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Are Marines Censoring Web Access for Troops in Iraq?
Gavin86 and others have submitted links to This Wonkette article (profanity warning) about the Marines Corps blocking access to some Web sites for their people in Iraq. This article was a follow-up to an earlier Wonkette post. Before I posted these links, I looked for verification of this problem but found nothing but links to Wonkette, so I cannot say for sure whether this is true. Hopefully, alert Slashdot readers (like you) will post confirmations if, indeed, there are any to be found. Meanwhile, if this is true, it's eerily reminiscent of an experience I had when I visited Saudi Arabia in January, 2004.
The Wonkette post contains this list of sites blocked and not blocked, allegedly sent by a Marine serving in Iraq:
I spent several hours in my Riyadh hotel room one evening checking sites suggested to me by Slashdot coworker Jamie McCarthy via IRC (which was not blocked by the Saudi filters). Among them were sites decrying Holocaust denial, which were blocked, although many sites espousing the old Protocols of the Elders of Zion antisemitic lies were not.
A number of sites that talked about human rights -- especially women's rights -- were also blocked. Sites that glorified Islam were, of course, fine. Interestingly, Jamie and I found that some (but not all) sites that were blocked when the 2002 Harvard Law School article, Documentation of Internet Filtering in Saudi Arabia, was released had been unblocked by the time of my visit.
And when I met with Eyas S. Al-Hejery, the man in charge of Saudi Arabia's Internet Serice Unit and told him about some of the blocked sites Jamie and I had found, including several innocuous Israeli government ones, he agreeably unblocked them.
I have no way of knowing whether Eyas reblocked those sites as soon as I left his country, but he told me more than once that he did not, himself, decide which sites should be blocked but only reacted to complaints from Saudi Arabia's infamous religious police and submissions from concerned citizens, which he said numbered up to 200 per day, total, while he only received a "trickle" of requests to unblock sites.
Now comes a big question: If the charges of Marine Internet blockage are true, will the Marines unblock incorrectly-blocked Web sites as quickly as Eyas did in Saudi Arabia?
But first, another big questions must be answered: Is the Wonkette story true? It's been up and spreading around the Internet since March 1st, and no official Marine spokesperson has bothered to either debunk it or admit that yes, the Marine Corps is blocking Web sites for political reasons.
It's going to be interesting to see if, here in a country where we supposedly hold freedom of speech dear, we expect our overseas troops to submit to the same sort of censorship that is an everyday thing in Saudi Arabia, a famous breeding ground for the Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism our Marines are supposed to be fighting against.
- Wonkette - "Forbidden, this page (http://www.wonkette.com/) is categorized as: Forum/Bulletin Boards, Politics/Opinion."
- Bill O'Reilly (www.billoreilly.com) - OK
- Air America (www.airamericaradio.com) - "Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion."
- Rush Limbaugh (www.rushlimbaugh.com) - OK
- ABC News "The Note" - OK
- Website of the Al Franken Show (www.alfrankenshow.com) - "Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion."
- G. Gordon Liddy Show (www.liddyshow.us) - OK
- Don & Mike Show (www.donandmikewebsite.com) - "Forbidden, this page (http://www.donandmikewebsite.com/) is categorized as: Profanity, Entertainment/Recreation/Hobbies."
I spent several hours in my Riyadh hotel room one evening checking sites suggested to me by Slashdot coworker Jamie McCarthy via IRC (which was not blocked by the Saudi filters). Among them were sites decrying Holocaust denial, which were blocked, although many sites espousing the old Protocols of the Elders of Zion antisemitic lies were not.
A number of sites that talked about human rights -- especially women's rights -- were also blocked. Sites that glorified Islam were, of course, fine. Interestingly, Jamie and I found that some (but not all) sites that were blocked when the 2002 Harvard Law School article, Documentation of Internet Filtering in Saudi Arabia, was released had been unblocked by the time of my visit.
And when I met with Eyas S. Al-Hejery, the man in charge of Saudi Arabia's Internet Serice Unit and told him about some of the blocked sites Jamie and I had found, including several innocuous Israeli government ones, he agreeably unblocked them.
