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:

• 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."

The political bias is obvious. And this is what reminded me of Saudi Arabia's Internet blockage, because there, too, it wasn't just obvious porn or "anti-Islamic" material that was being blocked, but plenty of political information.

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.

Comments

Wouldn't that be ironic.

[suso]

Fighting for freedom are we?

Re:Wouldn't that be ironic.

[grasshoppa]

We're fighting for freedom and democracy. You'll notice that you have none of those things in the military.

Re:Wouldn't that be ironic.

[Bazzalisk]

Seems to me that a lot of the time what you're fighting for is market-capitalism -- freedom and democracy often seem to be regarded as more of a happy bonus.

(Exactly why the market-socialist UK is supporting this I'm not sure).

Re:Wouldn't that be ironic.

[Golias]

Considering response to Cindy Sheehan by Bush Admin...

Oh, so it was the Bush Administration that ordered the NYC police to arrest her for trespassing when she and her fellow protesters locked their legs together and blocked the door to the US Mission of the UN???

And this is "not far off" from arresting a drunk for sedition after he bad-mouths FDR?

"Hello in there, Cliff. Tell me, what color is the sky in your world?"

Re:Wouldn't that be ironic.

[the phantom]

Unfortunately, it is very hard to just "quit" when you are in the military. In fact, I believe it is a crime. Does the word "dersertion" mean anything to you?

Re:Wouldn't that be ironic.

[cow ninja]

dude.. really.

I am a also a sysadmin in the Guard and we do filter content, just like any other company would. That network is there for working not for casual browsing. It just takes one guy to pull up porn and offend a female before he loses a stipe and net access is taken away.

If the troops/Marines want internet access for personal reasons they can go to MWR and get it, not durring working hours.

Re:Wouldn't that be ironic.

[StarOwl]

Of course, this article wouldn't have made Slashdot if access to all political fora, blogs, etc. were blocked for on-duty personnel.

The allegation that only certain sites, all of which seem to lean a certain way politically, are blocked is what raises eyebrows.

Re:Wouldn't that be ironic.

[Hatta]

You have to have blind trust that you're doing the right thing and that the orders you got are good to go and that for the vast majority of people is impossible.

Which is a good thing. You should never have blind trust in authority, nothing leads more quickly to tyranny. In any democracy, those that trust the government are shirking their responsibility to act as a check on government power.

Love your country, but never EVER trust its government.

Re:Wouldn't that be ironic.

[WhiplashII]

In order to have a successful society, both viewpoint are required. If no one questions the orders, tyranny results. If no one follows the orders without understanding them, nothing can be accomplished. Specifically in the military case, if you question your orders, people die before they are cleared up for you. (Why should I fire artillery there? I'm not sure those are the bad guys...)

What is attempted in the military is that you have mostly order followers (enlisted), and a few order questioners (officers) to try to keep everyone honest. Most of the failures modes of this are bad, but less bad than what the enemy would do to you.

In normal society, most of the people are order questioners, and almost noone is an order follower. That means that nothing gets done (unless everyone can be made to agree quickly), but the failure modes mostly involved lack of information - and are not usually that critical (under the assumption that the more critical something is, the closer it is watched).

Both these systems seem to work pretty well - in normal society the government should probably not do anything unless a lot of people agree, and in the military it probably is best (for our side) to err on the side of following orders.

Re:Wouldn't that be ironic.

[bj8rn]

/. rumors for nerds, it used to matter.

Exactly.

FTA: The political bias is obvious. Yes, and so's yours, Mr. Roblimo. Next time, could you please try to make a news article more like an article and less like a political rant by cutting straight to the point (ie asking people if they can confirm or deny this), instead of ranting endlessly about the situation in Saudi Arabia?

Re:Wouldn't that be ironic.

[spacecowboy420]

"And there are plenty of other jobs you can have."
That's rich.
Take it from a white trash redneck who joined the Army during daddy's war; where I came from there were not "plenty of other jobs". There was competition for Circle K cashiers. It was rural America where the opportunities are limited. It isn't a choice between the Army and college - if you want to go to college, you join the army. Look who the majority of the enlisted are - in any branch; minorities and rednecks. For many people, the military is the ONLY option besides spending your life in a trailer house or the projects. The Army has provided many opportunities for me that I would have never had otherwise - some of us don't get to choose our parents.

It is nice to speculate about the options of others when YOU have options, but some of us don't/didn't have many. That is why I, and many of my fellow enlisted joined in the first place. Yes, we were patriotic, yes, we were ready to die for our country without hesitation - but many would have chosen a different route given the opportunity.

