Steven Rheault-Kihara is a 46-year-old veteran diplomat and Canada's public relations attache in Bangkok who may soon be an ex-veteran diplomat.
As my friend Greg Weston reports in this morning's Sun papes, Rheault-Kihara did not put up any privacy fences on his Facebook account. Weston had a flip through the 36 pages of musings and exchanges posted there over the last 18 months:
The day after Harper's surprise singing debut at the National Arts Centre last month, for instance, Rheault-Kihara wrote on Facebook: “As much as I think he's a terrible leader, I thought that Stephen Harper gave a good show last night.”
Last December, as Canada was facing the possibility of a coalition government led by Stephane Dion, our man in Bangkok wrote: “If you put a gun to my head and forced me to choose between Harper or Dion as PM, my answer is simple: Pull the trigger, please.
.. One of his most entertaining exchanges with his pals was over our recent column on the latest Foreign Affairs audits that found embassy life not always as taxpayers might hope.
The diplomat wrote that “quoting from an audit report is the laziest form of journalism, but then again, no-one(sic) ever accused Greg Weston of being a journalist.”
No, Mr. Weston didn't just happen to have a “flip through” Mr. Rheault-Kihara's page – he deliberately went looking for it and methodically engaged in character assassination.
While Mr. Rheault-Kihara may have erred in not securing his Facebook page well enough, he could be expected to have a reasonable expectation of privacy. While the page was OPEN to the public, it is not a PUBLIC page. People have to go LOOKING for it, specifically under his name, which is what Mr. Weston did.
This is trash journalism at its worst.
When will people learn? You publish out in the open like that, you are asking for trouble. And trouble found him. Do you blame the thief for robbing your unlocked car or house? Or is that your fault?