I have no way of knowing whether Eyas reblocked those sites as soon as I left his country, but he told me more than once that he did not, himself, decide which sites should be blocked but only reacted to complaints from Saudi Arabia's infamous religious police and submissions from concerned citizens, which he said numbered up to 200 per day, total, while he only received a "trickle" of requests to unblock sites.
Now comes a big question: If the charges of Marine Internet blockage are true, will the Marines unblock incorrectly-blocked Web sites as quickly as Eyas did in Saudi Arabia?
But first, another big questions must be answered: Is the Wonkette story true? It's been up and spreading around the Internet since March 1st, and no official Marine spokesperson has bothered to either debunk it or admit that yes, the Marine Corps is blocking Web sites for political reasons.
It's going to be interesting to see if, here in a country where we supposedly hold freedom of speech dear, we expect our overseas troops to submit to the same sort of censorship that is an everyday thing in Saudi Arabia, a famous breeding ground for the Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism our Marines are supposed to be fighting against.
While I can't speak for The Core, when I was in Kuwait for the Army, we had full access to everything. For that matter, the Internation version of CNN or the International MTV were always on the TV in the mess hall.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
See Daily Kos discussion here.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I am in Baghdad right now and I am a network admin here. I am aware of no blatant censorship (but we do have filtering software). I was able to read the linked article. Here is one of the comments posted on that page:
Curious if www.pattillmanfoundation.org is blocked.
The article, nor the page referenced are blocked. This article is bullshit.
strike
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
The best part is that one of those proxy machines is on slashdot's banned list, so I have to try and find one of the others to read/post from time to time.
While I love a good conspiracy as much as the next guy, I'm sure the Marines are just trying to keep crap out of their boxen.
The issue is SmartFilter which the DoD uses on all networks. They have certain policy combinations that get blocked based on how those sites are listed in the SmartFilter database.
DoD sets the Forum/Bulletin Boards tag for site as blocked for example. If you look at wonkette.com in smartfilter database its tags are set as Politics/Opinion, Forum/Bulletin Boards. The Forum/Bulletin Boards is what policy is being blocked, so that site doesnt go through, while Rush Limbaugh is only listed as a Politics/Opinion site which isnt blocked.
On the air America and Al Franken, its the Internet Radio/TV flag that is blocked.
I doubt you have much contact with the soldiers. Over 50% of the soldiers deployed country side are National Guardsmen. The vast majority of NCOs (non-commissioned officers) and the regular officers are middle class or above. The E-4 and below are mostly college kids. I've been in multiple different units. I have no idea what you are talking about when you say "BTW, a nice side effect is that every one of our troops there that dies is a unwanted poor person from here in the states" Believe what you want and enjoy the view from the high ground.
I work for the USAF as a contractor. All the sites listed above are not blocked solely to those serving in Iraq, or just the Marines.
They are blocked by the Air Force with the same reasons listed. I just tested them all.
It's not just the fact that some two star wants/doesn't want his/her troops going to political sites that are against his/her party, it's the simple fact that the sites that ARE allowed simply haven't been blocked because people haven't been swarming to those sites.
From what I have noticed, being a Work Group Manager (PC Admin for the AF), the more a site get's visited, the higher it stands a chance to be blocked, unless the site is required in order to complete the mission.
In other words. The sites that are blocked are so because the higher ups don't want people chatting up forums when they should be supporting the mission. (hmm, speaking of chatting, I think I hear the blocking police calling me!)
Remember, not everything has a political agenda. On the other hand, not everything isn't. But we tend to fall towards blaming politics. And as much as I hate politics, it's not always to blame.
