will get burnt.
Re:Teach your children (Score:4, Insightful)
If they were actually anonymous users, the company won't be able to unmask them. Most likely they were registered users that posted anonymously. And if they used their real names, they will get burnt.
I don't think it will make any difference whether they used their real names or not. If they used an offshore VPN they might have a chance, but never underestimate the resourcefulness of government investigators. It's a lot harder to be anonymous on the Internet than you might think.
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I don't think it will make any difference whether they used their real names or not. If they used an offshore VPN they might have a chance, but never underestimate the resourcefulness of government investigators. It's a lot harder to be anonymous on the Internet than you might think.
Often though, the government is lazy, and only wants to appear to be doing something. So if there's 100 names, and they can't track down five of them, they'll just blow them off.
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I don't think it will make any difference whether they used their real names or not. If they used an offshore VPN they might have a chance, but never underestimate the resourcefulness of government investigators. It's a lot harder to be anonymous on the Internet than you might think.
It is trivial if you use an open WiFi hotspot; at best that will give them your general location. If you are paranoid then in addition, forge your MAC address and use a separate browser inside of an encrypted VM.
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Don't sigh up using your real name. If glassdoor didn't log IPs the government would be SOL.
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Glassdoor does not allow anonymous users, but they do (did?) allow anonymous reviews of companies. This allowed people to post reviews, but because they weren't anonymous *users* it (supposedly) kept them honest.
I've reviewed a few companies there, in the hopes that my reviews would either motivate the company to change horrible policies, or at the very least to give prospective employees the opportunity to make an educated decision about potential employers.
On the larger topic, anyone with a cursory under
Re: Teach your children (Score:1)
Escalate as much as you like. Black helicopters and black bags over the head are at the root of the hierarchy and guess who has access to that level?
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Escalate high enough and you WILL find a judge that agrees with you.
Have you seen the makeup of the Supreme Court recently? I'm not so sure they will.
The constitution hasn't guaranteed any rights to anyone in many decades.
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You might want to take a look at some of the rulings from Goruch. He seems to be willing to call bullshit on the government.
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Glassdoor does not allow anonymous users
How do they prevent anonymous users? Do they require you to send in a copy of your ID when you sign up?
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Go to the web site and look, don't be a dick. They are an employment web site and you can not anonymously apply for a job, like duh. So obviously those people who joined are completely exposed to commercial wilful retaliation if they are exposed for negative reviews. This is the intent, a trial action to punch a hole into glassdoor so that corporations can attack everyone and silence all transgressors, the judge knows this and in all liklihood getting suitably paid for this at election time.
Basically it wi
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From the look of it, this is a criminal investigation into the company reviewed--I think that, actually, it would have been better for Glassdoor to argue that unless the court is issuing summons or subpoenas for these people, it is inappropriate to be compelling Glassdoor to reveal their names at this point.
It also seems like a generally stupid thing to do overall; these are people who are hoped to be useful witnesses for the government. This is going to be more likely to have them hostile, especially sinc
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????
All Glassdoor has to do is not record who wrote the review. I log in, type a review into a textbook. Glassdoor takes the text and puts it in a database row that has company/date/review.
Then they turn to the government and truthfully say, "We have not possible way of telling you who wrote that review."
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There's no such thing as an anonymous account...even if you use a burner account. These days, sites like Google and Facebook can track you even if you never even log in to their services! Even disabling javascript doesn't help. Basically, all it takes is for you to go online, to be trackable.
Re:Teach your children (Score:4, Insightful)
That's mostly true but anonymity is mostly possible. It's just difficult.
Tails, free WiFi, a little OpSec, a little discipline and throw away email addresses can keep you ahead of pretty much anyone other than a TLA.
LK
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pretty much anyone other than a TLA.
If you aren't anonymous to a TLA, then you aren't truly anonymous.
I would say that it's probably still possible to be truly anonymous online, but it would take a LOT of work, both in the initial setup, and in the maintenance of it.
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pretty much anyone other than a TLA.
If you aren't anonymous to a TLA, then you aren't truly anonymous.
I would say that it's probably still possible to be truly anonymous online, but it would take a LOT of work, both in the initial setup, and in the maintenance of it.
For a one-and-done kind of situation, you can probably remain anonymous to a TLA but for sustained two-way communication, the NSA can find you, if they're sufficiently motivated.
LK
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That's the fun part here, they aren't even alleging that these people did anything wrong, they're alleging that they witnessed wrongdoing and that should be enough to unmask them.
