Detective Constable Richard Horton, a police officer of the Lancashire Police, was recently unmasked. He kept a blog, where he called himself Jack Night. At this webpage he wrote about all kinds of topics and news items, but he also gave his opinion about police business. He won the Orwell blogging prize and was hailed on blogs and in newspapers as an unusually impassioned, eloquent and informed piece of frontline reporting. Horton was, of course, very satisfied with winning the award, but felt a bit uncomfortable as well because all of the sudden he got a lot of media attention and he wanted to remain anonymous. Unfortunately another blogger did some research and discovered and unmasked his identity. Horton went to court to ask the judge to protect his privacy, but he declined. The judge said that people that write on public blogs cannot expect privacy. The Lancashire Police is not happy about their detective’s unprofessional writing.
In my opinion it is Horton’s own fault that he has problems with the police department now, because he should have realized that you cannot be anonymous on the internet anymore. If you get a lot of attention, in this case media attention, there could be another blogger who would really like to know who you are and it is not too difficult to track someone down these days, especially for people who know a lot about computers and the internet. I do understand that Detective Horton regrets that he was unmasked but I believe that a police officer has a certain role model and he did not gave a good example to the public. Of course you can give you opinion, it does not even matter if you do that on the internet or somewhere else, but Richard Horton went very far with his blog diaries, too far if you ask me.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jun/16/blogging-cop-found-out
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