L8r
From what I can tell here (a Military facility in the US), Internet filtering is hit and miss and often changes back and forth without notice depending on filtering software upgrades and back-ups. I don't think our IT people spacifically filter out any political sites, I've been able to access stuff all over the spectrum. I think because the military used a commercial product that comes with pre-configured profiles, what is filtered and what is not is very hit and miss. Several of my associates who are "down range" tell me that no real organized filtering takes place except for porn and certain ecommerce such as eBay and stock market. On recreational systems, generally, only porn is filtered out.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Since my previous post was modded into oblivion and I have karma to burn, I'll link to another discussion. I'd suggest that those who are angered by this other discussion go there and participate in the discussion, rather than simply making it disappear here, in order to avoid the irony of "trollmodding" a link to a political site into oblivion on a censorship story.
See Daily Kos discussion about this topic here.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
the article is saying Rush Limbaugh is 'OK' (not Blocked) and Al Franken is blocked
The military has censored anything they wanted from troops in every war ever.
This would be the poll in question, conducted by Zogby. Here's the critical paragraph, emphasis mine:
This sig intentionally left blank.
Mildy offtopic but:
Shameless Plagirism from another slashdotter sig: "We want peace for all and prosperity for mankind. We are United States Government; we don't do that sort of thing."
That's actually a quote from the end of the movie Sneakers. James Earl Jones (playing an NSA chief or something like that) says the "We're the United States Government! We don't deal with that sort of thing." part. See IMDB.
~~
Thank you for your time, and now back to our regularly scheduled Slashdot programming...
I was in Iraq for a year as part of the United States Army.
Internet access was always a little iffy, since it's expensive and the troops have a very high demand for it. There were several ways to get internet access while I was there, some of which are still around and some of which are not.
#1: US Government provided independent internet cafes.
Status: Removed.
Reason: Not cost effective. They decided to go with a consolidated large provider instead.
I ran one of these while I was deployed. The closest I got to 'filtering' was running a caching ad-blocking squid proxy. I did this for speed reasons, because *I* wanted to provide my Soldiers with fast internet access. (PS: f*ck doubleclick.net)
#2: US Government provided Internet Cafes.
Status: Still around.
This is one of the biggest and most commonly accessable internet accesses in Iraq. The US Government contracted for some massive amount of bandwidth through some satellite provider. You can't bring in your own laptop, you have to use their locked-down desktops. But I didn't see any politically motivated filtering going on, and I checked.
#3: Privately funded Internet Access.
Status: Still around, but usually kept on the quiet.
Unit commanders occasionally try to stop them out of generalized fear, but I never saw one go away. It's not against any regulations. It's just expensive. ($1400/month for 128u/512d)
#4: Contractor run public Internet Cafes.
Status: Still around.
If you can make money at it, someone will try to do it. Zaid (http://www.russianwolf.com/) was one that I dealt with on a regular basis. He not only provided the hardware for our cafe, but he ran several others on a for-pay basis. ($20 would let you browse for an hour) Filtering was not in place in any of his cafes. Not cost effective. Consider this my plug for him. He's a good guy.
#5: US Government 'NIPR-net' (Non-Secure Internet Protocol Router Network) access.
Status: Still around.
This is what people use for official communications and internet access. This is for non-secret data only. The closest they got to filtering was publishing what unit and individual computer was browsing the internet more than anybody else on a weekly basis. This network was VERY overloaded and SLOW SLOW SLOW. But it was filtered for sexual content I think, not that I ever tried. But it was not filtered for political content.
In summary, the common methods that people use to access the internet in Iraq are not filtered for content of a political nature. What the Marines may be doing is not something I know, but I saw plenty of Marines using these other access methods that I know were not filtered. Any filtering is either a new thing or isolated to a small unit. It was not the policy of the Department of Defense to filter internet access for political content as of Feb2005 (when I was there last)
Nathan Brazil?
Here in Europe, and in the middle east the common tool is Websense to block selective things. How they determine what they block and don't block changes. Sometimes it is set to limit access to High Bandwidth sites (like the army's own webmail site), but then later in the day, that access is removed. Beyond that, all bets are off on what is/isn't blocked. It is a official network, no different then any corporate one. In this case though, if you don't like it you have to wait up to a year for your tour of duty to end.
r ticle=33734&archive=true
Here is an article describing the filtering done in Europe by the military, from an end users perspective.
