Bloggers: “Big Brother is not watching you, but 10 members of a Virginia National Guard unit might be,” according to the Army. The Manassas-based Guardsmen are on a one-year assignment to clamp down on both “official and unofficial Army Web sites for operational security violations.“
The team, working “under the direction of the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell” hunts for “documents, pictures and other items that may compromise security” — and then orders the parties to take the offensive content offline.
Not that the material is top secret or anything, an Army News Service article notes.
The most common OPSEC [operational security] violations found on official sites are For Official Use Only (FOUO) documents and limited distribution documents, as well as home addresses, birthdates and home phone numbers.
Unofficial blogs often show pictures with sensitive information in the background, including classified documents, entrances to camps or weapons. One Soldier showed his ammo belt, on which the tracer pattern was easily identifiable.
Since the relatively wide-open days following the Iraq invasion in 2003, the Pentagon has been slowly tightening the screws on military bloggers. Officers started busting frontline diarists for their websites. In Iraq, new rules required bloggers to check with their commanders before posting. Then, in August, a message came highest levels of the military that “EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, NO INFORMATION MAY BE PLACED ON WEBSITES THAT ARE READILY ACCESSIBLE TO THE PUBLIC UNLESS IT HAS BEEN REVIEWED FOR SECURITY CONCERNS AND APPROVED IN ACCORDANCE WITH DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE MEMORANDUM WEB SITE POLICIES AND PROCEDURES, DECEMBER 7, 1998.“
“So much for military blogging,” said one officer, deployed in Iraq, when the ruling came down. Not that the officer — an active blogger back in the States — was doing much public writing while on the front lines. “The Army’s guidance on OPSEC [operational security] has been broad and ambiguous enough to chill my speech,” he wrote to me. “Discretion is clearly the better part of valor where OPSEC rules are concerned, because the sensitivity of any particular detail is in the eye of the beholder.“
Other soldiers, even ones stationed back home, took similar measures.
As of today, May 5th, 2006, I am officially shutting down my blog… There are certin [sic] commands out there that do NOT want me to blog… they have been trying very hard to find out who I am and shut me down… I really don’t want to end my military career over a blog — it has gotten THAT bad!
Others — thousands of others — have continued on, trying to stay within the rules. The Virginia National Guard Web-trolling team “uses several scanning tools to monitor [these] sites for OPSEC violations,” the Army notes. “The tools search for such key words as ‘for official use only’ or ‘top secret,’ and records the number of times they are used on a site. Analysts review the results to determine which, if any, need further investigation.“
“Pictures of [soldiers’] compounds or weapons” are also considered off-limits.
In an age when so many troops have access to the Internet — and “open source intelligence” is becoming so critical — it’s only natural that military higher-ups have grown concerned about what’s posted online. But OPSEC isn’t the only dimension to the counter-terror fight. This is, as the cliche goes, a battle of hearts and minds, after all. That battle largely takes place in the press, broadly defined. And, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld observed earlier this year, “our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today’s media age, but… our country has not adapted.” Just the other day, the New York Times shrieked about Iraqi insurgents using YouTube to spread fear.
So you would think that the Defense Department would be doing everything it could to encourage positive coverage of the war — to bring stories of brave American troops, risking their lives for Mideast democracy, to the Internet browsers everywhere. But Rumsfeld’s penchant for secrecy — and the military’s fear that even the smallest, most innocuous detail about American operations could give insurgents the upper hand — has scuttled this crucial media mission.
Even after shutting a blog or site some information may stil be lurking deep within the cache of major searchengines.
http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsID=7083&pagtype=all
” One Soldier showed his ammo belt, on which the tracer pattern was easily identifiable. “
Why is this bad OpSec ?
for official use only top secret for official use only top secret for official use only top secret for official use only top secret for official use only top secret for official use only top secret for official use only top secret for official use only top secret for official use only top secret for official use only top secret for official use only top secret for official use only top secret for official use only top secret for official use only top secret for official use only top secret for official use only top secret
hmmm…me thinks they need to start at ‘home’.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22for+official+use+only%22+site%3A.mil&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=
Sending national guardsmen on wild goose chases after FOUO information is such a ridiculous waste of Army resources.
I imagine average soldiers will feel great knowing that their Army trusts them so little. They probably just as great as the taxpayers who will fund this boondoggle.
These my friends are the actions of someone
who thinks there losing.
It’s simple…“if you feel you have to control every facet of everything…your not winning.“
I’m a Vietnam Vet. I thought it was bad, then.
I wouldn’t want to be in the Military, now.
i spent my entire childhood waiting to be old enough to join the navy.i did at 18 and am retired now,the stories i read about the military are not the military that i joined,nor is the country that i served for so long the same country,all our ideals and values have gone down the latrine during the last 6 yrs.i support the men and women in the military,i have no respect for the current military leadership,they are puppets of the administration,thats not what the military was intended for.the retired military leaders speaking out today are the ones needed badly in the services.too bad,this isn‘t america anymore.
Shame on the pentagon for turning the Guard into spys against free speech. Like everything else this administration has done against the military, add this to the list of misuses.