But then most of the world already realizes that the USA is a totalitarian regime. Screaming "land of the free, home of the brave" at the top of their lungs doesn't really convince anyone that they are either.
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Law enforcement has always had the right to bring in possible witnesses to illegal acts and talk to them. The courts have always had the power to get information. The privacy concerns are normally about what people can do without judicial oversight and the need for a warrant, and don't apply here.
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The privacy concerns are normally about what people can do without judicial oversight and the need for a warrant, and don't apply here.
In the legal world, you may be correct. But generally when people talk about "privacy concerns", they are talking about privacy concerns in a more general sense, not about what the law thinks of as "privacy concerns".
If someone (government or otherwise) legally obtains information about me against my will, my privacy has still been violated. That violation may or may not be ethically or morally justifiable, but it's a violation nonetheless.
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You never have had privacy against a legitimate criminal investigation. I don't know of any country that would guarantee that.
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Yeah, my concern here is that they seem to have gone straight to asking Glassdoor to give them the names directly. I'd have started with accepting the deal Glassdoor offered, with the understanding that I may need to subpoena those who don't come forward--and would like to know of those who don't agree to talk to me, how many of those had been a 'No' vs 'No response.' (The latter group may simply have thought Glassdoor's email was spam, while the former I'd probably be best off not calling as a witness un
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Ever heard the expression "2 wrongs don't make a right?"
Americans love to think they're superior, but they're no better than anyone else.
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Good luck with that. I couldn't teach my boys not to write stuff down so that their mother wouldn't find it.
Hint for you younger guys. If you don't want to mom to find it, don't write it down!!
Spoiler: name of company (Score:3, Funny)
The company under investigation is Slashdot. The anonymous tipsters revealed their shady business practices including posting repurposed press releases on the front page ("slashvertisements"), inflating story count by posting the same story numerous times ("dupes") and fraudulently claiming to employ competent editors who are actually illiterate millennials.
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fraudulently claiming to employ competent editors who are actually illiterate millennials
That would be satire, not fraud.
Anonymity (Score:5, Interesting)
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Do you have a right to anonymity online?
If you did, you could use it to aid terrorist activities, like bombing. So do you really want online anonymity, citizen?
Re:Anonymity (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes.
By the by, most terrorists are already known to law enforcement by the time they do whatever it is they're going to do. How many times have we heard "the FBI had previously investigated the suspect" or "British counter-terror officials had been monitoring the attacker for several years?" Anonymity isn't really the issue, and even if it were, I'm not going to live my life afraid of terrorists.
Re:Anonymity (Score:5, Informative)
Anonymity was never really possible offline either. Nor was it ever protected by the Constitution. What the Constitution does protect, is your right to criticize the government, even if you do not try to hide your identity. Taking advantage of this freedom does not guarantee the lack of consequences. It only guarantees that you can't be punished by the law for stating your mind.
While that's true (Score:2)
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The protections do apply online. What they do not apply to, and have never applied to, is legitimate law enforcement officers serving a subpoena they obtained from a judge. Journalists have often dealt with this by contempt of court and serving jail time to protect sources, but that isn't a trivial thing to do.
This is a tough one (Score:4, Insightful)
I understand Glassdoor's argument about protecting the privacy of their users, and the chilling effect that losing pseudonymity would have.
On the other hand, it sounds like these users may be witnesses to a crime of fraud. That seems to favor the government's case for talking to them.
If only the users in question could be deposed in the case without having their identities revealed. IANAL -- Is there a way to do this?
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Yes of course, the identities of the witnesses would need to be revealed to the defendant. I was talking about sealing the records from public access.
Without Glass Door there would be no reports at al (Score:3)
In the bigger scheme of things, a Glassdoor that allows leaks reduces fraud. But killing the site (and similiar sites) means that in future there will be no users to disclose.
Courts need to focus on the public good in general and not just on one particular case.
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Any chance whistleblower "protections" could apply? Just wondering...
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In the bigger scheme of things, a Glassdoor that allows leaks reduces fraud. But killing the site (and similiar sites) means that in future there will be no users to disclose.
Courts need to focus on the public good in general and not just on one particular case.
But the public good is served poorly if the claims that Glassdoor's users bring forward aren't tested in the courts.
I get that Glassdoor's mission isn't to expose the malfeasance of companies its users once worked for -- it's to offer a clearing house for comments on the culture of companies, to benefit potential new employees. But surely, the worst of those companies will undergo a special kind of scrutiny that includes what we're discussing here. Whether Glassdoor likes it or not, they will need to cope w
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What I don't understand is why the Glassdoor posters must be revealed but the name of the company is a secret.