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&a
After this article, lots of the URLs mentioned changed availability.
Cheers,
Mstaj
Hotmail is blocked from government networks, last time I checked. The only way he could have accessed it would have been from an internet cafe.
Yes it does apply to soldiers, just not how you think.
Does the u.s. constitution apply to military personnel?
Sort of, but not exactly the way it does in civilian life. While military personnel are not excluded from the rights set forth in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution grants Congress the power to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces.
As a practical matter, most civilian Constitutional rights are afforded to military personnel - although with some differences to fit the military situation. In some areas, such as right to counsel and rights (Miranda) warnings, military personnel have broader protections than those contained in the Constitution. In other areas such as search and seizure, they have reduced expectations of privacy and fewer protections.
Military appellate courts tend to interpret military law as being consistent with Constitutional protections so far as is possible.
I know that's not the answer you wanted, but the military is not civilian life, and the rules are very different.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
Which is why I also put (or don't sign up in the first place). The rules are clear upon signing up. I beleive everyone gets a copy of the UCMJ.
What's your point? Don't sign up if you don't like what you'd be getting in to. And yes, it is a crime. A very very serious one. But the point still stands, if you don't like what the job entails and the inherent freedoms taken away then don't sign up. No one is forcing you to. And there are plenty of other jobs you can have.
Bungo!
Yes, they absolutely are. They also monitor outgoing phone calls and instant message conversations. One of the major goals, it seems, is to cover up the large number of 'enemy' casualties (e.g., several days ago there were over 500 deaths in one area when the sectarian violence spilled out onto the street. They shut down the computer center for 2 or 3 days following that.)
Sorry about the AC: this is all straight from my brother, serving in Fallujah. It seems that we went in with a fundamental misunderstanding of regional politics, and are now paying the price.
~AC
Then you deeply misunderstand what 'enlistment' in the MILITARY means.
As far as the Bill of Rights:
* First Amendment - Freedom of speech, press, religion, peaceable assembly, and to petition the government = mostly lost. You are not allowed to speak freely, assemble other then as ordered, nor to petition the government except as through the chain of command.
* Second Amendment - Right to keep and bear arms. = mostly lost. You are only entitled to arms as ordered.
* Third Amendment - Protection from quartering of troops. = lost. The army can assign you to bunk with someone or someone to bunk with you at any time, for any reason.
* Fourth Amendment - Protection from unreasonable search and seizure. = lost. The military can search your private effects at any time.
* Fifth Amendment - Due process, double jeopardy, self-incrimination, private property. = IANAL, not sure how many of these are still available during a Court Martial, but I know that many of them DON'T apply.
* Sixth Amendment - Trial by jury and other rights of the accused. mostly lost = no jury trial, you get a counsellor, but are tried by a panel. There is not necessarily an appeal, as you can be summarily executed in situations judged to be in extremis.
* Seventh Amendment - Civil trial by jury. Dunno about civil matters while you are subject to the UCMJ.
* Eighth Amendment - Prohibition of excessive bail, as well as cruel or unusual punishment. Again, I don't know that there IS bail for military prisoners.
* Ninth Amendment - Protection of rights not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
* Tenth Amendment - Powers of states and people - not applicable
Enlist in the military they OWN you. You can, in situations, be ordered to perform what amounts to indirect suicide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCMJ
-Styopa
Well, being stationed here in Iraq... any website with "Internet Radio" is blocked. While one person listening to the radio factor will not harm bandwidth usage... what happens when you have 100, or 1000 people listening to internet radio. It brings the military network to its' knees. Anything with forums in the key words is equally blocked... it is to enforce OPSEC (operational security). This is on the military network. I cannot speak for the moral interet computers as I do not use them... I have my own Huges Receiver :) Another thing is what they are using to block websites is biased against what is in the keywords. You can go to www.foxnews.com all day. However if you try to watch a streaming video clip from Fox News... you get the usual popup box for the video, but it is blocked (Streaming media). It is sensorship to a degree (porn, internet auctions, straming media) but it is also common sence.
