By Karen MacNutt,
Contributing Editor

The back room is a quiet place. The bustle of the street is at the other end of the house. Its muffled noises are overwhelmed by the steady, rhythmic, tick-tock of the wall clock. The clicking of letters on my keyboard taps out a muted duet with the clock. I sit here, at my desk, by the glow of the computer screen. At some point, my dog snuck into the room. She is now sleeping at my feet in total confidence that I will not step on her. As daylight fades, my reading light assumes a more prestigious role; but, it can not chase darkness from the corners of the room.

I am alone. Just me and the computer. No one looking over my shoulder as I read my e-mail and answer my friends. It is a relaxed, social, chatty, intimate way of communicating. There is a mixture of personal messages, jokes, and political posturing. Here! This is a funny joke. It is a little off color, but it is funny. I will only forward it to a few of my close friends, perhaps five, who will understand. Those five send it to five of their friends (that is 25)....who send it to 5 (125 who send it to 5 (625)who send it to 5 (3,125)who send it to five (15,625)who send it to 5 (78,125)who send it to 5 (390,625)who send it to 5 (1,953,125). In a matter of minuets my private joke has a wider circulation than the printed edition of The New York Times.

There is no privacy on the Internet! If you put something online to anyone, you might as well have snaked it across the TV screen during the Super Bowl!

If you have a web address through your employer, it is owned by your boss. She has the right to see everything in your e-mail and to check out every website you visit. She can do that even if the cyber address is supposedly your private web address. She can go back months and find out each site you have been on, how long you were there, and the date and the time you were there. She can fire you for visiting inappropriate sites or for being online when you should be working.

The government can do the same thing even if you are a private subscriber to an Internet service. There is no such thing as privacy on the Internet. There is no such thing as being "secure" on the Internet. "Secure" things on the net are only "secure" until the government or some smarter hacker comes along.

There is no "freedom of speech" issue. Free speech does not apply to private employers. Nor, if you hold a responsible position or are in the public eye, will it prevent the press from taking your Internet follies and publishing them on the front page of their newspaper at the most inopportune time for you. The fact that your comments, or actions, have been taken totally out of context, will not prevent you from being humiliated. The fact that the joke, comment, or action is something that "everyone is doing" or has been around since Noah got off the ark will not save you. A half truth is out in a 30 second "sound bite." It takes an eight hour mini-series to prove to people that the statement is false or misleading.

A great deal of information about you is on the Internet. It is open for anyone to find.
For some incomprehensible reason, supposedly intelligent people will put the most compromising things on the Internet. The thought process of people who post photos of themselves dancing on tabletops holding a beer bottle totally eludes me. Things you post on the net have a life of their own. They can come back to haunt you at the worst time.

Certainly anyone who has any thought about having a job with responsibility, working in the public sector, or running for office, must be extremely careful about the information he or she allows onto the Internet. It is all too easy for employers to check what you have been doing online to see if you fit their corporate image.

Letters to the editor that ten years ago would have been relegated to the dust heap, are now put into the electronic news. Not only that, but they are indexed for the ease of anyone who wants to search for them.

How does this impact the firearms owner? If you think you might be in the public eye, if you think you might have to apply for a gun license that gives the licensing officer some discretion, if you think you might some day have to explain your actions in court, those e-mail follies may well become e-mail horror shows.

Over the years I have counseled people who carry firearms for self defense to be careful about the image they project. You always want to think, "What if I have to use a gun in self defense?" Honest people fantasize that they will be treated like heroes for fending off the bad guy. The reality is that there is a good chance the police will bring charges against you. There is a good chance the district attorney will work harder at prosecuting you than she will at prosecuting your assailant. After all, you will be the person with the gun.

Imagine how other people will see you. If you have to explain yourself to a jury, you do not want your gun to be called "the terminator." You do not want your ammunition to be advertised as "exploding rounds" and you do not want to be wearing a T-shirt that says, "Kill them all, let God sort them out."

