Yet another reason...

...to maintain some degree of anonymity on the internet.

Via Bill Quick, we find that blogger Hossein Derakhshan was googled by customs officers as he tried to enter the US at the Buffalo border.

I've literally become homeless. My new home is now hoder.com and I'm not joking.

You might have seen a small change in my little biography on the right hand side. I had said that I was in New York and that's what had actually changed my life. But I'm now out of the states and can't go back at least for six months.

It was actually my blog that got me into trouble after a month of staying in my friend's flat in lower-Manhattan, NYC. It's a sad but real story.

...When I wanted to come back to NYC, I was obviously stopped and interviewed by US Customs and Border Security people at the Buffalo border, like everyone else on the bus.

But when they realized I was going to the States to speak at a blog-related conference (ConvergeSouth) they googled my name right in front of me. Two of them, actually.

They carefully scanned the results and found this English blog. One of them, a very sharp guy in fact, started to read every single post on my blog. And it didn't take long until he shocked me: "So you live in New York, right? That's what you've written in your on blog."

...He was ecstatic. My blog made his day, or in this case, his night. He kept reading my posts and asking questions about a lot of them: Why did I go to Iran, what are my feelings about Bush administration, why I separated from my wife, what did think about Iranian politics, etc.

The guy was so in love with his job he wanted to get me into deep trouble so ultimately I could never go back to his lovely country, apparently. So he started to look for evidence that I'd also worked in the States and were paid by them. Until he found, in my archive, a post I'd written before leaving for Iran, to ask for the blogging community's attention and support, especially if something happened to me in Iran and about how they could help in that case.

Now, if you follow the link, you'll see that this guy's words and behavior weren't exactly smart under the circumstances.  Discretion would have been advisable.  But the point remains:  anything you and I write that makes it onto the web, even indirectly, is available to be used against us by any idiotic customs officer—or anyone else who is in a position of authority and can use a computer.

I don't exactly enjoy using a pseudonym online.  Some have even called those who blog under an assumed name "cowards."  Although my real name is, well, pretty lame-sounding with no "zing" or any other kind of phonetic desirability, it is my name, after all, and I'd much rather be posting as myself than some obviously fictitious character.  (Actually, if you tried just a bit, you could probably find out what my real name is.)  And I admire those who openly use their real names online all the more because of the courage required to do so.

But this is the sort of thing that keeps me behind a "protective curtain" of at least partial anonymity for now, even in these "free" United States.

Searchlight Crusade linked with Links and Minifeatures 11 27 Sunday

UPDATE:  After reading Searchlight Crusade's comments on this post, I need to reemphasize what was and what was not my point, because Dan Melson is mostly right about this.

It was not my point to say that anyone had been prevented from entering this country wrongly.  Melson argues that Derakhshan was correctly kept out of the country, being an illegal resident.

It was my point to emphasize that anything we write that ends up on the internet may well come back to bite us in ways we did not foresee, not, as Dan inferred, only the illegal things.   If I believed I could trust all customs officers, police with an axe to grind, etc., then I wouldn't have written this simply because "I don't want to be bothered."  That's all, and yes, I should have been clearer about that.

Comments

[Phoenix]

Okay, I'll bite. FRED ? Is that your real name? :) Fred Wan. hmmm... Has a nice oriental ring to it.....

[DaveG]

Well, I did a WhoIs on ForwardBiased.com, and the secret identity is....
One Mr. Go Daddy in Scottsdale, AZ. So, it turns out that Obi-wan is the notorious hip-hop rapper Go Daddy. The reason for his anonymity, then, is most likely to hide the fact that he has an illegitimate child name Snoop Doggy.
Can't blame a guy for wanting to hide that!

[Obi-Wan]

Fo' shizzle, G-Dawg!

Heh! (I almost NEVER use the expression LOL, but I sure did!)

[Obi-Wan]

I meant to add that GoDaddy is pretty good about not advertising its clients' identities to every WHOISer in the world. Add that to being dirt cheap, and Johnny, we have a WINNER!

[rob]

Yeah, the folks I have my domain registered thru advertise almost every fact about me they can.. including blood type. (O+) For a small yearly fee I can have them anonomize that... but the fee is more than I pay for the domain name so I don't. btw, contrats FRED. Must be cool to be a world famous rapper. Drivin around in your bling'ed out H2 with folks starring at yo rims and crushed ice on a rope.. dat's fo'shizzle.

[Obi-Wan]

The coolest part is stepping out of my H2 onto the street, raising my cell phone to my mouth, and saying "where you at?"

[Phoenix]

Lawww, have MERcy! Fred, you dude, you.... you go Daddy. I gots to love you steppin' owt yo H2 an puttin' that phone to yo ears an callin' them Fo Shizzles to come and make yo night bright! Lawww, have mercy!

I applied me a applicashun to be a Shizzle but me bust wusent whut they wus astin fo,... I am tellin yew now....et wusent. Et dident project thee bling intew thee spotlite far 'nuff.