US Army to spy on soldier and family blogs

[Joanne98]

WIKILEAKS PRESS RELEASE
Thursday April 09, 2008

US ARMY TO SPY ON SOLDIER AND FAMILY BLOGS

The US Army has formed an "Army Web Risk Assessment Cell" to spy on the personal blogs and forum posts of soldiers and their families, according to a confidential military document released today by the transparency group Wikileaks.

The cell is to "Conduct routine checks of web sites on the World Wide Web for disclosure of critical and/or sensitive information that is deemed a potential OPSEC compromise."

Web sites include, but are not limited to, "Family Readiness Group (FRG) pages, unofficial Army web sites, Soldier's web logs (blogs), and personal published or unpublished works related to the Army."

The passage comes from a March update to the US Army's 2007 "Operations Security" regulation 530-1, which is the Army's high-level document on how the service should keep secrets.

In an unusual circularity, the disclosure of the document on the internet today is something the document was designed to prevent.

See: US Army Operational Security OPSEC 530-1 (2007)

Retrieved from "https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/US_Army_to_spy_on_soldier_and_family_blogs"
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/US_Army_to_spy_on_soldier_and_family_blogs

[TomInTib]

1. I never gave this much thought until I signed up for gmail.

I am constantly amazed at the ability to sift thru emails for the slightest nuance, hidden statement.

And I am convinced that every word published on DU gets at least as much scrutiny as do my emails.

[damntexdem]

2. Well, after all, some soldier could disclose highly-sensitive, classifiable information ...

such as how much soldiers disdain the Bushistas and their stupid war, how upset soldiers and their familiies with repeated 15-month stints in Iraq, how horribly the war is actually going in Iraq, and so on. After all, the military can't allow such sensitive information to spread from common-knowledge in Iraq to the place where it can do the maximum damage -- among the American electorate.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. This has been going on FOR EVAH! OPSEC is critical

and violating OPSEC is just a no-no.