Ask yourself: what would you do if there was no college money, no moving money, no money for transportation to work(if you had a job), no job experience, no real future but the one you make?

You sound like a republican blaming the poor in New Orleans because they just didn't leave when the hurricane was coming. Nice to have options, but don't assume everyone else does.

Re:Wouldn't that be ironic.

[drakaan]

The opinions that matter (as far as when to release soldiers from active duty or decide which web sites they should be able to access), have nothing to do with the public.

Often stated and often ignored in the posts above is the fact that you have to knowingly commit yourself into service in the united states military. When you do so, you are made to understand that your life no longer belongs to you at that point. Your raison d'etre at that point is to support and defend the constitution and obey the orders of the officers appointed over you, in that order. Beyond that, you are told that you serve at the discretion of the branch of service you are a part of, and that's it.

You are given a chance during basic and advanced training to quit. Just pack it up and go home. No harm, no foul. If you decide to stay past that point, then the military will do it's best to get a return on the investment of time and money they put into trainng you. It'd be stupid for them not to.

As for the websites, it's not a matter of political bias, it's a matter of morale and welfare management that causes the apparent political slant to which sites get blocked. Rush is an idiot, but he's an idiot that isn't constantly saying "Pull the troops out now, they're fighting an illegal war, etc, etc". If he began to do so, you can be sure he'd be blocked as well. It's easier to maintain a fighting force's morale by limiting their exposure to that kind of speech, and it's within the rights of the military to do so.

Soldiers don't have the same rights that ordinary citizens do, and they have very little control over anything that they have not been placed in charge of. Yes, some want to leave. Yes, the military wants them to stay...it's easier to put effort into getting people to stay than to train new recruits well enough to replace them.

It's all to easy to say "that's wrong! Do it this way instead!". If you think about it for a split second before saying that, though, you'll probably realize that a lot of other people within the military have been working for a century or two at addressing precisely those issues, including addressing those issues in cases where the servicemen involved were conscripted and not volunteers.

Calm down and think about the whole situation for a minute, then ask yourself what it would take, in terms of intelligence and ability, to mobilize and deploy that many people and whether a group with that much planning and thinking ability would be likely to not have considered the option you're proposing.

Re:Wouldn't that be ironic.

[dclydew]

Ya know, I grew up in a small southeastern Ohio village (no stop lights 1500 people). There weren't jobs unless you wanted to work for a pottery. My parents had neither the money nor the inclination to send me to college... and yet, I didn't join the millitary. I read books, I learned how computers worked. I learned how networks worked and now I have a good job with a nice salary.

I'm not a republican by any means, but I do think that at least a portion of the responsibility for those that died during Katrina... lies with those that died in Katrina. People in the city knew that the levees were unlikely to hold against a big storm, the news had covered the issue many times, including a discussion of how bad the flooding would be. Yet, these people failed to accept the most basic act of self-preservation. How many of those that stayed and died had bothered to develop a plan? How many had stocked up on even the basics like water? People standing in line at the Dome were holding bags of clothes and televisions... why weren't they holding milk jugs of water and bags of food?

The federal, state and local authorities failed to support thei constituants and they should be held responsible for their failures... but, when it comes to life and death, the ultimate responsibility must lie with the individual. At any time, you may find yourself in a life-threatening situation. When that happens, there might be some local cops to help, or there might be national guard to help, or there might be FEMA... however, the only person that WILL be there, for sure... is you. If you can't rely on you, then how can you expect to rely on some government group? I mean, the government are the people that run the BMV, do you really want to stake your life on that level of incompetence.

As an aside, I think it also speaks to our failure as a civilization. Survival, for most species on this planet is instinctive. Survival for Americans, is a responsibility of the government. If some terrible disaster struck, how many Americans could survive without a grocery store? How many would starve? We live on a Continent that provides basic sustance throught the entire year. There is nowhere in North America where there isn't at least some type of food (with the exception of some small patches of desert). Yet, how many people would survive?

How many people live in areas where tornados, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes etc are all possible? How many of them actually spend even a few hours putting together a contingency plan? How many bother to store up even a gallon of water?

Personal responsibility, seems to me, the most important thing that we as a nation have lost. Our society loves to find someone or something to take the blame (I was poor so I had to join the millitary. I was poor so I couldn't save my own ass.)

