Corps of Engineers Caught Harassing Activist Group’s Blog

Many bloggers and webmasters are wont to check their stats so often it borders on behavior that could be classified as obsessive-compulsive. Fortunately, that is how the folks behind the scenes at the New Orleans-based activist group, Levees.org learned that the harassing comments being left at their blog were coming from computers registered to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Well, maybe they weren’t OC about checking their stats, but after this incident, I’m guessing they just might be now.

Levees.org is a watchdog activist group that is pushing for an independent analysis of the “failure of the federal flood protection system” in metro New Orleans on August 29, 2005.” The group’s founder, Sandy Rosenthal did some digging into her stats after an unusually high volume of “negative comments” began rolling into the blog.

Rosenthal had this to say about the issue:

“1. Multiple people using the same IP address 155.76.159.253 are targeting me and supporters of levees.org and trying to reframe the bad engineering as being the fault of New Orleans residents. And apparent Corps-employees like steveonawlins are commenting on my blog from at least four different IP addresses. The writing style and grammar from the negative comment posters vary substantially, meaning this does not look like the work of a lone wolf.

2. The corps is dismissive and indifferent about the the incidents. I really expected the Corps of Engineers, working for the US taxpayers would issue something more like righteous indignation. Something like “we do not condone this sort of behavior.” The corps spokesperson responding to the WWLTV story seems almost indulgent.

3. I did not provide proof that the comments re-writing history were coming from the New Orleans District. That piece of information was offered up by the Corps. And I was genuinely surprised. There are many corps folks on the ground here who do seem to be working hard to repair and improve our levees. I had believed the comments were coming from up the chain of command.”

I suggest to all bloggers that they check the IP addresses of the more dishonest comments to their blogs.”

The Corps of Engineers is able to proclaim their innocence by essentially saying they cannot keep tabs on every single employee, and that one bad employee doesn’t vilify the entire agency. And they are not entirely wrong for adopting this stance on the issue. But if the employees in this case are acting while they’re on the clock, taxpayers have a right to be concerned with misuse of their tax dollars.

As blogs and new media continue to fill the space left by the demise of print media, there will be a growing amount of cases just like this one where people—representing themselves or organizations they work for and support—hide behind a cloak of secrecy called the internet.

Speaking as a person who approves and deletes comments from a political blog on a daily basis, people don’t always say the nicest things and aren’t always truthful about who they are and what they represent. The people who are usually moved to comment are often done so not because they couldn’t agree with you any more, but because they couldn’t agree with you any less.

To learn more about the Levees.org case, watch this short clip:

Image: NOAA.gov

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