Fire bosses learn IDs of anonymous critics

Two senior Halifax fire officials now know who criticized them anonymously on an online news site.

Fire Chief Bill Mosher and deputy chief of operations Stephen Thurber went to court to unmask seven commenters who had responded to a story about allegations of racism in the fire department.

A judge ordered the Coast weekly newspaper to release any information that could identify the commenters who posted on its website, including log-in information and computer IP addresses.

Michelle Awad, lawyer for Mosher and Thurber, said she now has five names to pursue in a potential lawsuit.

"If there is a next step for our client, it would be a new lawsuit — that would be the defamation action that was the reason we were trying to find out who the authors of the defamatory remarks were," she said.

Mosher and Thurber have a year to decide what to do.

The Coast published the article about the fire department in April 2009. Over the course of several months, dozens of commenters responded to the online version on thecoast.ca.

Mosher and Thurber argued some of the posts contained allegations of racism, cronyism and incompetence, and they needed to identify the writers in order to defend themselves.

The Coast complied with a Nova Scotia Supreme Court decision on April 14 to hand over any information it had on the anonymous commenters, who posted under names such as "thetruth" and "intheknow."

Awad later obtained a court order requiring Bell Aliant and EastLink, two internet service providers, to hand over whatever identifying information they had.

Awad did not release the names of the commenters in question. She said she doesn't know if they are connected to the fire service.

"So far, I think we have five," she said. "We're still waiting for some additional information."

Awad said she's waiting for the identity of the person who emailed from a Google Gmail account urging firefighters to post comments on the Coast website. She expects that by Friday.