RUMSFELD VS. CAMERA PHONES

First, Donald Rumsfeld clamped down on Defense Department web­sites, claim­ing the infor­ma­tion they offered was a national secu­rity threat. Now, he’s going after dig­i­tal cam­eras and cam­era phones, accord­ing to AFP.

Mobile phones fit­ted with dig­i­tal cam­eras have been banned in US army instal­la­tions in Iraq… the US Defence Department believes that some of the damn­ing pho­tos of US sol­diers abus­ing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were taken with cam­era phones.
“Digital cam­eras, cam­corders and cell­phones with cam­eras have been pro­hib­ited in mil­i­tary com­pounds in Iraq,” it said, adding that a “total ban through­out the US mil­i­tary” is in the works. (via Boing Boing)

THERE’S MORE: “I spoke to sev­eral NJ Army Guard trans­porta­tion NCOs just back from Iraq and they told me that avail­abil­ity of free email ser­vices like YAHOO and HOTMAIL had been shut down on mil­i­tary pro­vided inter­net com­put­ers in the­ater,” one Air Force NCO tells Soldiers for the Truth.

In the ANG [Air National Guard] here in CONUS [the con­ti­nen­tal United States], wing level com­mu­ni­ca­tions flights and squadrons are DENYING or remov­ing access to free email ser­vices for mem­bers of each ANG unit. I LOST my access to both YAHOO mail and HOTMAIL on 5/​20/​04. Prior to that, I used to make con­tact using these sites even while at my unit. Now, I can no longer do so…
Many of the folks I spoke to used words like “cen­sor­ship” and “big brother” because they know that their mil domain email accounts are sub­ject to mon­i­tor­ing. These same folks said they feared say­ing any­thing crit­i­cal on a mil domain com­puter for fear of prosecution.

AND MORE: The report of a Defense Department-​​wide cam­era phone ban is bogus, Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin now says. But there is a new direc­tive lim­it­ing the use of com­mer­cial wire­less tech­nol­ogy on the DoD’s “Global Information Grid.“
AND MORE: Xeni’s got a kick-​​ass round-​​up of the issue in today’s Wired News.

May 24th, 2004 | Uncategorized | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.