Army Squeezes Soldier Blogs, Maybe to Death
Noah Shachtman 05.02.07 | 2:00 AM
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The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or
sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content
with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive,
issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops' online
activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the
end of military blogs, observers say.
Military officials have been wrestling for years with how to
handle troops who publish blogs. Officers have weighed the need for
wartime discretion against the opportunities for the public to
personally connect with some of the most effective advocates for the
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq -- the troops themselves. The
secret-keepers have generally won the argument, and the
once-permissive atmosphere has slowly grown more tightly regulated.
Soldier-bloggers have dropped offline as a result.
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All Blogs To Be Censored
The new rules obtained by Wired News require a commander be
consulted before every blog update.
"This is the final nail in the coffin for combat blogging," said
retired paratrooper Matthew Burden, editor of The Blog of War
anthology. "No more military bloggers writing about their
experiences in the combat zone. This is the best PR the military has
-- it's most honest voice out of the war zone. And it's being
silenced."
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Blogs, E-mails, Chat Rooms are all censored
Army Regulation 530--1: Operations Security (OPSEC) (.pdf) restricts
more than just blogs, however. Previous editions of the rules asked Army
personnel to "consult with their immediate supervisor" before posting a
document "that might contain sensitive and/or critical information in a
public forum." The new version, in contrast, requires "an OPSEC review
prior to publishing" anything -- from "web log (blog) postings" to
comments on internet message boards, from resumes to letters home.
Failure to do so, the document adds, could result in a court-martial, or
"administrative, disciplinary, contractual, or criminal action."
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Officers Monitor Certain Individuals
Despite the absolutist language, the guidelines' author, Major Ray
Ceralde, said there is some leeway in enforcement of the rules. "It is
not practical to check all communication, especially private
communication," he noted in an e-mail. "Some units may require that
soldiers register their blog with the unit for identification purposes
with occasional spot checks after an initial review. Other units may
require a review before every posting."
But with the regulations drawn so tightly, "many commanders will feel
like they have no choice but to forbid their soldiers from blogging --
or even using e-mail," said Jeff Nuding, who won the bronze star for his
service in Iraq. "If I'm a commander, and think that any slip-up gets me
screwed, I'm making it easy: No blogs," added Nuding, writer of the
"pro-victory" Dadmanly site. "I think this means the end of my blogging."
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Effects Even Civilian Personnel
Active-duty troops aren't the only ones affected by the new
guidelines. Civilians working for the military, Army contractors -- even
soldiers' families -- are all subject to the directive as well.
But, while the regulations may apply to a broad swath of people, not
everybody affected can actually read them. In a Kafka-esque turn, the
guidelines are kept on the military's restricted Army Knowledge Online
intranet. Many Army contractors -- and many family members -- don't have
access to the site. Even those able to get in are finding their access
is blocked to that particular file.
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"Even though it is supposedly rewritten to include rules for contractors
(i.e., me) I am not allowed to download it," e-mails Perry Jeffries, an
Iraq war veteran now working as a contractor to the Armed Services Blood
Program.
The U.S. military -- all militaries -- have long been concerned about
their personnel inadvertently letting sensitive information out. Troops'
mail was read and censored throughout World War II; back home,
government posters warned citizens "careless talk kills."
Military blogs, or milblogs, as they're known in service-member circles,
only make the potential for mischief worse. On a website, anyone,
including foreign intelligence agents, can stop by and look for
information.
"All that stuff we used to get around a bar and say to each other --
well, now because we're publishing it in open forums, now it's intel,"
said milblogger and retired Army officer John Donovan.
Passing on classified data -- real secrets -- is already a serious
military crime. The new regulations (and their author) take an unusually
expansive view of what kind of unclassified information a foe might find
useful. In an article published by the official Army News Service, Maj.
Ceralde "described how the Pentagon parking lot had more parked cars
than usual on the evening of Jan. 16, 1991, and how pizza parlors
noticed a significant increase of pizza to the Pentagon.... These
observations are indicators, unclassified information available to all …
that Operation Desert Storm (was about to) beg(i)n."
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