Fine line between love and pain

Rambling romeo Joseph Dobbie has become the latest victim of worldwide humiliation via email. He has had to change his home and mobile telephone numbers after a soppy - and slightly bonkers - email he sent in an awkward attempt to woo a woman he met at a party was forwarded around the globe.

The woman in question, Kate Winsall, has reportedly apologised to Dobbie for sending his email to her sister - who promptly sent it to all her friends. However, having read his email in full she might have felt justified in thinking he was a bit of a weirdo.

He writes: Your smile is the freshest of my special memories. Regardless of whether we see each other again, I will use it as I do all my other special memories. I will call on it when I am disheartened or low. I will hold it in my heart when I need inspiration. I will keep it with me for moments when I need to find a smile or my own. ... I will paint it onto the collection of Barbies I keep under my bed - ok, so I made that last bit up. But by the end of the cringeworthy missive you're not left wondering why Dobbie has been single "for a while".

Comments on the internet range from "What an absolute LOSER! Ha ha!" to "He's not bananas, he's just brimming with effort but doesn't really knowing how to woo." Generally, public opinion is sympathetic - and even those who question Dobbie's approach - getting Winsall's email from a group message - feel he doesn't deserve the stick he's received.

He can at least console himself that he's not lost his job over the incident. Hardly a week goes by these days without someone getting into trouble for material they've posted on their blog, adds David Fickling.

The argument goes that in the grey area of work-related blogging, you can get away with anything as long as it doesn't get the boss into public disrepute. But what about when the blog itself is posted on a classified network read only by spies? Christine Axsmith clearly thought that the US intelligence community was mature enough to discuss CIA interrogation techniques on its Intelink private intranet.

In a post titled something like "Waterboarding is torture, and torture is wrong" (the actual title is of course classified), she took issue with the CIA's claims that the practice of strapping a prisoner to a board and ducking them in water does not constitute torture.

Axsmith's British employer BAE Systems has now sacked her at the CIA's behest and she may face criminal charges for the posting, which the Washington Post claims discomfited "seventh floor" staff - the CIA's director and managers. She describes her tribulations on her own site, Econo-girl.

The fascination of the thought-police aspects of this story - if you're going to encourage intelligence analysts to write classified blogs, why can't they discuss their opinions of their workplace with their colleagues? - are equalled by the hints it gives of the US intelligence community's massive intranet. Most of us have little idea what this secret network looks like, although the author and former intelligence agent Fredrick Martin claims that its homepage looks like this.

This Powerpoint presentation by Intelink's Randy Marks claims that the network has 60,000 users at top secret level - a good slice of the 100,000 employees claimed for the US intelligence community by Washington's spy chief John Negroponte.

And so Axsmith joins the legal executive Richard Phillips who left his job last June after an email exchange with his secretary Jenny Amner - insisting she pay a o4 cleaning bill for a ketchup stain on his trousers - became public.

In October 2002, Trevor Luxton resigned from his job with a top London bank after his lewd email was seen by thousands. In it, he described how a friend's ex-girlfriend performed a sex act on him while he spoke to his own "bored" fiancee on the telephone. The following month Rachel Fountain was sacked from her office job when she accidentally sent the company boss an invitation to a "porn party". The moral of all these tales - think before you click.

(The Guardian)