U.S. Air Force is blocking access to New York Times and 25 other news organizations!

[Better Believe It]

Air Force Limits Access to Web Sites Over Secret Cables
By ERIC SCHMITT
December 14, 2010

The Air Force is barring its personnel from using work computers to view the Web sites of The New York Times and more than 25 other news organizations and blogs that have posted secret cables obtained by WikiLeaks, Air Force officials said Tuesday.

When Air Force personnel on the service’s computer network try to view the Web sites of The Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, the German magazine Der Spiegel, the Spanish newspaper El País and the French newspaper Le Monde, as well as other sites that posted full confidential cables, the screen says “Access Denied: Internet usage is logged and monitored,” according to an Air Force official whose access was blocked and who shared the screen warning with The Times. Violators are warned that they face punishment if they try to view classified material from unauthorized Web sites.

Some Air Force officials acknowledged that the steps taken might be in vain since many military personnel could gain access to the documents from home computers, despite admonishments from superiors not to read the cables without proper clearances.

Computer network specialists within the Air Force Space Command last week followed longstanding procedures to keep classified information off unclassified computer systems. “News media Web sites will be blocked if they post classified documents from the WikiLeaks Web site,” said Lt. Col. Brenda Campbell, a spokeswoman for the Air Force Space Command in Colorado Springs. “This is similar to how we’d block any other Web site that posted classified information.”

Read the full article at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/15/us/15wiki.html?partner=rss&emc=rss



The New York Times website is one of three newspaper websites that the Air Force is blocking.

[Better Believe It]

1. CNN: Air Force cutting off access to WikiLeaks news

Air Force cutting off access to WikiLeaks news
By the CNN Wire Staff
December 15, 2010

The U.S. Air Force is denying its personnel access to websites carrying documents released by WikiLeaks, including those of some news organizations, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.

The White House Office of Management and Budget has already forbidden federal employees and contractors from accessing classified documents publicly available on WikiLeaks and other websites via computers or mobile devices. But Maj. Toni Tones said the Air Force has cut off access to over 25 sites, including WikiLeaks and three newspapers that have worked with the site to release a cache of U.S. diplomatic cables -- The New York Times, The Guardian in Britain and Germany's Der Speigel.

"This is consistent with the direction received in August 2010 that stated Air Force personnel should not access the WikiLeaks website to view or download the classified information," Tones told CNN.

The other sites may not necessarily be WikiLeaks-related, Tones said but she couldn't explain what other sites were blocked and why. "We look at these sites on a daily basis routinely," so the number changes day by day, she said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/12/14/us.wikileaks.government/

[NuclearDem]

2. Not surprised

The Air Force rarely ever handles anything in a logical manner.

[TheMadMonk]

3. So is DU on the list? Or we on an earlier shitlist? And where's FR? /nt

[NuclearDem]

6. I know that as of this morning, DU and FR are both accessible from Air Force computers nt

[msongs]

4. bet they havent blocked access to subversive religious hate groups taking over the AF academy lol nt

[Divine Discontent]

5. ha! makes one wonder, huh?

[tomm2thumbs]

20. P R E C I S E L Y ! ! ! !

hypocrites never prosper

[reformist2]

7. I was wondering if they were going to stop them from reading newspapers

Sad to see it's happening!

[eShirl]

8. or watching television, or listening to the radio, or interacting with civilians

[lonestarnot]

11. Or touching themselves, not even in the shower.

[TheMadMonk]

10. I think someone has the bright idea of watching to see who tries...

...to get past the block for profiling purposes.

[Jackpine Radical]

9. This is so nuts.

I mean, it kinda stands the whole security thing on its head. Usually, we use security to keep the rest of the world from finding out what the military knows. Here, we're trying to keep our military from finding out what the rest of the world knows.

Bizarro World.

[lonestarnot]

12. Very very bizarro.

[Justin54B20L]

13. Not just the Air Force

I'm a federal employee. Our computers are blocked from viewing all pages that have the word "Wikileaks" on it...anywhere. This blocks both pages that have actual released classified information on them as well as news pages that discuss said documents. Furthermore, the IT departments fully acknowledge that the latter is perfectly legal for viewing even on government computers. IT however says it's too difficult to separate pages that have listed classified info on them and the news sites that simply report on the stories.

[DirkGently]

14. How very Chinese of us.

[HEyHEY]

17. No, you can get all those sources in China online

[DirkGently]

27. Good point. We're beating them at their (censorship) game then. Yee. ha?

[EFerrari]

15. It makes them look unAmerican and weak.

Which they probably are.

[Golden Raisin]

16. I'm sure there's 24/7 easy

access to Fox --- internet & TV.

[cherokeeprogressive]

18. "work computers" Everyone gets that, right? Do your work. Stop reading the NYT on my dime.

Is there something I'm not getting here?

Is "I should be able to do anything I want to do whether I'm at home, work, highway, or public place" the rule of the day now? Am I a slave to authority to think that military personnel should have their internet access limited to sites pertinent to their job while they're at work?

[SoCalDem]

19. Can they get Newsmax, Drudge?

That's all they really need anyway..

They have Fox TX
Rush Radio

What else would Christian Soldiers need for their Onward missions?