I work for the 72nd signal brigade (Army). All network access, for all services, goes through me.
(I can post no more replies.
strike
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
No, they are not being filtered durring off hours. There is a completely differant non-censored government funded network available in the form of 'Internet Cafe's' that are available.
The network we are talking about is the NIPRNET http://www.disa.mil/main/prodsol/data.html and any bandwidth intensive site will be blocked.
No one has mentioned citizens giving up their rights, only deployed Marines/Soldiers.
If you are in the ARMY you are a "SOLDIER"
If you are in the NAVY you are a "SAILOR"
IF you are in the MARINES you are a "MARINE"
IF you are in the AIR FORCE you are an "AIRMAN"
Those are the terms used to describe the members of the various services.
Collectively they can be known as "THE TROOPS" but a MARINE is NOT a SOLDIER.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
/rant NMCI is an excuse to give sweet contracts to civillian buddies. EVERY implemtation of it I have seen (in several states and 2 continents)has resulted in an increase in costs, and a decrease in service and functionality.
Example #1 When it was implemeted at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, they charged $60 A MONTH to "maintain" a single PDA. Oh, and all those PDAs the ships bought for themselves? They now belonged to the contractor (as well as any other hardware that had been bought with ship's funds). If the ship had more computers than the contractor deemed necessary, the excess (even if bought by ships funds) were disposed of. What was deemed necesarry? Well, for my office of 18 people, we were alloted 2 desktops, one of which was dedicated for the Department Head's exclusive use.
Example #2 Trouble call response time went from same day (when they were handled by the base IT department) to a sliding scale that depened on the users rank (which meant that an enlisted person with a critical application was screwed, but the Admiral's printer could be replaced in two hours). As above, the Group Commander was promised 2 hour service by contract, while my submarine Captain had 48 hour service (and this is not "worst case scenario... service actually did take 48 hours, and was never much sooner than that). The enlisted people had much longer wait times.
Honestly, I'm not even a journalist and it seems completely obvious to me.
The fact that you're not a journalist is probably why you jump to FOIA first.
FOIA is SLOW, SLOW, SLOW. Agencies use every excuse to delay your requests, force you to file lawsuits, etc. etc. Just now the AP got a list of Gitmo detainees released. They started that process 4 years ago! FOUR YEARS. In short: FOIA costs time and money, both of which Wonkette does not have.
Second, there isn't some universal 'block list' for military internet. There are a variety of access methods, networks, branches, etc., all of which could have different access lists. Just by reading the posts on this thread it's shown that this blocking is not uniform. It's not like Rummy is sitting there reading the Internet saying 'block, keep.. keep, keep, block' and tabulating them in a nice little list.
This is the whole reason the FOIA process exists: to give transparency to the operation of the federal government.
That's why FOIA existed under Clinton, maybe (and I mean maybe. It's not like Clinton was a saint). Under Bush, FOIA has become a joke. Transparency? HA! Cheney energy meetings ring a bell? White House Iraq Group mean anything? The only thing that's been transparent was Alito's letter to James Dobson.
Wow, what war movie from the 60s did you get these ideas from?
First Ammendment fully available except while in uniform or performing official duties
Second ammendment, not only are you allowed to own and possess personal weapons, you are also occasionally given official weapons and the training to use them
third, Irrelevant
4th, only while on an installation(oh and if you as a civilian go onto federal property you lose those rights too.Read the sign over the door at the post office
Fifth, all are included in the courts martial process
sixth, How would you like to be tried by a jury of your peers(people who have shared similar life experiences, heartaches, joys and pain)?
Seven, Eight, Nine, and Ten
you can in this situation be a complete and total idiot.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
I work for the federal goverment as a reservist and a civilian. A requirement of my civilian job is that I maintain service as a reservist, but that is a whole other story. I have confirmed that each of these sites are blocked or permited on the USARC (United States Army Reserve Command) exactly as described above. I am located in Utah on federal property so it should not be a "war zone" issue. This is a government computer, so they have the right to limit viewing as per user agreements, but this seems to be a freedom of speech issue. Good Night and Good Luck.
