----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ian Welton" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2006 11:55 AM
Subject: Re: [data-protection] The other Blair


>
> Is that an official opinion, or informed by personal experience and
> expressed as a personal opinion?
>

I know that you are being ironic (I think) but unlike most people in this 
group I work for myself (offers kindly received) and therefore I speak for 
noone but myself.

It is quite obvious that anyone else who writes from their workplace to a 
semi-public discussion group, whilst expressing a personal opinion, is 
presumably aware of their professional opinion and the fact that it is being 
circulated to 500+ people and archived must mean that participants views are 
constrained by this fact - after all I used to be a local government 
officer.

When I occasionally spoke at meetings of the Royal Statistical Society and 
these were reported in their Abstracts my affiliation. Clearly anyone who 
speaks publicly in their professional capacity is presumed to be aware of 
that fact.

I was fairly recently vilified in a (moderated) newsgroup on the Internet. 
Despite the fact that I posted anonymously in the group it was clear that 
others knew who I was. I considered that the accusations made against me put 
me in some danger.

A number of the people posting to this group (not an academic group) didn't 
uses an alias and used university email addresses in the US and Israel.

One of the people who so vilified me I complained to their university. I 
didn't stay around to see precisely what happened but eavesdropping on the 
group I think that the poster to whose university I had complained had been 
asked by his university at the least to put a disclaimer.

The nature of most newsgroups that they generally descend in to abuse and I 
would have thought that participation by academics or other university staff 
from a university address was not to be encouraged (anyone with UK 
Email/Internet Policy).

Nick Landau 




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