I was poor, my Grandma still uses an outhouse and I have a great Aunt that still sleeps on cornshuks and has a dirt floor. I have a job that makes money and I have learned how the hell to save my own ass. And still have time for 420 ;-)

Re:Wouldn't that be ironic.

[An Onerous Coward]

You spin a good story, and no doubt it's basically true. But I've got a real beef with the whole "stop whining and make your own opportunities" crowd. It's the party line being toed by a large number of people whose primary goal is to blame the poor for their sorry lot in life, so they don't have to feel guilty about all the crap that goes on. It also flies in the face of all evidence to think that human beings have a great deal of control over their personal characteristics. A very large fraction of our personality traits are genetic. For example, children of violent parents are unusually likely to be violent themselves, even when adopted at birth into some other family.

Some people have incredible self-discipline, a solid work ethic, and the ability to delay gratification. Your story would indicate that you do, because you succeeded where most of your peers probably failed. But it's an insult to your peers, an insult to reason, and an insult to everyone who works to bring fairness into the world, to claim that anyone else could have done the exact same thing in your situation.

Okay, that last bit was a bit much with the histrionics. But the basic premise that you're supporting (whether by accident or design) is that it doesn't matter how unfair the world is, so long as the occasional superstar has the wherewithal to claw his way from poor bastard to rich bastard. For my part, if people don't have the discipline to make the best choices for themselves, I still want to see them lead happy and fulfilled lives. Moreover, I'm happy to put my taxes where my mouth is, and fund the social programs that might help them.

Hell, they've done studies correlating a three-year-old's ability to put off eating a marshmallow with his or her future success in life. That seems like a strong indication that there is something inborn being measured, and that we shouldn't be willing to condemn all who fail to live up to our expectations.

Doh! Military have always censored

[redelm]

Please understand: People who go into the armed services of any nation are giving up rights that civilians enjoy. This is one of the things that makes conscription so reprehensible.

Military commanders are worried about troop morale, and will intervene to keep whatever they consider disruptive away. They can and will punish spreading of dissent or other insubordination. Sometimes very severely.

The military also censors what it's members can say. This is necessary to avoid inadvertantly informing an enemy, but like everything else, it can be abused. Also part of service life. It ain't pretty.

Gimme a break!

[gasmonso]

Before people start all the suppressing soldiers rights chatter... this is nothing new and I'm sure its being done to all the forces, not just the Marines. The military has always kept a tight grip on incoming and outgoing information. In WWI and WWII, mail was looked at for sensitive information and photographers had their pictures looked at. The was especially true in Vietnam. I'm not justifying it, but I don't think most people are in a position to judge if you yourself haven't led troops in combat or fought in a war yourself. Having served in the Marines myself, I can say that good morale is vital to a mission's success. It's so important that it may even be worth losing some freedoms to maintain it. Anyone who has served in the armed forces will tell you that you give up your rights when you enlist. The military is a serious game and normal rules don't apply often. May seem strange to many, but its reality.

gasmonso

Does your company block websites?

[BiloxiGeek]

Are you free to surf any website you want on your company network? Do any of us really think that the military lets troops surf anywhere they please on a government owned and operated network that is there for "Official Use Only"? The same network that carries Command & Control data that is vital for operational information.

I think if I were a Marine/Soldier/Sailor/Airman in the zone, I'd rather be limited in what websites I can surf from the combat zone in exchange for having the available bandwidth that lets an alert message come in about an impending attack.

Re:Doh! Military have always censored

[Baseball_Fan]

Please understand: People who go into the armed services of any nation are giving up rights that civilians enjoy

While I can agree that members of the military give up some rights because of their job, they still should enjoy the basic constitutional rights that all Americans have. For example, Troops in the Army who live on base are not allowed to have any political posters of any kind. There are no signs of "I support X for congress". Military troops also have less rights in criminal cases. They don't always get a jury, sometimes it is a tribunal. There have been cases when their contract for service has expired but they are forced to continue service.

On the other hand, when we enter another nation, we must respect their laws. There is no freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia. If they want to censor the internet, it is their right. The USA can not dictate to Saudi Arabia how to live, what values to have. Muslim nations have a right to form religious states where their doctrine determines laws. Just like the USA can form a state based on our values.

Dare to criticize the Great Leader?

[Red Flayer]

Preposterous.

One of my closest childhood friends commented to me in 1999 that on a carrier (the ship, not the service provider) their web access was censored.

Furthermore, they were forbidden by their CO from watching any news other than Fox News in the mess. Apparently, due to personal preference of the CO, not because of military policy... but after checking with and other parts of his ship, they all had the same mess/recreation policy.

