UN's Sudan Envoy asked to quit Sudan over blog remark - lessons for bloggers everywhere?

I think there is a clear difference here between a public and a private blog.
- On the one hand I am developing a public blog that is accessible to anyone who wants (but with some safeguards concerning posting of comments). In this blog I am careful not to slip in any remark that could be dangerous or harmful to our work or workers.
- On the other hand I have a private blog that is only accessible to my close friends and family, and in which I sometimes vent in ways that could be seen as problematic if they were in the open -- so I have instituted very tight security on this blog.
Pronk's mistake was ofcourse that he included remarks in his public blog which should not have been there. A public blog is no different from a continuing press conference; you shouldn't say anything in a public blog that you wouldn't before the press.

EFF's guidelines seem to be a bit naive when applied to aid workers (but remember they were not written with us specifically in mind). EFF knows better than anyone that you need to use *all* the techniques mentioned there (use of pseudonyms, no identifying details -- which is a lot harder than it sounds! --, use of anonymizers and ping servers, use of robots.txt *and* anonymous registration of your domain) to have even a remote chance of remaining anonymous; and which aid worker has the time and resources to do so?

It's well worth reading Jan Pronk's extended response to this:

n the end I may not have been successful. However, that has nothing to do with blogging. As I said earlier, I had to combine the two approaches also when giving a press conference and when addressing the Security Council or other forums. The Government of Sudan, requesting me to leave Sudanese territory, did not only refer to what I had written in my weblog, but to ‘statements to the media and in (the) website’. They criticized me for the content of my statements, not for the channels that I had used. I utterly disagree with the views and policies of the Government, but in one aspect they are right: it is not important where you say something, but what you say. So, if bureaucrats want to criticize views expressed by politicians or diplomats, they should not criticize the medium, but the message.