I don't like this crap one bit. Newspapers piecing together you identity on a privately run anonymous web forum? I have said it before and I am going to say it again. Don't give out any clues to your identity in postings on FR. Not your real name, address, or where you work.
Yeah, and if you remember, the scum over at D.U was trying to figure out who he was.
What the hell!?! I registered here at Freerepublic almost two weeks ago and I haven’t got one single call from Carl Rove or anybody at the right wing conspiracy headquarters. I am really starting to feel left out… are ya’ll sure ya’ll wrote my number down right???
They'll never get me,I'm to smart for 'em.
Perhaps it's time for the public display of someone's postings be limited to 6 months or something. Sorta like a statute of limitation. Not suggesting deletion(the posts would still be around in the threads), just making it so it's harder to have a 1 stop shop for digging up details on someone.
-Until The Times identified him by piecing together information from his postings over the past two years-
-I don't like this crap one bit. Newspapers piecing together you identity on a privately run anonymous web forum?-
OK let me get this straight. MSM couldn't tell the they were fakes unless they brought in experts, BUT they can determine who broke the story by hunting down every post he's made in the last couple of years and tracking it back to a real name?
Time for me to change my screenname. Again.
Until The Times identified him by piecing together information from his postings over the past two years, MacDougald had taken pains to remain in the shadows — saying the credit for challenging CBS should remain with the blogosphere as a whole and not one individual
I don't like this crap one bit. Newspapers piecing together you identity on a privately run anonymous web forum? I have said it before and I am going to say it again. Don't give out any clues to your identity in postings on FR. Not your real name, address, or where you work.
Where is the LATimes investigation in the CBS documents? Into the Kinkos?
Where's the LATimes investigation into the half-million dollars to Democrats and Kerry given by the president's accuser? Those things don't even take but a minute to check and yet they can spend time reading TWO YEARS worth of posts on FreeRepublic and correlating it with 270 million possible suspects?
Buckhead has been singled out and I'm heartbroken. Why? He was NOT the first, he's not been the chief nor only questioner, nor the sole investigator of the documents' origins. There's no rationale for this piece by the LATimes. Do they mention THEY SUED FR in this presumably balanced piece? Do they mention the family of the alleged author of the documents saying he wasn't a typist, never mention the things claimed in the documents and didn't talk that way? Do they mention the alleged author's secretary says she did not type those documents, that she believes they're frauds? Do they mention CBS' own experts saw only *one* document each, raised concerns and were ignored? Do they ask why USA Today has SIX documents and CBS continues to assert there are only FOUR when the fifth document was given to a CBS expert for authentication! Do they ask how someone who was already retired could be putting pressure ? Do they find out if there's any record of ? Do they locate a Selectric of the area? Do they investigate the non-Guarde language used in the document? Do they investigate how a Tennessee Democrat party operative can PREDICT (in archived radio) the documents are coming weeks before the story breaks? Do they investigate who has a long-standing public grudge against the president and happens to have a running account at the Kinkos? And those are just a few questions they could do if they were really interested in INVESTIGATING.
Do they investigate why Kerry claims to have released all his documents when we know from an FOIA lawsuit that there are *AT LEAST* 31 PAGES HIDDEN and UNREVEALED?
DO THEY ASK ANYTHING THAT MATTERS ABOUT THIS STORY OR DO THEY SPIN FOR THE DEMOCRAT PARTY (TERRY'S BASELESS CLAIM ROVE DID IT) AND JOHN KERRY'S INTERESTS?
You're right. One should never give out personal info.
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But, ya know what? Even if you never do it, some slimeball folks know how to find out. Happened to me on a different forum.
I feel pretty safe here at FR.
I don't call myself "L.N. Smithee" for nothing. When I first used this variation on the showbiz pseudonym "Alan Smithee" on the short-lived Drudge Bulletin Board back in March 1998, I did so because I knew that if I was identified, it would give others control over my life -- most likely, people I didn't like and people who hated me with a passion.
I was the originator of the phrase "Sore/Loserman," which, with the assistance of Freepers more artistically skilled than I, became a minor phenomenon within the Florida recount circus. However, to this date, I have never told anyone in my "real life."
I don't believe I have given any clues that could bring the media slimeballs any closer to my identity than scanning San Francisco high school yearbooks spanning certain years, examining the faces of black men in an attempt to figure out which one would grow up to be more conservative than the rest.
I'm wondering if this is a counterattack against us uncredentialed pajama-clad nobodys. Think of the damage the loss of pseudonymity could do if the poster were, say, a professor hoping to get tenure someday, or even just a guy whose workplace is full of hyperactive leftists. There's a Japanese folk saying: the nail that stands up gets hammered down. I bet the LA Times wants to chill its rising on-line competition.