[tomm2thumbs]

21. +!

[cherokeeprogressive]

22. You paint the whole of the Armed Forces of the United States with the same nasty brush...

That's so wrong. Some of them are Sailors, some of them are Airmen, some of them are Marines, but not all of them are "Soldiers" (learn the difference before you lump them all into the same category). Not all of them are Christians. Lots of them are agnostics, atheists, Jews, Muslims, Rastafarians, Mormons, and people of other faiths whose context escapes me at the moment. Most of them march to a common purpose regardless of the circumstance that led them to enlist in the first place OR their religion.

All of them though, are brothers and sisters of mine since I was a voluntary member of the Armed Forces of the United States and for you to drape the same disrespect over ALL of them by calling them "Christian" when you're using the word as a derogatory term is for me unacceptable.

Those people you call "Christian Soldiers" will stand between you and anyone who wants to harm you just because of the country you live in if it ever comes to that. Understand that they're a VERY diverse group of people whose motives you'd probably never understand, but try to appreciate the fact that they're there.

Or not.

Your last sentence lowered you by a hundred points in this veteran's eyes.

[EFerrari]

23. How long have you been out?

The Air Force is the branch were cadets are hazed into attending services, harassed for not being Christian, it's really gone around the bend.

Diversity is not a contemporary value there. I think that's what SoCalDem was referring to.

Air Force cadets complain of religious harassment by Christian evangelists
By ROBERT WELLER
Associated Press Writer Napa Valley Register | Posted: Friday, April 22, 2005 12:00 am | (0) Comments


AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. — Less than two years after it was plunged into a rape scandal, the Air Force Academy is scrambling to address complaints that evangelical Christians wield so much influence at the school that anti-Semitism and other forms of religious harassment have become pervasive.

There have been 55 complaints of religious discrimination at the academy in the past four years, including cases in which a Jewish cadet was told the Holocaust was revenge for the death of Jesus and another was called a Christ killer by a fellow cadet.

The 4,300-student school recently started requiring staff members and cadets to take a 50-minute religious-tolerance class.

"There are things that have happened that have been inappropriate. And they have been addressed and resolved," said Col. Michael Whittington, the academy's chief chaplain.

http://napavalleyregister.com/lifestyles/article_0fb97973-987b-55d9-9b89-f704b352811c.html

[cherokeeprogressive]

24. How long were you in?

I don't ask that question lightly because I respect you and always open your posts to see what you have to say. I don't mean "I served but you didn't", I swear. But I have to ask because my 9+ years as a Sailor didn't include any in-depth discussions of religion from day one to day last. Yeah, I've been out for a long time, 20 years.

I don't believe that the Armed Forces of the United States are as religiously oriented or motivated as most DU'ers. I was in the club, and don't believe it's changed to the extent DU'ers claim.

They're good people, those young men and women who are sleeping in harm's way tonight, tomorrow night, and every night. They're not religious fanatics. They're your neighbors, and in my case, they're my nephews, nieces, sons, daughters, hell grandchildren of people I know and love.

Any time someone paints them with a brush as broad as "Christian Soldiers" in a bad light it gets my hair up.

[EFerrari]

25. Sure, I hear that. Something is happening at the Air Force.

I first heard about it from a dad, a vet, got angry because he found out sideways that his kid was being harassed at the academy because he was Jewish. And then he found out that a lot of kids were being bullied and more or less persecuted by evengelists that were thoroughly backed up by the administration. Anyway, that dad put a group together to fight this stuff and it looks like they're might be making gains:

Military Religious Freedom Group Victorious at Air Force Academy

Military Religious Freedom Foundation’s Demand Finally Met by Air Force Academy; Freedom of Information Act requests force Air Force Academy to release “Climate Survey” on religious bigotry -

In a win over rightwing dominionist Christians, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation’s (MRFF) forced the notoriously doctrinaire Air Force Academy to release the “Climate Survey,” mandated in response to the well-publicized religiously intolerant and bigoted atmosphere at the Academy(Jeff Sharlet; Harper’s, May 2009).

Curtis Weinstein … … he planned to beat the shit out of the next cadet—or officer—who called him a “fucking Jew.” (Sharlet)

The following is a statement by MRFF Founder and President Mikey Weinstein regarding the US Air Force decision to disallow MRFF from the briefing event.

”The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF; http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/) condemns, in the harshest possible terms, the comprehensively despicable and transparently self-serving actions of the U.S. Air Force Academy in barring MRFF from attending its ultra-controversial “2010 Climate Survey” Â briefing this morning at the Academy. Among other things, this cowardly refusal by the U.S. Air Force Academy directly violates a specific promise by a senior Pentagon official via a letter to MRFF dated October 19, 2010 that today’s release of the Climate Survey data and related context information was specifically intended to address the demands of those entities that made requests pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, MRFF being chief among them.


http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/11/01/military-religious-freedom-group-victorious-at-air-force-academy/

[ProgressiveProfessor]

26. Many things are blocked

Anything "adult" in nature, anything with an applet, Youtube...and other sites without a discernible work related purpose.

[sarcasmo]

28. How very Nazi of them.