Ironic that supposedly our troops are “fighting for democracy in Iraq” –of which freedom of speech is a major component. (I’m not talking about giving away troop movements, etc.)
If Bush doesn’t like free speech, he’s in the wrong country. Try Saudi Arabia, fly boy.
They should be more worried about the multitude of memory sticks available across Iraq containing highly classified info. You want some real top secret info? Just go to a local market in Baghdad.
I was watching dateline the other night and they arrested THREE MARINES for child molesting maybe spend some of that time watching for all the perverts in the us military.
my guess this op is not designed to keep OPSEC data out of the public square, but to silence soldiers who may want to express their misgivings about their mission and their leaders.… what better way to shut them up than to shut everyone down?
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Does this mean there is going to be a change in the uniforms soldiers wear? If someone knows how their unit patches and crests, they can figure out a whole slew of information about the unit the Soldier is assigned to right down the Company level.
From journalists on the White House payroll (http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/15513470.htm), official video
It’s time the Bloggers of the world began targetting these “Big Brothers” from the army and gave them some of their own medicine!
ATTENTION BLOGGERS: Your government masters are watching you! In AmeriKKKa you will obey your government!
The US / UK governments successfully gagged freedom of information when they ‘embedded’ reporters, and even then, reporters were/are not allowed to ‘see the action.’ Furthermore, Mainstream Media suppresses information on behalf of their corporate sponsors. Press offices have been bombed, and reporters have been murdered. So the ONLY access the public have to the reality of war is through milbloggers and ‘leaks.’ Whilst the public understand that some information might be in the ‘interest of national security,’ this cannot, and does not, apply to ALL information, Please keep milblogging
The 4th Reich has begun. Already the gestapo detains demonstrators, bans books like “America Deceived” from Amazon, conducts warrant-less wiretaps, uses false-flag operations (9/11) and starts illegal wars based on lies. We are the new Hitler. Much of Germany did not know what was going on until it was too late. We can probably agree that the WWII German populace was far more intelligent that today’s average American. How long until they realize?
Final link (before Google Books caves to pressure and drops the title):
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0–595-38523–0
The corporate controlled American government is afraid of its own citizens.
As an example, over two years ago, the Senate Select Committee, headed by Sen Roberts of Kansas, refused to release part two of its findings on the behavior of the White House regarding what the White House did with the pre-information it had regarding 9/11.
The senator’s position was that he didn’t want the report to influence the upcoming elections (thus influncing the outcome anyway — his way). After the elections, the senator STILL REFUSED to release the report.
Thus, how can the American citizen make an intelligent choice about whom to vote for or what is best for his country when his own government refuses to be honest with him?
If the past six year have shown anything, it’s just how corrupt and how easily bought, the American government it
You don’t have to be a blind conservative not to see it, just an ignorant one to deny it.
It’s like everything else in the military.… When they twist your ballz and threaten to take your pay and/or kick you out, you end up following along. So now they are twisting. I guess we can all start to follow!
Hee! Now I will be *ever* so tempted to add “FOUO” and work “Top Secret” into every post I post…
Just to see if I get a traffic bump, if nothing else.
It’s a tough balancing act, and of course the natural tendency on the part of the bureaucrat is to over-react, because of the potential stakes involved.
Not to mention weak commanders who kill blogs to stifle Just criticism of Stupid Officer Tricks (Full disclosure, I *am* an officer, albeit retired).
I for one would welcome the discussion, should they send me a note telling me to take something down (unlikely, as I think I do a decent OPSEC screen beforehand anyway, and *never* post something with markings. Of course, that self-imposed restriction (I say self-imposed, since the NYT and others seem to feel no such inclination) gets me scooped a lot.
I’m not going to be accused of “salting” the URLs so work with me here. Do a WWW search for ‘machinegun’ and make a short list of the number of government, corporate and academic sites that show the layout of tracers in US machinegun ammunition.
If they’re really concerned about it, the might want to check those pesky NATO and theater command web sites that give quotes from the various regulations and standardization agreements that specify ammo ratios, bullet and cartridge design, etc. As for entries to camps. Has anybody driven down the road in front of Firebase Otter lately?
Here’s an idea, mind your own. What I do at home is mine.
http://tor.eff.org/overview.html
http://invisiblog.com
http://www.truecrypt.org
http://www.dynebolic.org
http://www.halturnershow.com/KeystrokeLoggersInAllNewComputers.html
http://www.mailvault.com
Why is this bad OpSec ?
Why is this bad OpSec ?
Give me more details please: about downloading psp games and movies and music and more…
At the beginning, I practiced the rank to be very low, therefore I must spent more 2moons dil to buy the high-quality weapon.
“Pictures of [soldiers’] compounds or weapons” are also considered off-limits.
I was watching dateline the other night and they arrested THREE MARINES for child molesting maybe spend some of that time watching for all the perverts in the us military.
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Great post!
As long as the blogs do not give any military info out — then blog on — a gov. afraid of what we protect and promote? Get new bosses who have a clue!
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