Have we entered into an alternate universe where corporations have a higher level of rights than humans?
Re:This is a tough one (Score:5, Insightful)
What I don't understand is why the Glassdoor posters must be revealed but the name of the company is a secret. Have we entered into an alternate universe where corporations have a higher level of rights than humans?
Not at all. We are still in the ordinary, everyday quotidian universe. Where corporations have a higher level of rights than humans.
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Hey, maybe the GP has slipped through a crack in spacetime from a universe better than ours.
Re: This is a tough one (Score:2, Informative)
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I don't understand how someone can be forced to give testimony against their will. If you force someone to show up in court and say stuff, how can you trust that stuff is accurate and not a fabricated lie to spite you?
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"how can you trust that stuff is accurate and not a fabricated lie to spite you"
By having a trial.
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So we'll be having a trial to test the testimony of each of these forced witnesses?
Does that seem efficient?
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Bad idea. That's contempt of court, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. Yes, a judge can force you to testify. No, that isn't a sign of the end of times, it has been established practice for a long time.
Lying to the court is an even worse idea. That's perjury, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
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Bad idea.
So is a government becoming too corrupt and authoritarian.
At some point, even a screwed-up, dumbed-down, self-absorbed, materialistic population like exists currently in the US will only tolerate so much before the Bubba Effect kicks in and people start shooting and burning anyone and anything to do with the federal government and anyone acting on their behalf. You got a small taste with Trump's election of the population's frustration with those in government. I believe that for many that voted for Trump,
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I agree that the US is corrupt, but that a judge can force you to testify is not a sign of that. It simply means that it is more important for justice to prevail than some discomfort for the individual. Again, this is long established practice. Longer than the US exists.
Voting for Trump is a very strange way to express your anger at corruption. Perhaps you have been conned into voting for him, but isn't it time then to get angry at the con men that convinced you to do that?
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That is why the court subpoena people. If you are found lying, then you get charged with Perjury.
From Google:
A subpoena is a legal document that orders an individual to testify for an investigation or legal proceeding at a specific date and time. A subpoena can be a summons for a person to provide testimony at a trial, testify during the early stages of an investigation, or provide physical evidence relevant to the case.
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Because if they are caught lying in count, it's perjury and carries a maximum sentence (a felony sentence btw) of up to 5 years in prison, and fines.
Is your spite worth up to 5 years in prison and seizing all your assets (plus some)?
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While I might be able to support court ordered unmasking of criminals for certain types of crime, unmasking of potential (not even confirmed) witnesses to a contractual dispute is very clear overreach of the legal system in interfering with innocent citizens' lives.
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I would think if Glassdoor could limit sharing the users, in cases of criminal legal actions. And not just because the company didn't like a negative review, and wanted to do a trumped up Slander charge.
I found found usually the lowest reviews from the company comes from bad employees (or employees who were not a good fit for that particular company).So they were feeling slighted, because they weren't particularly liked or valued in the company.
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On the other hand, it sounds like these users may be witnesses to a crime of fraud.
However, they spoke anonymously about it, and Glassdoor's purpose in life is for publishing the postings from these anonymous sources. Glassdoor's purpose is Not to exist as a free tool to help trace frausters.
The authorities should be able to simply use the anonymous postings as a "tip", and then do the actual legwork of talking with all the potential people. If they have a legit investigation, they should already
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From what the article says, this isn't a deposition. Federal agents want to talk to possible witnesses. That can be done without revealing identities.
Yeah,I saw it all. (Score:1)
It was Colonel Mustard in the Conservatory with the Candlestick.
Now hat I've testified, no need for a trial. Hang them all.
All writs act: NSLs (Score:4, Interesting)
I was in charge of a very large library system. In 20xx (I don't want to be specific), the Chief Technical Archivist issued me a directive: Purge all logs with personally identifiable information after 7 days that the transaction closed. EG: Any books checked out, that record's PII was to be deleted after 7 days of checking it back in.
The patron's record showing how many books they checked out was to be purged as well - EG: reset to zero for any but books currently checked out.
Only aggregate data was to be retained. Daily transaction logs were to be purged immediately - which was a pain in the neck, because that meant the system had to be shut down for a full cold back up every day - which could not be kept for more than a few days. (I solved this issue by using RAID 50 and splitting the RAID mirror, then backing it up, then resyncing the mirror. That way it was "cold", but the system was down for only a few seconds.)
On my personal sites, I set the log files to /dev/null, and only log when I have a issue (technical or user).
