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when one of the councillors send you a ‘snarky’ message through a Tor server.

I guess this needs an explanation. This morning, after last night’s council meeting I received the following message posted to me at ParrySounds.com.

“Hi Jo – perhaps instead of writing a summary of the council meeting for your next post, you could instead explain your smart ass comment as staff were leaving the meeting. That would make a great read.”

It came from “Nope@yahoo.com”. Who is Nope? Well it’s not as hard to figure out as you might imagine. Let’s go through the logic path.

The message came through a Tor exit router. Don’t know what a Tor exit router is? Well it’s a service that resides in Finland for the purpose of anonymizing emails and messages. This is the service that the rebels in Syria, or dissidents in Tibet use to hide their identities from the authorities. It also works pretty well for councillors who are too ‘shy’ to make a post with their name attached. So how many councillors know what a Tor server is, much less know how to make use of it?

And who was left at the end of the council meeting when I made one comment “close your eyes” in response to the fact that it was one minute past the hour on the room clock (it’s about 3 minutes ahead of standard time) and there was one last agenda item to finish? In fact there were no staff members leaving at that point, they had for the most part left earlier after their agenda items were addressed. Except for the CAO and Deputy Clerk who ‘run’ the meeting and are there until everything is finished, it basically was council, mayor, a couple staff, Cogeco and little old me.

Oh and the Robert’s Rules of Order councillor was not happy that I was expressing support for ‘taking care of business’ with my body language. When you are an audience of one, you get noticed.

And the term “smart ass” is one I have heard a couple of times before from one of the councillors. Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, was identified in large part because of his writing style and use of language. Tor servers don’t help disguise that.

So it’s not hard to figure it out and I’m wondering if it’s worth raising the issue with the Integrity Commissioner. Not because of the comment – that’s fair game, but because the councillor chose to hide their identity. I would expect a councillor to have the integrity to identify themself when they comment on, or respond to, items that relate to their elected position.

So is this a great read or what, Mr. Nope? I hope it’s what you wanted. Thanks for the comment and the topic for this post, but hey it’s time to come out of the closet and let the rest of the public know who you are. It will set you free. We don’t live in Syria or Tibet.