Today's Globe story on the Beacon Hill cleaning lady states:
Because no charges had been filed by last night, the Globe is withholding the woman's name.
Which is understandable. But the story then gives enough details about the woman's professional life that any bored Web surfer with 10 minutes to spare could quickly determine her name and even her social-security number.
The Globe really needs to come into the 21st century: Either don't provide enough gratuitous details about the woman's life to make looking her up easy or just print her name.
Yes, I posted her name yesterday (thanks to the Globe for mentioning she lived on the fourth floor, which led to the Boston online assessing records, which, since she is an owner-occupant, yielded her name and then the resulting Google search). Should I have?
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Comments
name away
By steve weeb
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 11:25am
the woman caused a major disturbance. people were forced out of their homes for more than 12 hours. I don't see why her name should be withheld. I always thought rule of thumb was withhold the names of victims of crimes, which doesn't even seem to hold true anymore anyway.
Misidentification Risk
By SwirlyGrrl
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 11:33am
Was there more than one apartment on each floor of that builiding? Was the person who owned that unit living there? Was she the same as the person involved? Did she have housemates, friends staying over?
All you know is that the person you named owned the place. There is some risk to using those records, because the owner is not always the same as the occupant, and the occupants are not always the people of interest.
Right you are
By adamg
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 11:37am
There are two units on that floor, only one of which is owner-occupied. Like you said, that alone wouldn't be enough to publish. But again, thanks to the Globe, I knew she was "an MIT chemist," which tied in with the other stuff I found about her, including one drug-company submission to the SEC that not only was "signed" by her but listed the same Beacon Hill address.
Even So ...
By SwirlyGrrl
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 11:53am
there is still some uncertainty - she might have sublet to a friend or a visiting professor or grad student from her department who would also qualify as "MIT Chemist".
(try to match death certificates with address records and you learn stuff the hard way)
I'm still surprised that a chemist would mix that kind of stuff in her own home. Packs of draino in aluminum foil maybe ... But maybe a biochemist would do it to kill every last bit of psychotic space ecoli on every surface?
I'm still surprised that a
By sheenaspleena
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 12:13pm
right.
who would every mix cleaning supplies with furniture and broken glass?
it wasn't like she was mixing sulfuric acid with lighter fluid or something...
It turned out to be household items such as shampoo, floor wax, and dish detergent," said Steve MacDonald, spokesman for the Boston Fire Department. "She was squirting, spraying these items on herself and on the floor and furniture in the apartment and mixing it all up."
Several bottles and boxes of Tide laundry detergent, along with one bottle of Mop & Glo, were scattered throughout the apartment, alongside disheveled furniture and on top of broken glass
Good point
By SwirlyGrrl
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 12:34pm
Must be that sanitizing all those elusive space ecoli led to some unintended reactions - otherwise, the bleach/ammonia thing is drilled in from day 1 of nearly any chemistry study.
Household items are not necessarily safe when mixed ...
Destroy!
I wish you'd stop calling her "the cleaning lady", though.
By Dan Farnkoff
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 11:36am
I know it's supposed to be funny, and it is sorta funny. However, it's confusing and it suggests that this was her occupation. In fact, she is a biochemist, who could theoretically know more than the average person about how to turn household cleaning supplies into a bomb, right? Every time I saw the headline I thought that they had arrested somebody's maid- shame on me I guess for not investigating the post.
Yeah, cheap shot, will stop
By adamg
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 11:38am
Obviously, it's because she was a lady. With cleaning supplies. But enough.
Pretty impressive investigative work, though.
By Dan Farnkoff
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 11:49am
That's the type of effort that makes blogs consistently interesting and relevant.
True confession time
By adamg
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 12:10pm
I went to sleep the other night blissfully unaware of the drama unfolding only a few miles to the north. I woke up the next morning to find some e-mail from somebody who'd already done the basic lookup, based on the initial Globe report. I'd give him full credit, but he'd prefer anonymity.
statutory right to healthcare privacy
By Anonymous
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 12:20pm
Did the Globe not also report "the suspect" (what Boston Police call citizens) had mental illness?
Having announced her mental illness publicly, would they then be violating her statutory right to privacy by publishing her name? Any lawyers out there?
Nope, no special rights
By eeka not a lawyer
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 12:51pm
I'm not a lawyer, but I'm a mental health clinician with a goodly amount of experience in this area. It's only healthcare providers (this includes licensed folks, as well as anyone working for a licensed agency that provides housing, day programs, etc.) who are legally obligated to protect people's privacy. For others, there's no legal obligation. The name of the person and her health information presumably came from neighbors and others who also aren't legally obligated to protect privacy.
This is actually good news from a civil rights standpoint. If we believe that people with disabilities should be afforded equal access to civic life (voting, owning property, making one's own decisions about healthcare and so forth to the best of one's ability, education, jobs, being named in the paper when one wins an award, etc.), then part of what comes with that is that people with disabilities also participate in the not-so-great aspects of civic life, like paying taxes, facing fines when they make bad choices, being named in the paper when one does something stupid. Inclusion in the mainstream community doesn't mean that one only accesses the "good" parts of life.
