Kentucky Bans Blogs in State Offices

KENTUCKY BANS BLOGS IN STATE OFFICES
[SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: Patrik Jonsson]
Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R) has banned the reading of many blogs by 34,000 state employees. Bloggers claim the governor is violating their free speech rights. But others see a more subtle lesson in Kentucky's attempt to crack down on desktop dawdling, including how much bosses should do to restrict access to opinion sites - and what blocking access to blogs might mean for everything from esprit de corps to the bottom line. "Whether in [private or public] workplaces, are you going to create a culture of mutual trust or a Big Brother 'we're watching your every move' environment?" says Zachary Hummel, a workplace attorney at Bryan Cave LLP in New York. "We now have so much more ability to monitor what employees do, the question becomes: How much of that do we want to do?" Central to the constitutional case is the question of whether blogs enjoy the same First Amendment protections as newspapers, which can be read on state computers. Blogs, too, discuss local policy and politics, and bloggers and state employees say they are protected by the First Amendment. "Government should defend the right of conservatives and liberals to post opinions and what [the Fletcher administration] is doing, we believe, is using the government to hurt a political web site because of its political opinion," says Charles Wells, the head of the Kentucky state employees' union. "The only ones this information is offensive to is this administration," says Mr. Wells.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0705/p03s03-uspo.html