I am a bit mystified why this would surprise anyone. Maybe those who spent zero time actually considering it are typing out a knee jerk reaction. Anyone who considers the whole picture will say, "Yeah, I suppose so."
The networks that the Marine Corps is running in Iraq have a primary focus: The Mission. That is supporting the forces there, allowing information to organized and passed quickly between those who need to coordinate their work. Marines are permitted to use the network for personal reasons when it does not affect the mission in any way and that use is subject to a number of restrictions. No viewing, transmitting, or storing obscene material, hate speech, chain letters, etc. The normal list of rules for the network is about two pages, courier new type, 10 pitch - including spaces for the user to fill in their name, rank, billet, sign (etc.) and for the approving officer to validate that the Marine needs a network account.
There can also be several layers of filtering for access. There could easily be several firewalls between a user and the Internet. We had one at our division level, then another at MEF. There is usually a something of a standard list of which sites are blocked, but each little network could be unique. We had a problem with idiots downloading large files from one or two Internet sites. It was affecting the performance of the whole network. Not only did I go find those users (and their Staff Noncommissioned Officers), but we cut access to the problem sites.
Oh, and when the unit suffers casualties, the Data Chief cuts access to email and the Internet for everyone except a list of critical users. That stays on until the families are notified by the Marines (in the US) who perform the casualty call. The last thing a parent, wife, or fiancee needs to get is an email with a subject line of "John is dead." That would also leave open the door for cruel hoaxes.
The point is that the Marine Corps allows Marines to use the network, in a limited fashion, for reading their personal email and accessing websites because it is good for morale and we usually have the bandwidth to support it. However, it is a military asset, just like a 7-ton truck. If the truck is being used by someone to clean out their garage, when it is needed to move supplies, there is obviously a problem.
Andrew Borntreger
Champion of cinematic disasters
Having worked for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force G6 (Communications), I also had the luxury of working in the internet cafes. With that said, I can give you the straight scoop and not these purported theories. We have dedicated hardware to handle filtering and devote hardly any resources to monitoring the activities of the servicemembers. With that said we operate mostly on a lock everything down and ask permission for access mentality.
In the Internet Cafes owned and operated by KBR, and serviced by McDean, they rely on BlueCoats for the filtering. Once again, due to fighting a war we're not going to devote the time to locking down websites manually. At these Internet Cafes you can pull up anything any everything you want. Now there are standard policies in place as to what you can and can't look at, and that's an honor system (for the most part). Big brother is always watching, and generally that was me. The reason we watch is to ensure classified information isn't leaked.
To wrap this up, there is no polticially motivated conspiracy to prevent people from seeing certain sites. You can more or less blame the filtering hardware for that. Now if there are some sites that you really want to see go and talk to your local admin and see if they will unblock it for you. More times than not they will accomodate your request. But if you're on a government laptop (non Internet Cafe) don't start asking for MySpace as after all... it's for official use only. We can't have the taxpayers thinking there is "waste, fraud, and abuse".
I spent two years in Iraq, half of which was spent as a network engineer and I tell you from my extensive knowledge of DOD networks that the Marine Corps in particular does "content filtering" based on catergories. For example if a site is known to be political, humours and have explicit matieral the filter will take the highest of them (explicit in this case) and then block that site. This is for moral reasons as well as international reasons. Countries like Iraq have laws against pornographic material. There was even a point where we were almost not allowed to have Stuff magazine and the likes. Another comes down to security. If a Marine is on duty and is surfing the internet or chatting then they are not alert to what they are doing and their surroundings. This can cause issues if something happened while that Marine was on post. Another reason is because YOU the tax payer, pay for that Sat bandwidth we have over there. How we can we justify to the DOD for our next Fiscal year that we need more money for bandwidth if half the traffic is non work related? YES they look at those stats!!! Not EVERYTHING is cut off, we do have moral computers in the internet cafes that allow anyone to surf anything as long as it is not X-rated pornographic material, once again this is due to international laws. The other DOD bodies have different regulations. The Army is less restrictive because they have more money in thier budget to buy more Sat bandwidth. They can afford to surf "junk" to put it plainly. The Marine Corps is not like and will NEVER be like any of the other armed services. We stand a notch above the rest and as such have a responsibility to set the example and pave the way for the other armed services. From internet to operations we are the best as what we do and that can not be argued. We are the elite fighting force of America. We take an honorable and moral high ground to be stay that way; since 1775. Semper Fi 1337P1rt3
I am in iraq right now. All of those websites work, at least on the camp fallujah internet center. I know anonymizers are blocked on certain computers, ones in the batallions areas and such. This was fairly recent. I work in the s-3 shop and have access to SIPR and NIPR, and up until about january they worked. and on the NIPR only certain sites are blocked, for bandwidth and virus related reasons. As far as i know this article is all smoke in the mirrors.
