For the last cou­ple of weeks, Defense Tech has been look­ing into the increas­ingly hos­tile atmos­phere that sol­dier– jour­nal­ists — mil­blog­gers — have been fac­ing. Now, a bunch of big­ger out­lets have picked up on the story — and advanced it sev­eral steps.
Stars & Stripes:

The [Army’s] August order [about blogs] specif­i­cally states that sol­diers may not cre­ate or update their blogs dur­ing duty hours, and the sites must not ‘con­tain infor­ma­tion on mil­i­tary activ­i­ties that is not avail­able to the gen­eral pub­lic.‘
That includes ‘com­ments on daily mil­i­tary activ­i­ties and oper­a­tions, unit morale, results of oper­a­tions, sta­tus of equip­ment, and other infor­ma­tion that may be ben­e­fi­cial to adver­saries.‘
If sol­diers are found vio­lat­ing those rules, both the ser­vice­mem­bers and their com­mand­ing offi­cers are noti­fied… lead­er­ship can decide what pun­ish­ment, if any, the sol­diers should face…
Noah Shachtman, edi­tor of defensetech​.org, said… “The fact that sol­diers want to write about their expe­ri­ences is some­thing that should be embraced by the Army… Theyre not look­ing to bad-​​mouth the mil­i­tary. Theyre look­ing to talk proudly about their experiences.”

AP:

“We are not a law enforce­ment or intel­li­gence agency. Nor are we polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness enforcers,” Lt. Col. Stephen Warnock, [head of the Virginia National Guard “Big Brother” website-​​monitoring unit] said. “We are sim­ply try­ing to iden­tify harm­ful Internet con­tent and make the authors aware of the pos­si­ble mis­use of the infor­ma­tion by groups who may want to dam­age United States inter­ests.“
Some blog­gers say the guide­lines are too ambigu­ous — a sen­ti­ment that has led oth­ers to pre-​​emptively shut down or alter their blogs.
“It’s impos­si­ble to deter­mine when some­thing crosses the line from not a vio­la­tion to a vio­la­tion. It’s like try­ing to define what pornog­ra­phy is or bad taste in music,” said Spc. Jason Hartley, 32, who says he was demoted from sergeant and fined for repost­ing a blog he cre­ated while deployed to Iraq with the New York Army National Guard.
According to Hartley, the Army had forced him to stop the blog even before the over­sight oper­a­tion existed, cit­ing pic­tures he had posted of Iraqi detainees and dis­cus­sions of how he loaded a weapon and the route his unit took to get to Iraq.

Wired News’ Xeni Jardin (who has the best story of the lot):

Blackfive’s [Matt] Burden says sol­diers are receiv­ing mixed mes­sages: some receive approval from their imme­di­ate com­man­ders, only later to be rebuked by more senior offi­cials. Burden says his site and another mil­blog, Armor Geddon, were once fea­tured in an inter­nal Army PowerPoint pre­sen­ta­tion which described both as seri­ous oper­a­tional secu­rity risks.
“That kind of mes­sage from the admin­is­tra­tion of the Army sends a chill­ing sig­nal to a young sol­dier who was told by his com­man­der that it was okay to do what he was doing,” Burden told Wired News.
He and fel­low mil­blog­gers gath­ered this year in April for a first ever MilBlog Conference in Washington, DC. They plan to recon­vene in May, 2007. Debate over how to address author­i­ties’ OPSEC con­cerns with­out cre­at­ing a “chill­ing effect” among blog­gers was a heated topic at the 2006 gath­er­ing.
“My advice would be to bring together active duty, reserve and vet­eran blog­gers to take a look at this issue in a way that would help the mil­i­tary,” Burden says, “There’s a lot of pos­i­tive infor­ma­tion com­ing from these 1,200 or so mil­i­tary blogs, and if it’s not pos­i­tive, it’s giv­ing peo­ple a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what it’s like to be a sol­dier or the fam­ily of a sol­dier fight­ing this war.“
Active duty mil­blog­ger John Noonan co-​​edits OPFOR (mil­i­tary slang for “oppos­ing force”) and posts on such top­ics as “for­eign pol­icy, wargam­ing, grand strat­egy and hippy bash­ing.“
Noonan is among those who believe the cur­rent flap is partly the result of a gen­er­a­tion gap between younger, tech-​​savvy recruits for whom life online is sec­ond nature and older, more senior mil­i­tary offi­cials who don’t get the net and are accus­tomed to the military’s long-​​established his­tory of care­fully mon­i­tor­ing release of infor­ma­tion from the bat­tle­field.
“They don’t want to lose the tra­di­tional con­trol they’ve had over infor­ma­tion released from the bat­tle­field to the American peo­ple,” Noonan said. “It’s coun­ter­in­tu­itive for mil­i­tary guys who are used to total con­trol over what infor­ma­tion is released and what isn’t, to all of a sud­den hav­ing zero control.”

Xeni also filed a story for NPR’s Day to Day, which should air this after­noon.
UPDATE 3:01 PM: The NPR seg­ment is up now.
UPDATE 10/​31/​06 4:20 PM: ABC News weighs in here, with some pretty bruis­ing com­men­tary from Blackfive. Note to self: Do not piss this guy off.