Somehow this doesn’t surprise me, but for all the gnashing of teeth by the Army over the potential security threat of milblogs it turns out the real threat is official Army websites.
Defense Tech founder Noah Shachtman, who now runs the tres gouge Danger Room blog for Wired, is on the case as he has been since the beginning:
“For years, members of the military brass have been warning that soldiers’ blogs could pose a security threat by leaking sensitive wartime information. But a series of online audits, conducted by the Army, suggests that official Defense Department websites post far more potentially-harmful than blogs do.
“The audits, performed by the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell between January 2006 and January 2007, found at least 1,813 violations of operational security policy on 878 official military websites. In contrast, the 10-man, Manassas, Virginia, unit discovered 28 breaches, at most, on 594 individual blogs during the same period.”
More from Noah here.
– Ward
When I was in the USAF (early 70’s) we got a classified breifing detailing what was about to happen with a squadron of F111s. We were told to not talk about this to anyone not cleared. We junior NCOs kept our collective mouths shut. Officers and to a lesser degree, senior NCOs flapped their gums about this so much that a local newspaper quoted several of them discussing the up coming mission. I pointed that out to my branch chief and he wasn’t a happy camper. According to his thought processes, we junior enlisted types were a security disaster just waiting to happen. Prosecute a couple of these leakers (officers and sr NCOs)and the leaks will dry up.
While in Iraq, we had one major OPSEC violation that was actually prosicuted, and it involved a kid making a map for his parents to show them what he did… he thought it was harmless, and it was done out of total ignorance… but later on, my wife at the time, told me when i was commin home before anyone else knew, and when i asked how she knew, she said the CO’s wife told her, she had found out from the CO and not to tell anyone… hell she even had the tail number of the bird we were commin in on, i reported that up to my COC and nothing ever happened… seems that everyone is all about comming down on Joe *HARD* but when its someone with a little brass on their collar, no one wants to challenge them…
won’t be brass that gets the heat as they always find a way to make it go down hill…keep reporting them, you may find someone that remembers the oath he/she took when they became a officer…and if they got there “job” from “book learning”, they need some time “on the job”…BE SAFE…
In the memoir of Hanns Joachim Scharff ,