China Bans Military Personnel From Blogging

eldavojohn writes "China has banned all 2.3M members of its military from blogging — even personal, non-military blogs. From the announcement of the new regulation: 'Soldiers cannot open blogs on the Internet no matter (whether) he or she does it in the capacity of a soldier or not. The Internet is complicated and we should guard against online traps.' While the official word seems to not be translated to English yet, the same apparently goes for websites or homepages owned by soldiers; there is no indication as to whether or not this applies to sites like Facebook or Renren (which the USMC bans). Similarly, as of 2007, the US requires active duty soldiers to clear any posting with a superior officer, and Israel had to cancel an operation due to a Facebook status update. A military blog aggregating site claims only a few Chinese military blogs indexed, but it looks like as of June 15 that list may have shortened."

Comments

Re:A Natural OPSEC Move

[agentc0re]

As a Marine Vet, I'd have to agree with the previous poster. You give up your rights when you sign to serve your country. You welcome the dictatorship over the democracy you swore to protect. You're rights are those given to you by your NCO's or CO's. The USAF is more like a glorified civilian anyways, so I guess you probably wouldn't understand.

I agree with doing away with those stupid social networking sites while you are in. You get phone privileges and can call home while overseas. The only people that would be severally pissed off would be all the POG's and Fobits that abuse that shit daily while there. You probably wont catch many grunts willing to waste their fucking time on that shit, I guarantee that. From patrols to post duty, when you are afforded your time to sleep, you do that over playing on the internet.

Semper Fi!
Semper gumby!
Kill'em all and let God sortem out!