Not so long ago there was an anti-gun "expert" who would say that the gun manufacturers were marketing to criminals because some of them advertised that their guns were "finger print resistant." He knew that was a lie. From his point of view, however, it impressed people who did not understand that "finger prints" cause rust. What the gun manufacturers were trying to say is that their product was resistant to the rust that occurs from careless handling. Of course, if you followed the anti-gunner's logic, you would ban Toyota cars because they advertise that their cars are "bullet proof."

If you have to go to court, you will make a much better appearance if your gun has a name like "State Trooper," your ammunition is called "safety rounds," and your T-shirt reads, "Conservation Camp."

The false security of the Internet encourages people to adopt extreme personality types that they would never portray in a face to face meeting. False bravado, boasting and gallows humor among friends seems harmless. Calling yourself "Crusher," or "Trigger," or "Gunrunner" or "Sniper2" might seem camp to your friends. The problem is that things on the net do not stay among friends. You do not want to be giving a long explanation of why you are called "Iron Fist" to a Judge who is being asked to hold you without bail because the police claim that they just removed an "Arsenal" (5 guns) with "Sniper Rifles" (a .22 with a scope) and "Assault Weapons" (an M1-Carbine) from your home along with "Bomb" making materials such as Hand Grenades (dummy), Explosives (black powder), and "Terrorist Training Films" (The Longest Day).

This is not as far-fetched as you might think. Some police officers have no sense of humor. They can not stand criticism. A number of years ago I had a client who managed to irritate the local police. They found an excuse to raid his/her house. Playing to public fear, they were able to convince a judge to hold the client without bail for over a year even though the person had never before been involved with the law and had not used or threatened to use violence against anyone.

More recently, a client came to me because his/her firearms license had been revoked. He/she lived in a state that gives the police broad discretion in issuing gun licenses. The client lived in town "A." The client had publicly criticized the chief of police in town "B." The criticism was not heated, not vulgar, and not physically threatening. It was well within the realm of free speech. The Chief in town B asked the Chief in town A to revoke the client's gun permit.

The client could not understand why the permit was being revoked. Neither could I. My client had a perfect record and was a well regarded citizen.

The Chief in town B, however, was incapable of taking criticism. He went all out to find some way to "punish" my client for having the nerve to question his actions. The client suddenly found he/she was having problems with his/her employer. The chief had been busy sending out letters telling people what a bad person my client was. Then came the letter revoking the client's gun permit sent out by Chief A.

I spoke to Chief A. He said he was relying upon what he had been told by Chief B.

According to Chief B, my client was a very bad actor. He/she had an e-mail address that implied violence. Then there were the e-mail communications in which my client openly spoke to his/her friends about being a member of the "clan." It detailed their plans on how to kill people. There were boasts of how many people the clan had already killed and what weapons they were going to use in future attacks.

I was shocked. My client seemed so nice. There it was, however, in black and white. I told the Chief I would have to get back to him. If my client was involved in that kind of activity, I did not want to represent him/her in a court proceeding to get a gun license. I immediately called my client. There was no way I wanted to represent someone who appeared to be a member of a hate group planning violence.

As Paul Harvey would have said, this is the rest of the story.

The Ku Kluk Klan, which the Chief had implied my client was a member of, spells "Klan" with a "k." Scotsmen and those who play survivor games spell "clan" with a "c." My client was involved with an online video game based on World War II. In this game each team is called a "clan." Like many war-based video games, the players choose what weapons they will use and the score is based upon how many bad guys each clan kills. The Chief in town B had been able to identify my client as playing this game. He was also able to download sufficient, out of context, messages to make my client look like a terrorist.

Now that might seem funny, and rather pathetic, on one hand. On the other, it is really frightening. What if my client had used a gun in lawful self-defense and the DA was saying it was not self-defense but a hate crime? What if we were not arguing about a license but about whether or not my client should get bail or be held as a danger to the public while he/she was awaiting trial? What if my client was suddenly on the terrorist "no fly list" and was barred from air travel without knowing why? As I said before, it takes thirty seconds to tell a lie but hours to explain the truth. Unfortunately, people remember the lie and do not want to spend the time to hear the truth.

The moral of the story is simple. Be very careful about what you put out over the Internet. Be very careful about the user names you use on the Internet. Remember, there is no right of privacy on the Internet. Anything you put onto the net is open to the public.