Protect servicemembers’ free speech

[unhappycamper]

The Army Regulation …

The Army regulation on blogging, in part, tells soldiers not to “publicly disseminate or publish photographs displaying critical or sensitive information … improvised explosive device (IED) strikes, battle scenes, casualties, destroyed or damaged equipment, personnel killed in action (KIA), both friendly and adversary, and the protective measures of military facilities.” It warns against “providing information which enhances the enemy’s targeting process.”


Protect servicemembers’ free speech
By Dave Mazzarella, Stars and Stripes ombudsman
Pacific edition, Sunday, September 9, 2007


Last April, the Army issued new regulations with respect to personal Web logs (blogs) posted by soldiers. The stated intent was to prevent sensitive or critical information going from the blogs to the ever-resourceful enemy downrange. The regulation said that soldiers had to consult with their immediate supervisors and their operational security officers “for an OPSEC review prior to publishing or posting information in a public forum.”

Public forums were defined as “letters, resumes, articles for publication, electronic mail (e-mail), Web site postings, Web log postings, discussion in Internet information forums, discussion in Internet message boards or other forms of dissemination or documentation.”

The Army quickly issued clarifications. It said that “no way” would every communication from soldiers to the outside world be approved beforehand, unless a commander wanted it done in specific cases. The bloggers could simply register their blogs beforehand and submit to spot checks. Still, advocates of military blogging warned, as one of them, Matthew Burden of Blackfive.net, put it: “This is the final nail in the coffin for combat blogging.” They noted that the clarifications didn’t jibe with the more restrictive language of the regulation.

Now comes word that GI bloggers apparently haven’t been much of a source of security violations at all, at least in relation to official Army Web sites. Army documents made public last month showed that security violations on official Web sites were occurring at nearly 40 times the rate of those in soldiers’ blogs. A Stars and Stripes article (“Report: Official Army Web sites compromising security,” Aug. 21) said the monitors had found 48.3 security violations per 100,000 official Web pages, and 1.3 for comparable numbers of personal blog pages. The figures, compiled by a special Army Web monitoring unit, were released to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which had sought them in a Freedom Of Information Act filing. The group’s aim is to defend free speech and consumer rights in digital media.

Officially, the Army seems not too concerned about these findings. The service’s monitoring unit, known as the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell (AWRAC), is a “self-policing mechanism,” Army spokesman Paul Boyce said. “We’ve been looking at Web sites for years. Their (AWRAC’s) job is to point out security problems on Web sites and notify people to get them fixed, so we deny the enemy anything of value to him.”

~snip~

Intelligent — and safe — communication between servicemembers and the outside world should derive from education, not coercion.


Rest of article at: http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=48638