Army crack down on bloggers

Michelle Malkin ^ | 5/2/07

[bnelson44]

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Via Noah Shachtman:

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.

The new rules (.pdf) obtained by Wired News require a commander be consulted before every blog update.

Bottom line from Matt at Blackfive:

The Bottom-Line to the this bad piece of regulation: The soldiers who will attempt to fly under the radar and post negative items about the military, mission, and commanders will continue to do so under the new regs. The soldiers who've been playing ball the last few years, the vast, VAST, majority will be reduced. In my mind, this reg will accomplish the exact opposite of its intent. The good guys are restricted and the bad continue on... Operational Security is of paramount importance. But we are losing the Information War on all fronts. Fanatic-like adherence to OPSEC will do us little good if we lose the few honest voices that tell the truth about The Long War.

[bnelson44]

Wired also has an interview posted with the creator of the new regulation.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/05/the_army_has_is.html

[pabianice]

Bush’s failure to publicize our successes in Iraq is baffling and unforgivable.

[Citizen Tom Paine]

Go back to WWII and observe how they did it. Every letter was censored prior to being converted to V-mail and sent back. We never knew for years what islands my Uncle Joe was on because the censors would not let him say.

[sono]

Yes ... but they didn’t have the Drive-by Media working against the mission with the ferocity and zeal they do now.

We have met the enemy ... and they is us.

[mysterio]

This is bad for morale.

[bnelson44]

Army Squeezes Soldier Blogs, Maybe to Death

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.

http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/05/army_bloggers

[bnelson44]

ping

[WakeUpAndVote]

Remember when.................

[CBart95]

Thank God. Malkin is on this assignment.

Thus ,so it appears, is Divine Guidance.

The Left and the MSM have cause for concern.

There may be a lesson in all of this about needless worry.

[Cicero]

Bad idea all around.

The military certainly has a RIGHT to do this, no question. But it’s a very poor idea to clamp down on patriotic bloggers while letting the traitors do their thing.

Not only that, but it means that the enemy (Democrats) can now make the propaganda point that any military blog on the internet is nothing but military propaganda, since it has been given an official seal of approval. They can say that the troops are only allowed to published sanitized speech.

So even if they let all the good guys post, which is doubtful, they will be much less effective.

[af_vet_rr]

The Bottom-Line to the this bad piece of regulation: The soldiers who will attempt to fly under the radar and post negative items about the military, mission, and commanders will continue to do so under the new regs. The soldiers who've been playing ball the last few years, the vast, VAST, majority will be reduced. In my mind, this reg will accomplish the exact opposite of its intent. The good guys are restricted and the bad continue on... Operational Security is of paramount importance. But we are losing the Information War on all fronts. Fanatic-like adherence to OPSEC will do us little good if we lose the few honest voices that tell the truth about The Long War.

Agreed - there will always be people who will skirt the regs, and this is going to be creating a burden on those up the chain of command, as far as having to approve every little email to grandma. Their commanders have enough to worry about without having to approve every little harmless email.

There are problems that need to be addressed of course, but I'm not sure they can be at this point - when you have journalists tagging along, your OPSEC goes out the window regardless of what is posted or emailed.

I would throw in, that I wouldn't worry about soldiers bitching. When they stop bitching, that's when there is a problem.

[af_vet_rr]

I am apparently wrong - private emails to family members do not fall under this (although they will be intercepted at some point, make no mistake). Now who defines family members, etc., is hard to say. Still, if those aren't monitored by the COs, then whose to say that soldiers aren't emailing blog entries to "family members" who then post them on the blog (and a lot of blog platforms have the ability for email posting, i.e., you send an email formatted a certain way and addressed to a certain address and it will be posted automatically).

For those who bring up WWII, we didn't have reporters back then who could send video and reports in almost near real-time from anywhere, and we sure don't have 16 million people in uniform, where you could dedicate a lot of people to censoring. The burden would be placed on already over-worked commanders.

[Publius6961]

The soldiers who will attempt to fly under the radar and post negative items about the military, mission, and commanders will continue to do so under the new regs.

I am sure that the military will have severe penalties in place for these violators.

It's not rocket science. You can't fight a war if the enemy has what amounts to hundreds (thousands?) of helpful agents in place informing them of the important element in all wars: the psychological factor.

[Publius6961]

This is bad for morale.

The alternative is worse, strategically. Assuming lives are still important.

[M. Dodge Thomas]

"Not only that, but it means that the enemy (Democrats) can now make the propaganda point that any military blog on the Internet is nothing but military propaganda, since it has been given an official seal of approval. They can say that the troops are only allowed to published sanitized speech."

Heck, it reduces my faith in anything the government says with regard to Iraq. One of the few source of information I trust on events there are the postings made by an officer in Army intelligence on a closed system to which I subscribe.(Of course, *nothing* he has ever said there has compromised operation security in any way). Absent that, I'm largely "flying blind" trying to disentangle the propaganda provided by both Democrats ans Republicans.

[SF South Park Republican]

I think this decision is a disgrace. The milbloggers are a major source of information for us who oppose the defeatocrat fellow travelers of al-Qaeda. I haven’t seen anything yet that proves that milbloggers have compromised operational security.

I hope someone gets a petition going to the Commander in Chief to rescind this bit of stupidity.

[Dark Wing]

US Army Brass is far more concerned about paper bullets ending the careers of men with stars then they are national security.

[Silly]

http://www.blogger.mil

[swatbuznik]

Man, I am torn on this one. I, for one, love to read the troops’ blogs, but on the other hand, I can understand the need for secrecy, etc.... damn. Any other way we can kick our soldiers in the nads? :(