Army Targets Military Bloggers

18 Oct
2006

Posted by David Peralty as Blogging News

Military bloggers beware, the US Army is clamping down on blogs that could be spreading some information that the government does not want others to read.

From DefenseTech:

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.”

I can understand why the military would want to do this, but at the same time, I am tired of having the details filtered through the government and mainstream media when it comes to what is happening to our fighting men overseas. I know one of my best friends is heading back to Afghanistan and I would love to hear stories about what it is like being over there right from his words.

Do you think military men should be banned from blogging? Do you think “the bad guys” could learn anything worthwhile from a fighting man’s blog?

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4 Responses

Patrick

October 18th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
1

if you’re “in theatre,” then yes, you should not be blogging. It’s simply too dangerous. Operational Security requires that information be filtered through the military so we minimize the data mining that can be done by adversaries. I write this as both a blogger and as a reservist.

Think of how the best hacks are done. It’s done through social engineering. You piece together bits and pieces of information to make a picture. Call up the phone company using a few names you heard or read on some repair guy’s shirt and see how much info you can get out of the person on the other end of the phone.

Blogging from the front lines presents a huge cloud of information that can be data mined for useful pieces. Those pieces can be aggregated to make a pretty detailed image for anyone willing to do the work. When you’re talking about soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen in theatre, you’re talking about life and death.

It’s “Loose Lips Sink Ships” on a digital, global scale.
Patrick

October 18th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
2

I should also add, if you’re not in theatre, you shouldn’t blog about your routine military life in much detail. There are day-to-day things in the service that have no purpose being shared to the entire world. Not in the instantaneous manner that are blogs and the Interweb. Write those down for later publication. Let them mature and write a boook, pamphlet, or publish them online at a later date.

I love reading the operational details of Midway. I wouldn’t have wanted them published as they were happening.
David

October 18th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
3

Thanks Patrick for stopping by and giving your two cents on the matter. I really appreciate it. You have to remember, I am looking form the point of view of a concerned friend as well as a person interested in an un-filtered view of what it is like to be involved in combat situations.

I love your last tip though. Save it for later. Great idea, and much less likely to get a blogger into any trouble.
david

October 19th, 2006 at 3:29 am
4

True — bloggers who are deployed to “hot zones” should probably not be blogging at all — or if they are, then their blog entries should be carefully screened by their CO or Public Affairs folks. No detail is too small when lives are at stake.

For “stateside” bloggers (like me) - the rules obviously can be much more relaxed. I decided long ago when I began blogging that I would not blog about military issues in general - no reason to invite trouble from the brass.