This story seems newsworthy regardless of whether the person has a disability, and I think that it's worth mentioning that there's hearsay that she has a disability -- it helps us to understand that she probably made bad choices, but also probably wasn't acting maliciously or trying to harm people. The story would be inappropriate (and leave the papers open to a civil suit) if they were to just bust out people's disabilities entirely for the sake of sensationalism. Something like having reporters standing around in CVS listening to what meds people are asking for and publishing a list of "what meds Dorchester residents are taking" in the paper every week would be totally irrelevant and inappropriate. It still wouldn't violate healthcare laws, since the paper isn't a healthcare provider, but the people would easily win a civil suit. The whole "truth is the best defense against libel" angle doesn't hold a lot of water when there's absolutely no newsworthiness to the content being published.
thanks eeka. maybe adam
By Anonymous
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 12:57pm
thanks eeka. maybe adam will write the globe and ask them to explain the policy that was applied in this case.
You're clearly not a lawyer
By anon
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 1:42pm
You're clearly not a lawyer because you're post is wrong on almost every legal point. There's no way you'd win a civil suit if the paper printed what meds you were taking -- and got it correct. If they got it wrong then you'd likely have a case, though not necessarily.
And the statement that "the whole 'truth is the best defense against libel' angle doesn't hold a lot of water when there's absolutely no newsworthiness to the content being published" is entirely wishful thinking on your part.
member of the bar
By Anonymous
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 2:15pm
I agree! Are you a member of the bar, what state?
healthcare privacy
By Lissa Harris
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 1:24pm
You actually don't have a statutory right to healthcare privacy. Your medical care providers have a statutory obligation not to disclose your health information. It's a critical difference. Some people are pushing for legislation to change that, especially since non-healthcare companies like Google and Microsoft are getting into the health-record business in a big way.
Interestingly enough, HIPAA gives you no recourse, as a private individual, to sue your doctors if they violate your privacy. The federal government can punish HIPAA violators, but you can't recover damages if you're harmed by a breach of privacy, unless the breach falls under some other existing pretext for suit.
IANAL, etc...
Apropos of nothing--it is probably futile to argue with people named "Anonymous," but in the event you're a reasonable person, I'd appreciate it if you'd not leave me vaguely threatening comments, especially in posts about people getting shot in my neighborhood. I get plenty of that on the way home from the T as it is.
not a threat
By Anonymous
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 1:50pm
You don't need to argue with me. I will gladly comply with your request. My comment was not intended to imply a threat but I can see how you might have taken it that way. Your request will be taken seriously. Consider it a closed issue.
thanks much!
By Lissa Harris
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 2:19pm
Kindly forgive the paranoia. A combination of being 8 1/2 months pregnant and having firecrackers go off right outside the bedroom window every night for the last two weeks is making me a little insane.
as I recall
By pom
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 1:03pm
you reported that an MIT-affiliated chemist named (fill in name, which escapes me--I am not being coy) owned a condo in that building. I used my powers of deduction to guess that she was probably the mixer. You didn't tell me she was. To my mind, in the citizen journalist role I see you/UH occupying, that's fair.
I agree with you that a no-name policy meant to shield the privacy of pple in the news is these days pretty useless in the face of even the merest hint of color. And that the Globe tends to play both sides fairly enthusiastically. The recent stories involving the owner of Lala Rokh spring to mind.
Did you add to the civic
By anon
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 1:14pm
Did you add to the civic good by publishing her name? There's a difference between "can" and "should."
Good question
By adamg
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 2:15pm
I wouldn't apply that test to everything I post, since probably most of what I post and link to doesn't have much to do with "the civic good" (I admit it: The quirkier the story, the more I like it, but I doubt that helps feed hungry children or whatever). But certainly in a case like this, it's worth asking.
I don't get the leap of logic ...
By PrimaDavid
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 2:15pm
I don't get the leap of logic that because the Globe decided not to print the woman's name it therefore has an obligation to keep readers from finding out that information on their own. It doesn't.
Read between the lines and you seem to be saying that the act of withholding her name is a hollow one in the Internet age. That's crap. It matters, and it matters a lot. Not one Globe reader in 10,000 will bother to try to get her name using the Internet. Most people don't have the knowledge of Internet sources to do it even if they wanted to.
What you're implying is like saying "why does the Globe bother to withhold the name of a rape victim when you can easily find it out by attending the trial." Yes you can, but so what.
Much more troubling was your posting of a name. You had no indication that the person was involved in the incident -- and apparently you made no effort to verify that she was. It was a guess, a researched guess perhaps but a guess nonetheless, and your reason for posting it seemed to be a combination of "look how smart I am" and "because I can," neither of which exactly covers you in glory.
sounds like you found it,
By Lyss
Thu, 07/03/2008 - 6:48pm
sounds like you found it, fair and square
Giving Name
By Good Therapy
Fri, 08/22/2008 - 8:06pm
Before giving any names you need to be 100% sure that you are giving the correct name of the person that was being questioned. When just enough information is given without the name and people start surfing for the person via the web they may get the wrong person. Either leave off the name and information that can lead to the persons supposedly identity or give the name.