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Soldiers Can't Blog Without Approval
denebian devil writes "Wired.com has obtained a copy of updated US Army rules (pdf) that force soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages without first clearing the content with a superior officer. Previous editions of the rules asked Army personnel to "consult with their immediate supervisor" before posting a document "that might contain sensitive and/or critical information in a public forum." The new version, in contrast, requires "an OPSEC review prior to publishing" anything — from "web log (blog) postings" to comments on internet message boards, from resumes to letters home. Under the strictest reading of the rule, a soldier must check with his or her superior officer before every blog entry posted and every email sent, though the method of enforcing these regulations is subject to choices made by the unit commanders. According to Wired, active-duty troops aren't the only ones affected by the new guidelines. Civilians working for the military, Army contractors — even soldiers' families — are all subject to the directive as well, though many of the people affected by these new regulations can't even access them because they are being kept on the military's restricted Army Knowledge Online intranet. Wired also interviewed Major Ray Ceralde, author of the new regulations, about why this change has been made."
Sounds like more of a PITA than anything at all... and to me, it doesn't seem like it'll make any difference in keeping information "secure" anyways. Anyone that wants to know anything about our military can probably just watch the news. They seem to tell enough of our "secret" plans most of the time anyways.
Its just like a NDA for a major corporation. But the stakes are life and death. If the censorships is being abused is one thing but that fact that it exists is to be expected.
It won't be a popular opinion but all content in a war zone needs to be carefully filtered, while "we shot three arabs today" won't cause my trouble "we shot three arabs in Baghdad today" might do so. Hence anything going in or out in any form must be checked to see if it gives their operations away.
Soldiers are much like prisoners, they have some freedoms, but at the end of the day you're on someone else's time and in a place and they make all the rules, both good and bad. If you sign up (or get sent there) you play by the rules ment to keep everyone safe.
I like muppets.
If they don't have a rule against it, when someone blogs something that truly is damaging the Army won't be able to do anything about it.
So, in typical bureaucratic fashion, they effectively outlaw the practice.
And it's not just the US Army that does this. This is no different than some large corporation setting a policy that you can't load personal software on company computers, or schools putting in censoring tools.
It's CYA in case something goes wrong - the top management can then point to a rule they made.
A military organization functions well due to its tightly controlled command structure, like a hive of ants. Whether or not the military should be doing X or Y is irrelevant to the issue - the actions of everyone in the hive must be controlled and purposeful.
If you don't like it, pretend to be crazy, gay, or commit a crime, and get out. THEN write your book.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Military censorship of all troops' correspondence is not exactly new.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
When I was in, back in the day, I'm willing to bet there were restrictions in place that could be applied to personal correspondence and telephone calls. Sounds like they're just updating the rules to keep up with the times. It's also not too surprising to me that the rules would be posted somewhere not everybody could read them, there'll be notes sent out to remind everybody about the new policy.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
When I was in the Army we were often told, "We're here to defend Democracy, not to practice it." OPSEC (OPerations SECurity) is vital to both mission success and protecting soldiers lives. I'm an complete nut when I comes to the first amendment, but combat soldiers absolutely DON'T (and shouldn't) have that right.
-Peter
Consider the average soldier. Don't get me wrong, I've served my time too, but let's be honest here, there are more than a few that don't think past the next meal. Can you see a blog entry like "bleagh, again another boring patrol down road $somewhere at 1130 tonight, can't they come up with something new"?
Loose lips and all that.
Of course this will be used to keep them from telling any news of events that don't run so lovely to keep the spirit on the "home front" up. I doubt, though, that this is the main concern. Those news get out, this way or another, because some of those soldiers will and do come home, and there ain't much that could keep them from talking.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I bet the regulation will be there forever, more or less. From the sounds of it, it's up to the unit commanders to set the standards for their unit. There'll be some leeway to make sure every "stop at the PX and snag some milk" email doesn't have to be approved by on-high.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
My younger brother has been deployed in Afghanistan 2 times and is on deployment leave prior to his 3rd trip there. Initially when talking to him while he was deployed it was near impossible to hold a decent conversation. He took OPSEC seriously to the point he would not even tell me there was sand on the ground. At first I found it pretty annoying. But after thinking about it anything that allows him to come home safe is well worth the annoyance.
Armies which require their soldiers to behave like ants are at a considerable disadvantage against armies which expect their soldiers to behave like well-disciplined people. There's a difference.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
JUST - ADD - S
Man, I hate how we're overrun with all these language princesss that think they're better than everyone else.
This is not some big conspiracy theory as I'm sure many people here will immediately cry out about.
Far too easy to give away something that could compromise the security of a unit or a mission -- even if unintentionally. Taking this sort of precaution just makes common sense. The military is likely far more concerned with this type of a scenario than some soldier giving away some horrible conspiracy that everyone in the military is in on (in most part because these types of things would be impossible to hide and if they do come out are fringe exceptions rather than the rule). Most of the blogs out there from troops are of a personal nature or in fact shed light on the fact that things are really not going as badly as is portrayed in our media here.
However, as someone else mentioned, it's probably not going to be too realistic to enforce in the long run.
The problem is that the bad guys have access to the Internet, too. I've seen missions get scrapped less than half an hour before go time because somebody leaked information that could have compromised it. The problem with blogging is that all it takes is one person to post information about the route for the bad guys to be able to figure out where you are gonna be. As the line goes, "loose lips sink ships"... if the bad guys know where you're gonna be, they can plan an ambush really easily, and people get killed.
