1. Send it to everyone you know.

2. Make a Google Maps mash-up out of the data.

Much of socialmedialand was rubbing its hands with glee this morning at the news that the British National Party’s membership list had been leaked on the Internet and was freely available for anyone to download. A lot of people were fairly unsympathetic, to say the least. One respected journalist said:

Oh look — there’s one down my road — I might go round for a punch-up [I’ll spare the author’s blushes. update: I was scanning and failed to recognise the irony in Scott’s remark. however, this was indicative of many other comments I’ve seen — use the search link for proof — I hesitate to name and shame for obvious reasons.]

The BNP is a Nationalist party which supports the repatriation of immigrants to the UK, especially ones that don’t have white skin. They are typically poor, ill-educated racists, in other words.

Revealing the names of members could have serious implications for their work, relationships and safety. There are apparently a number of police officers on the list, for example, and there are already calls for their dismissal. [I am not saying that is a bad thing].

Before long, one ingenious soul had created a Google Maps mash-up to show the locations of everyone on the list. (It’s now been taken down, since the author realised that though he’d made the locations imprecise, people were reading the map as pinpointing exact locations.)

I’ve got no truck with the BNP or any of its policies, but this is quite clearly a terrible idea.

Why?

Imagine if the boot was on the other foot. Imagine if one of the dozens of CD-ROMs routinely lost by the government was found and posted onto the Internet. Maybe including, say, your wage or any criminal convictions. You would be outraged and very worried (especially if you did have a conviction).

One definition of ethical behaviour, a very good one I think, is that when you legislate, you should do so as if you were legislating for everybody. If you say it’s OK to publish the names and addresses of people you disagree with or hate onto the Internet, you should recognise that you’re saying that that it would be OK for someone else to do the same thing to you. If you were behaving ethically.

I think most of us agree with the general principle that people have a right to privacy. We become very angry when CD-ROMs are lost or advertising networks are found to be collecting data about our browsing habits without permission.

It’s a good principle. So let’s stick to it.