• Anyone working with Frischling now knows that he’ll respect your confi­den­tial­ity, just so long as it’s not incon­ve­nient to his liberty. And that’s not respect at all. He let all bloggers down the other day when he willingly handed over his computer to the government.
• TechCrunch’s Michael Arring­ton • Regard­ing travel blogger Steven Frischling, who caved to TSA inves­ti­ga­tors regard­ing documents that he released in the wake of the under­wear bomber last week. Arring­ton feels that Frischling let down a lot of bloggers by not fight­ing the subpoena and instead caving in. The situa­tion has been resolved, with the TSA dropping the subpoe­nas (fellow travel blogger Chris Elliot didn’t cave), but Arring­ton feels that bloggers need to fight to protect their sources in cases like this – and as a tech blog on the front line of situa­tions like this (although not as life-or-death), he has some experi­ence with this. We’re with him, but would like to point out that there’s not a lot of insti­tu­tional support for many bloggers in the same way as tradi­tional journal­ists. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • Permalink