Time to get our snoopy government out of our hair. They must be forced to stop shoving their nose in our crotch with indiscriminate abandon. Am I against prosecuting crime? Not at all. But I'm not in favor of our government being able to snoop into every breath we take, every penny we spend, every call we make, every text we have. "They hate us for our freedoms" - what a FSCK'ing JOKE.
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And this is why so many governments are passing laws requiring logs to be created and retained for long periods of time.
Unfortunately the solution to corrupt and overreaching government isn't to find loopholes in their rules, those will be closed once enough of the common people find them, the only real solution is to change that government. Ideally that would be done by voting in rational people, but it seems that Americans are reluctant to vote for anyone who isn't already part of the establishment which
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It's more baffling to watch from the inside, because you're considered insane for gaping at it with utter disbelief.
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Ideally that would be done by voting in rational people, but it seems that Americans are reluctant to vote for anyone who isn't already part of the establishment which they seem to despise. It really is baffling to an outsider to watch.
I think the problem is that rational people don't tend to run for office.
Going out of their way much? (Score:4, Funny)
These prosecutors act like spoiled children.
"You can't go into that door"
"I DEMAND TO BE LET INTO THAT DOOR!!!"
"There's nothing in there! And if you open it, you'll let the dog out and I'll have to chase it down the street!
"NOWNOWNOWNOW!!!"
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Well, we could allow you to go in and tie the dog up before we go in. Maybe you can tidy up first. Burn the mail about your yoga classes or your daughter's wedding.
Re:Here's one way around this (Score:4, Interesting)
The right to anonymity of these people must be guaranteed by the state. Same as if they were mafia stoolies. With an added penalty to redress the loss of revenue to Glassdoor by having people turned off engaging in its process in case they are outed, in the case that the anonymity of the witnesses is broken.
This may mean that anything directly from these people is inadmissable, but that can still be used to investigate something that IS admissable evience.
To corporations and the government, the trial at the center of all this is simply a means to an end, a convenient opportunity to accomplish the underlying goal: Destroying Glassdoor and setting in place a heavy disincentive for anyone else thinking of attempt to start a similar kind of service that reveals what many powerful people and businesses would wish to be ignored by everyone. It also serves government power-creep in eroding citizen's personal privacy rights & expectations.
Seeing as there is a rotating door between many mid- to high-level government positions and private-sector industries and corporations, it makes perfect sense that that they would team-up to destroy Glassdoor and make an example of them.
Strat
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I've only worked at one place that even considered Glassdoor, and it was considered a joke. A website where disgruntled employees went to bitch about why they got fired. I can't imagine why there would be a grand conspiracy between big government and big industry to bring it down. Besides, that is not their modus operandi. They are more likely to collude to co-opt media such as this, and have it send the message they want, like they do with our mass media.
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Let's look at possible hypotheses.
Hypothesis: Government investigators want to talk to certain individuals about crimes they likely witnessed. To this end, they get a subpoena to get the identities of the probable witnesses, after which they will talk to them as part of the investigation. Note that this is not any sort of power creep, as the government has always had the power to subpoena information relevant to a criminal investigation.
Hypothesis: Government, for some strange reason, wants to elim
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Let's look at possible hypotheses.
Hypothesis: Government investigators want to talk to certain individuals about crimes they likely witnessed. To this end, they get a subpoena to get the identities of the probable witnesses, after which they will talk to them as part of the investigation. Note that this is not any sort of power creep, as the government has always had the power to subpoena information relevant to a criminal investigation.
Hypothesis: Government, for some strange reason, wants to eliminate or discredit Glassdoor, and tries to do so by serving a subpoena to get the identities of eight commenters, presumably thinking that this will discourage people from leaving comments on Glassdoor.
Pick the one that looks the simplest, has the least dubious constructions, and is overall the likeliest.
The two goals you stated are not mutually exclusive. Using some otherwise-ordinary and unremarkable prosecution, investigation, etc that would occur in any case, to simultaneously accomplish some other, possibly totally unrelated goal and/or advance some agenda, has been a pretty bog-standard practice in the US for decades.
Strat
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Yes, but the hypothesis that doesn't include any government hostility is quite sufficient to cover all the evidence. Therefore, assuming that the government does have it in for Glassdoor is a multiplication of hypotheses, which William of Ockham warned against.
The Company is Triwest Healthcare Alliance (Score:2)
http://webreprints.djreprints.... [djreprints.com]
People should know by now (Score:2)
You cannot expect that any identifying information you provide to any website (or any business, online or not) will be kept confidential.
It's the law.