On the Web, the world gets smaller fast
It seems to be taking a lot of sex tapes, e-mail scandals and idiotic Web site postings for people to understand that the Internet is a virtual open-mike night, a cable access channel where anyone can get on the air and anyone can tune in.
The latest people to learn this lesson are officers in the Lexington Police Department whose careers are now in jeopardy because they didn't realize it might not be a good idea to post their loathsome views about the entire city on the World Wide Web.
The operative terms are "world" and "wide," people.
Of course, this isn't even the first time in the past year that the halls of power in Kentucky were rocked by electronic communications.
E-mail isn't as obviously public as the Internet, but in the recent hiring scandal, many officials in Gov. Ernie Fletcher's administration have found that hitting "delete" is hardly as final as putting a handwritten note through a paper shredder.
And geez, ask any celebrity about the kind of life videos of their most intimate moments take on the Web. The phrase "Paris Hilton sex tape" generated more than 4 million items on Google.
OK, we can see how intimate and personal the computer can seem. As I write this, I am alone at my kitchen table. It feels as if this is between me and my keyboard, even though I'm aware I'm writing something that will be published in nearly 150,000 papers. It's easy to see how someone who doesn't publish for a living might not fathom how public the Web is. I found that out when I got to the Herald-Leader and my articles were going up on www. kentucky.com. Suddenly, there's a national audience. Just two weeks ago, I received several responses from Europe to a column I wrote about new James Bond Daniel Craig. I still receive e-mails regarding articles I've written years ago that have stayed alive on cyberspace.
All of which is to say, you can sort of see how these officers might have viewed their www.myspace.com pages as private jokes. "Hey buddy, look what I put up on MySpace now. Heh heh heh." It might never have occurred to them that Police Chief Anthany Beatty would get a look at them, that thousands of the citizens they were sworn to serve and protect would get a look at them.
But that's what happened, and it should serve as a cautionary tale to everyone.
Already, these guys will be disciplined under rules governing officers' conduct, and the chief is looking at more explicit language for the employee rules regarding the Internet. It would be smart for other offices to do the same.
I know a number of people with Web sites or blogs out there whose employers probably would be chagrined if the contents were made widely public and associated with the employees' day jobs. But they probably never thought of that.
Recently, the media, schools and churches have been filled with information about the Internet and kids. Just three weeks ago, I attended a seminar about MySpace.com and the risky information kids post in their pages on the popular Web site. One of my church's youth pastors did a ZIP code search for girls 18 to 19 years old in a 10-mile radius of 40508 on MySpace -- the type of search a sexual predator might do -- and it returned 1,865 people.
The message was: Teach your kids about how to carefully use the Internet. Apparently, someone also needs to talk to the adults.
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The latest people to learn this lesson are officers in the Lexington Police Department whose careers are now in jeopardy because they didn't realize it might not be a good idea to post their loathsome views about the entire city on the World Wide Web.
The operative terms are "world" and "wide," people.
Of course, this isn't even the first time in the past year that the halls of power in Kentucky were rocked by electronic communications.
E-mail isn't as obviously public as the Internet, but in the recent hiring scandal, many officials in Gov. Ernie Fletcher's administration have found that hitting "delete" is hardly as final as putting a handwritten note through a paper shredder.
And geez, ask any celebrity about the kind of life videos of their most intimate moments take on the Web. The phrase "Paris Hilton sex tape" generated more than 4 million items on Google.
OK, we can see how intimate and personal the computer can seem. As I write this, I am alone at my kitchen table. It feels as if this is between me and my keyboard, even though I'm aware I'm writing something that will be published in nearly 150,000 papers. It's easy to see how someone who doesn't publish for a living might not fathom how public the Web is. I found that out when I got to the Herald-Leader and my articles were going up on www. kentucky.com. Suddenly, there's a national audience. Just two weeks ago, I received several responses from Europe to a column I wrote about new James Bond Daniel Craig. I still receive e-mails regarding articles I've written years ago that have stayed alive on cyberspace.
All of which is to say, you can sort of see how these officers might have viewed their www.myspace.com pages as private jokes. "Hey buddy, look what I put up on MySpace now. Heh heh heh." It might never have occurred to them that Police Chief Anthany Beatty would get a look at them, that thousands of the citizens they were sworn to serve and protect would get a look at them.
But that's what happened, and it should serve as a cautionary tale to everyone.
Already, these guys will be disciplined under rules governing officers' conduct, and the chief is looking at more explicit language for the employee rules regarding the Internet. It would be smart for other offices to do the same.
I know a number of people with Web sites or blogs out there whose employers probably would be chagrined if the contents were made widely public and associated with the employees' day jobs. But they probably never thought of that.
Recently, the media, schools and churches have been filled with information about the Internet and kids. Just three weeks ago, I attended a seminar about MySpace.com and the risky information kids post in their pages on the popular Web site. One of my church's youth pastors did a ZIP code search for girls 18 to 19 years old in a 10-mile radius of 40508 on MySpace -- the type of search a sexual predator might do -- and it returned 1,865 people.
The message was: Teach your kids about how to carefully use the Internet. Apparently, someone also needs to talk to the adults.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
posted by idtics at 12:17 AM
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