A large part of opsec in Afghanistan is changing routes, not following set patterns, etc. It's making it a *lot* harder for Taliban forces to plant IEDs with any guarantee of actually hitting us with them.
As to posting information after the fact... again. Patterns. We try to avoid patterns in Afghanistan, but any information that gets leaked about our movements can help the enemy figure out what we're doing, which in turn can help them figure out where we're gonna be. Your friend can deal with combat stress reaction the same way other members of the army do... by talking amongst each other. Watch out for your buddies. Your best defense against stress reactions is your buddies. Them knowing the symptoms and watching out for you can catch it *long* before the symptoms affect your performance. There's no way to know who's going to be able to deal with combat stress until you actually expose people to it, and that's why it's included in standard military first aid training.
Obligatory disclaimer: I'm in the Canadian army reserve. Our rules are a little different from the American rules... to begin with, we've had rules restricting what members are allowed to post on the Internet for as long as I've been in....
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
No! You cannot apply the freedoms to the military that you do to the general public. Period. They're in a different league all together. The fact that you can't see that is very disconcerting.
And - damn it! - get rid of the damned Slashdot template of trying to turn this into a political issue by bringing "incumbent party" into it! I read TFA and there is NOTHING in there about politics, so stop trying to inject your own! This is absolutely nothing new and is not uncommon during a time of war.
From TFA:
If fact, if you had bothered to read TFA, which you obviously did not, the one blogger that they specifcally mentioned is a "pro-victory" blogger, hardly someone who goes against the current administration. Having read a bit of his blog, it is clear to me that he supports the idea of victory in Iraq, which IS the view of the political party that is in the White House! So, if anything this article demonstrates how this action goes against the views that are supported by the incumbent, political party! So, your little quip attempting to place blame on discouraging "them from espousing political opinions that are are disliked by the incumbent political party" is just an attempt for you to throw politics into this.
Keep your baseless attempts to make everything political out of Slashdot and move them over to Digg where they belong.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Why couldn't these rules also apply to CNN? They spew more tactical information on their news channels than anyone else.
Picture it: The first Gulf War.
Remember when CNN was there, with cameras transmitting from a Navy Seals landing site in Kuwait as the soldiers crawled out of the water, looking around at the cameras being shoved in the their faces, deer-in-the-headlights look in their eyes.
CNN and other news sites should be censored. The soldiers know what'll happen to them if they talk. Wolf Blitzer didn't give a crap.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
That's why posts should be reviewed. Just in case they inadvertently let something slip.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Well, I can't really say what the Army teaches, as I never wore a green uniform. All of the OPSEC training I've ever sat through was much more concerned with, as you said later, patrol times & the like. (In my case, port call dates, fuel stops, etc.) And since it's a matter of public record where ships are homeported, it's the simple matter of looking at the big numbers on the side & going to the internet to find out where the USN/USMC/USCG guys you're looking at came from. So there wasn't ever any mention of "don't say where you're from", with the exception of the obvious "don't put your address/telephone on the internet."
Will there be more attacks in the US? Most likely. Will they be going after military family members? Exceptionally unlikely. I'd be more concerned with house burglary... or, hell, lightning strike starting a fire.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
> I'm curious as to how the US Army plans to stifle the free speech of a civilian family member.
/. about 'censorship.'
/. pissed about this article... that last line. How dare they imply you idiots 'are in this war' or that you are Americans!
Perhaps by the simple expedient of educating them that breaking OPSEC can kill. Which is the whole point of the exercise, despite the deranged ravings already showing up on
Plus if the carrot doesn't work there IS the stick which an AC has already posted about in another reply to your post.
BUt really, just what is the big freaking deal here people? What is NEW? The military has ALWAYS been paranoid about secrecy during wartime, or has everyone forgotten all those over the top posters from WWII? But I think I know what really has most of
Ok, that was flamebait but dammit some of you loons make it all too easy.
Democrat delenda est
No. That's what software is for. We know they're listening to every phone conversation using speech recognition; it is even easier to read every email. You don't live in the condition of privacy you seem to think you do. Soldiers, probably less so.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If you hate free speech so much, leave. Go to some non NATO country.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Seriously folks, if you've never served in today's modern military then don't you dare pretend to know what you're talking about when it comes to things like this. Army Knowledge Online (AKO) has been around for more than a decade. I was one of the first "beta testers" for AKO and it's a damn fine system as well as one of the world's largest private online portals. Slashdot pales in comparison to the total number of users AKO has. It's so good that the DoD has made it the new portal for all DoD employees and family members, and it's changing it's name to DKO (Defense Knowledge Online). You ladies have to remember one thing: DoD != George Bush All members of the U.S. Army are REQUIRED to have an AKO account and a valid AKO email address. All family members of U.S. Army soldiers are also allowed to have their own logins and email accounts via AKO. There's even an online instant messenger (using Bantu no less) that works across pretty much any OS out there. SO this bullshit claim by the original poster that AKO is "restricted" somehow and that soldiers won't see the new changes is absurd. Matter of fact, probably right now somewhere in the ME where I am there are probably briefings being given by signal command personnel to both commanders and soldiers about the changes. Every 6 months all soldiers go through a special "dealing with the media" class and these same issues are brought up. Those classes were being mandated even during my first (out of three) Bosnia deployment in '95. Slashdot, you're pretty damn good at covering topics unrelated to active duty military life, but you know nothing about active duty military life. I might not agree with what you say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. Every soldier knows that phrase because they've heard it at one time or another from an officer or sergeant and knows it pertains only to the civilians not to themselves. The soldier knows he's to defend civilians and their rights at the cost of his or her own freedoms.
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!