Whisper CEO: We’d fire any editor that actually said what the Guardian alleged

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Whisper CEO and co-founder Michael Heyward wants to make the recent controversy about his anonymous sharing app go away — and he is prepared to fire people if that’s what it takes: Heyward said at the WSJ.D Live conference in Southern California Tuesday that he has put all the members of his editorial team that dealt with the Guardian on leave pending an internal investigation, and that he may fire people, based on the outcome of that investigation.

One key aspect of that investigation will be whether a Whisper employee suggested to journalists from the Guardian that the company is tracking lobbyists and other Whisper users “for life,” something that the paper recently alleged in a series of articles about the app. In these stories, the Guardian reported that Whisper had identified a Washington, D.C.-based lobbyist with an apparent sex problem, and the paper quoted an unidentified member of the editorial team saying: “He’s a guy that we’ll track for the rest of his life and he’ll have no idea we’ll be watching him.”

Heyward said Tuesday his stomach turned when he read that quote, adding: “That obviously does not reflect our values,” and saying that he would fire staff members if they had actually said such a thing. However, he sidestepped questions on whether Whisper is able to identify its users through personal information mentioned in their Whispers. Heyward said that any member of Whisper is able to look up past Whisper messages of any other member, insisting that Whispers are publicly shared information. He did acknowledge that it is easier for a Whisper employee to wade through someone’s Whisper history than for the average user, but insisted that the company doesn’t know more than its users. “We don’t actually have anyone’s name,” he argued.

The Guardian also alleged in its reports that Whisper is tracking the location of its users, even after they have opted out of sharing their location, and that the company is sharing some of that data with others, including the Department of Defense. The Guardian based its allegations on conversations its reporters had while visiting Whisper in order to strike a partnership with the company. “The Guardian… came into our offices under really false pretense,” Heyward said, while denying that the company is tracking anything beyond IP addresses for users that have opted out of location sharing.

He also argued that the Guardian “got a lot of the facts wrong,” in part because the paper didn’t talk to Whisper’s CTO, but instead just to the editorial team. He likened it to writing about Facebook’s data centers after just talking to the company’s ad sales team. Heyward didn’t want to say whether he is considering to sue the Guardian for its reporting, which he called hugely irresponsible. “We gotta do what’s best for our users and our company,” he said, without elaborating further.

Disclosure: Guardian News & Media is an investor in the parent company of Gigaom.

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