I actually met Al Franken once. Any guesses where it was? It was at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq. He was there as part of a USO tour. So why would the military allow him to perform in Iraq but not allow his content to be viewed by people in Iraq?
Life has many choices. Eternity has two. What's yours?
There's actually very little information he can give. OPSEC and all that. That doesn't nescessarily mean that network information is classified (though some of it is) but just that in an on going information even enough unclassified information can be pieced together to form a classified picture. In light of that, it's often wise to not give any real details.
About a year ago I was stationed about 10 miles outside of Baghdad and will confirm that our "buisness" connection went through Baghdad. We did, however, also have an MWR connection. This connection was intended for personal use and as far as I was able to tell, there was no filtering on it whatsoever.
I actually just thought of an interesting point. Just what evidence did you want him to provide? A link to his units website that says he's in Iraq. Big deal, we know there are units in Iraq and that wouldn't prove anything. The exact coords where he's located right now or where his datacenter is? That'd be a huge security risk and still wouldn't prove anything. Though I'd be willing to bet he's at Camp Victory (the one in Iraq, not in Kuwait). Where in Victory? Beats me. I had no need to know that and neither do you.
Life has many choices. Eternity has two. What's yours?
As a prior Marine working out in Iraq and RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BLOCKING of webpages there is a simple reason why these have been blocked....Lack of bandwidth. On a base you have about 5,000 users all wanting to check email, look at pictures, and God knows what else with only 512k of bandwidth But these things can interfere with the mission and the mission is most important. When we were first out there everything was open to all but then we installed a websense server and used the catagories it provided to block content. There was no political bias, what was taking up the most bandwidth got killed, espically with it didn't pertain to mission accomplishment. So there is no need for political discussion, nothing about rights, it comes down to the Marine Corps is focused on mission accomplishment. These sites have NOTHING to do with mission accomplishment and were therefore blocked. In all honosty if you do believe there is a political bias flame the people at websense, they are the ones who decide which websites are blocked
I found it quite humorous while living in the sandpit that was operation Desert Shield that although we were in a country where we couldn't get even a slice of bacon, four of our twelve MRE menus were pork-centric. Worse still was that we were supplying the saudi army from our MRE stocks, but they could only eat the 8 non-pork menus, which left a huge surplus of pork ones. I swear, nearly every meal I ate there for six weeks was goddamn Omelet with Ham or nasty, nasty BBQ Pork w/Rice. One of the disadvantages to beeing a "bottom feeder" in the infantry-- everyone else higher up in the "food chain" was undoubtedly taking what little non-pork was left...the bastards.
Checking the current MRE menus, it seems they've cut it down to one menu item (#2 - "Pork Rib") out of 24. So we can't get a can of deviled ham from our mother, but Uncle Sam can feed us a bagged and processed pork rib meat patty?
Conclusion: the Empire squashes the Federation like a bug. Accept it.
One thing I noticed about most of the sites on that list is they have forums; it only takes is one General to find out one of his Troops were engaged in a flame-fest with Civilians, to start locking things down. Conduct unbecoming is a violation of the UCMJ, and it's not unusual for an establishment where unbecoming conduct frequently occures to be place off limits.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Another piece of historical trivia: at the beginning of its existence, the [Soviet] Red Army functioned as a voluntary formation, without ranks or insignia. Democratic elections selected the officers.
