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.

[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.

[GuloGulo]

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.

Re:Wouldn't that be ironic.

[n2art2]

Are you kidding me? Seriously?

"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?"

Ok, I asked myself, and the answer was. . . I was there. I grew up in that situation. My Dad was a Military man, still is actually, 28yrs later. And I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to speak of. where meals many a times consisted of potatoes we grew in the garden, and only those potatoes at times. I grew up as "red neck" as it comes. Gravel road that in the winter took 3-4 days to get plowed out after a storm. Where it was nothing to walk the 5 miles to school, cause I had football practice. Where our only family vehicle was a Ford Festiva, and I had 3 brothers, all of us in highschool at the time, and we found a way to get us 4 in the back seat so we could drive the 40 min. to church on Sunday. Where our idea of a good time was swinging on a rope in the water hole out in the east field down by the railroad tracks in our underwear, because we didn't know they actually had clothes you was supposed to wear when swimin' cause 90% of the clothes we did wear was made by Mom for the first boy and handed down to the fourth, and patched along the way.

And guess what? I didn't join the military like my Daddy and my Brothers did. No, I saved up 150 bucks from corn detasseling the summer of my senior year, and bought a car. Well if you could call it that. And left town for the City. (Minneapolis) and I signed up for college at. . . . A PRIVATE ART COLLEGE, MCAD.

And how did I do that? with no money and all I owned in the back seat of my crappy Rustbucket of a Ford Tempo? It's called motivation. It's not. . .

"but many would have chosen a different route given the opportunity."

It's called making my own opportunity, and busting my balls. It's called finding a job at the local Happy Chef working as many shifts as I can, and selling Blood Plasma 2 times a week for the entire time I was in college, and student loans to boot. Then graduating with a 4 year BFA Degree in Multimedia/3D Computer Animation.

So don't spout that crap about opportunities to me. Make your own!

I hate these pour me I can't choose my parents, it's not my fault, I didn't have a choice people. You do have a choice, you just choose to not make it.

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.

[bj8rn]

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.

Army didn't

[ArcherB]

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.

Re:Army didn't

[Chemosky]

I concur, while on deployment in Kuwait before OIF, I had unlimited, high speed internet access. However, during OIF (in Baghdad anyway) military provided bandwidth was monitored by Websense. Anonymous proxies were an easy solution to circumvent Websense. Eventually, local provided satellite internet cafes sprung up on nearly every camp which offered unhindered access for a small price.

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

Bluecoat filtering proxy in use

[uab21]

Actually, every one of those blocked sites is blocked for me right now working in the good old USA. My company is using the Bluecoat proxy server hardware which has filtering on it that gives exactly the same messages.

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.

No Conspiricy

[XMilkProject]

I know everyone is looking for some vast right-wing conspiricy, but to me it looks like the blocked pages had free streaming radio, or public forums. I can see cases where administrators may block streaming media for the purposes of saving bandwidth, and potentially public forums for a huge number of security and public relations reasons.

It just so happens the Air America lets you listen online for free (becuase they are not trying to turn a profit), and Rush Limbaugh does not. I'm not so certain theres any bias going on here.

At the worst, it seems like a case of stupid network rules, which happen to be the same as at my company. (No streaming media, no forums).

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.

Blocked for me as well!

[thundergeek]

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

The military did not block or filter anything

[Faldgan]

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)

Re:not censored

[Firethorn]

I too, have worked as a network admin in the AOR. In my case, Air Force

For the most part, we use a standard commercial filtering package on a proxy server. This can vary by command.

In this case, I could easily see why air america was filtered. To conserve bandwidth, especially in the environment of limited bandwidth that is the AOR, streaming media sites are blocked. This explains the Air America blockings. Internet Radio/TV is the blocked category, not Politics/Opinion. The Forbidden page lists all categories the site belongs to.

Commonly blocked categories are forums/bulletin boards, porn, illegal activities, profanity, extreme, criminal skills, drugs, trading (like stocks and/or EBay). Web-ads by some of the smarter bases.

The forum/bulletin board filter tends to be very hit or miss.

Any sites blocked specifically by the administers of the site would present a webpage that says 'forbidden by local policy'.

Sites that would be in here are generally those that target military members for scams or other illegal activities that aren't otherwise caught by the filters.

Though there was those hours that I was told to block the major news sites as they had classified up there... Then the senior leadership realized that yes, the cat is out of the bag.

As for unblocking sites, that's generally difficult for official networks because the submitter has to show official need(not misc. browsing).