See, dissenting points of view could harm troop morale, and diminish their effectiveness. The military is allowed to get away with a lot of things in the name of protecting morale. You wouldn't want any doubters to risk the lives of brother soldiers/shipmen/airmen because of their conscience, would you?

The armed forces, including all the men and women in them, are responsible for the execution of war -- not the morality of war. The Congress is responsible for those decisions, so the armed forces have no reason to hear dissenting points of view. Right?

Since the Revolutionary War in the US, that has been how it has worked. Separation of Powers, Checks and Balances, and all that. As long as Congress is respnsible for the ethical decisions of war, then censoring information accessible to the troops is fine. Oh wait...

Apologies in advance for the tongue-in-cheekiness.

Re:Dare to criticize the Great Leader?

[Hatta]

The armed forces, including all the men and women in them, are responsible for the execution of war -- not the morality of war. The Congress is responsible for those decisions, so the armed forces have no reason to hear dissenting points of view. Right?

I realize that you were being somewhat facetious, but it bears explicitly pointing out that this is dead wrong. Every man is born with a conscience and it is his responsibility to use it. If you choose to participate in an unjust war, you are a murderer plain and simple and not any different than any other armed thug.

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs.

-Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience" 1849

Hate to tell all you guys this, but...

[hcob$]

Of Course! Not to sound like a red-dog republican, but of course they censor the internet for the troops. Their job(and thier life) depends on being focused on their job, not what's going on at the Underground Asian Showgirls(TM)website. Censorship is something that has always and will always occur in the Military. When you join the military you give up several freedoms due to how a military works. There is no free press, free speech, and free will(within limits), etc. in the military.

All you "everyone has a right to do whatever the hell they want" people need to get your collective head out of your collective rears so you can see what actually happens in the world.

Re:Doh! Military have always censored

[stanmann]

Your claims are a mix of fact, fantasy and fiction. While out of uniform, or in one's residence signs of support for a party or a candidate are perfectly acceptable. There is always a right to jury at a courts martial, and unlike in the civilian sector you can be certain that those judging you are your peers. The cases where the contract "expired" but they were forced to continue serving are mostly a misunderstanding from the civilian sector of how the contract works.

The answer is so painfully obvious

[JoeShmoe]

File a FOIA request for a copy of the block list for the Armed Forces Internet. Simple. Then you can read the whole list and parse out any meaningful information. Honestly, I'm not even a journalist and it seems completely obvious to me. This is the whole reason the FOIA process exists: to give transparency to the operation of the federal government.

Now, perhaps there's a chance that the federal government will come back with some kind of excuse like "releasing the block list gives aid and comfort to the enemy" but that alone would be a story worth the price of admission. Wonkette is an idiot, so of course this simple idea wouldn't occur to her or her readership. I'm I hope that a real investigative journalist picks up the story so he or she can actually do some investigating and find out the truth. I think that it would be hilarious to compare the Chinese block list with the American block list. Wouldn't it be a hoot to find out that the Americans are blocking more?

-JoeShmoe
.

Re:But that was Kuwait

[Anonymous Custard]

Regardless of whether soldiers have a right to uncensored internet access, congress needs to look into biased filtering.

If the military wants to block political-opinion websites, that's fine, but block ALL political opinion websites. The category and reason for blocking is "Politics/Opinion" , not "Liberal Politics/Opinion" or "Politics/Opinion that the Bush administration doesn't like".

Re:Yup

[Minwee]

Islamic Superpower + Western world = Armageddon

Yup. It sure is a good thing that nations like Islamic Republic of Pakistan don't have nuclear weapons. That would mean the end of the world.

Except that they vote...

[Anonymous Coward]

As for the websites, it's not a matter of political bias, it's a matter of morale and welfare management that causes the apparent political slant to which sites get blocked. Rush is an idiot, but he's an idiot that isn't constantly saying "Pull the troops out now, they're fighting an illegal war, etc, etc". If he began to do so, you can be sure he'd be blocked as well. It's easier to maintain a fighting force's morale by limiting their exposure to that kind of speech, and it's within the rights of the military to do so.

Great, but don't forget that these military folks are also voters. It seems to very, very convenient for one side or the other to define a common political view as "bad for morale". Then they can block their opponents outright. If political speech is so dangerous to morale, the filtering is at least as dangerous to our democracy, since it allows one side or the other to sculpt the political opinions of a large portion of the voting population.