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
"Those photos were real photos."
The United States has actively been deploying new satellites above the Middle East since the Fall of 1996. In January 2003 the USA replaced a 10-year-old GPS satellite station above Iraq, which was no longer working, and thus wasn't able to take photographs. Images sent from the live satellite would be in color, not black and white, as Powell shows. It is therefore unknown when the pictures Powell shows us were taken. The Poker bluff. The USA couldn't let the world know they were madly deploying new satellites above Iraq, therefore discrediting their claims Iraq held weapons.
Furthermore, the USA does monitor live images. Why didn't Powell show this? If you recall, the Bush administration claims against Iraq predates these images by one year. Powell and the Bush administration claim they had proof of Iraq weapons in January 2002, but via satellite, they fail to marry images with claims.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
Hello moderators, please mod the parent up. I too work in communications in the military and can tell you first hand that any reports of censorship conspiracy are greatly exaggerated.
I read the drivel that Wonkette was spewing about on her site weeks ago and would have challenged her directly on her own website, but surprise, anonymous comments aren't allowed there.
There is no blatant internet censorship going on in the military. Just to make sure my point gets across, allow me to repeat that again, this time in bold letters that are sure to stand out: There is no blatant internet censorship going on in the military. The logic is clear and the logic is simple, so follow along with me if you will.
1. Government computers in general and government military computers in specific are for official use only. This is always made very clear, but of course, it's never stopped people from visiting Slashdot, playing online games, bidding on eBay auctions, and even viewing pornography on government computers when they're supposed to be doing work.
2. A commander or someone high up on the food chain says, "Hey, we've had too many porno incidents and I'm starting to lose face. We need to filter our web access. Since we're the government, we'll put a bid out on it and get a contractor for the solution.
3. A contractor wins the bid. Partially because they're the lowest bidder and partially because their proposal contained all this great-sounding stuff like "increased work productivity".
4. The contracter says, "okay, we can ban access to these different types of pages, sir. Which would you'd like?" To which the commander says, "I want my people to be as productive and hard-working as possible, so we don't want to tempt them with any distractions. Filter all of it! Er, except cnn.com. A guy's gotta read the news in the morning, right?"
5. Contracter sets up filters that prohibit access to porn sites, sports sites, auction sites, classified ad sites, gaming sites, humour sites, entertainment sites, gambling sites, and personal sites.
Read that last one again. "Personal sites." That's what blogs are. I can't access geocities, tripod, blogspot, livejournal, or any of those because they're considered "personal sites" by the web content filter where I work. (I keep wondering when Slashdot will finally be blocked.) The contractors who set up content filters over here are quite often the same ones that set up content filters over there.
Commanders and contractors are not deliberately censoring United States Military personnel. They're trying to keep people focused on their work. They have no interest in censoring what troops want to say. I should be the last person in the world to lecture about this, but troops are supposed to keep in mind that using the government computer for personal reasons is wrong and technically illegal. Like the parent said, even overseas there are ways to check your email, post to your blog, or whatever without doing it on the taxpayer's dime.
The only sites from the list in the article that I can't access from here are "http://www.airamericaradio.com/" and "http://www.alfrankenshow.com/". But I wonder if these sites offer [more] streaming media than the others on the list. After all, here I am posting on Slashdot, so it can't be all that bad. Usually, the only sites that I've noticed are blocked are porn, games, illegal activities, dating/personals, and shareware/freeware. Web mail is intermittantly blocked. Note that these restrictions exist on/from the cemnf-wiraq.usmc.mil domain. In other words, these are computers that are [supposed] to be used for work purposes. Everyone has the option of walking 1/2 mile to the Camp Fallujah Internet Cafe for unfettered access. Most of us would rather just come into the HQ office (aka the "Combat Operations Center" or C.O.C.) and put up with the restrictions.