Is blogging a thoughtcrime?

Anybody who keeps a blog and holds a job should be interested in this story about the DeVrey University professor who was fired for mentioning her employer on her personal blog.

According to The Denver Post,

"Spohn's blog recounted her travels across the United States and her thoughts on chaos theory. She mentioned DeVry occasionally, complained about online training she thought was unnecessary and wrote that administrators were telling her not to inflate grades."

Writing about what's on my mind is what I do here in my little blog. It's chilling to consider the consequences for self-expression despite one's track-record and achievements. Here's a little more:

"Spohn, who has a master's degree from Harvard and is a doctoral student at the University of Denver, said she was popular among faculty and was promoted last fall to chairwoman of the communications department.

Then last month, the dean and a human resources staffer told her they 'had become aware of her blog,' she said, and that she wrote 'disparaging things about DeVry and the students.'

'They escorted me to my office and shoved me right out of the building,' she said."

So many blogs I peruse cite connections to what they see happening in the world with Orwell's 1984 [By the way, you really must check out that link--it's an online version of the novel!] Yet, this is a case where Big Brother isn't the government, but the employer.

It seems that Americans have been slowly relinquishing their privacy to their employers over the last couple of decades. Perhaps it began with more rigerous background checks and drug testing, which the average responsible citizen probably would argue are not such bad things. But consider employers today who wield even more control over employees by restricting health care benefits to exclude prescription birth controll pills for women. Consider employers who fire employees who are overweight or who smoke. Consider the incestuous role of big government and big business in the breaking down of workers' unions. (It must also be time for us all to revisit The Jungle again to help us remember why we might need unions!)

It just seems that when one must fear retribution for expressing her opinions, even when the opinions are not extremely radical, that a bigger systemic problem exists. What do you think?