Army monitors soldiers' blogs, Web sites

Begin forwarded message:

From: Alice Kehoe <[email protected]>
Date: October 29, 2006 8:53:31 PM EST
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected], derry <[email protected]>
Subject: Army monitors soldiers' blogs, Web sites


David - for IP, if you wish
--AK


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061029/ap_on_hi_te/military_blogging

Army monitors soldiers' blogs, Web sites
By MICHAEL FELBERBAUM, Associated Press Writer Sun Oct 29, 1:24 PM ET

RICHMOND, Va. - From the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan to here  
at home, soldiers blogging about military life are under the watchful  
eye of some of their own.

A Virginia-based operation, the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell,  
monitors official and unofficial blogs and other Web sites for  
anything that may compromise security. The team scans for official  
documents, personal contact information and pictures of weapons or  
entrances to camps.

In some cases, that information can be detrimental, said Lt. Col.  
Stephen Warnock, team leader and battalion commander of a Manassas- 
based Virginia National Guard unit working on the operation.

In one incident, a blogger was describing his duties as a guard,  
providing pictures of his post and discussing how to exploit its  
vulnerabilities. Other soldiers posted photos of an Army weapons  
system that was damaged by enemy attack, and another showed personal  
information that could have endangered his family.

"We are a nation at war," Warnock said by e-mail. "The less the enemy  
knows, the better it is for our soldiers."

In the early years of operations in the Middle East, no official  
oversight governed Web sites that sprung up to keep the families of  
those deployed informed about their daily lives.

The oversight mission, made up of active-duty soldiers and  
contractors, as well as Guard and Reserve members from Maryland,  
Texas and Washington state, began in 2002 and was expanded in August  
2005 to include sites in the public domain, including blogs.

The Army will not disclose the methods or tools being used to find  
and monitor the sites. Nor will it reveal the size of the operation  
or the contractors involved. The Defense Department has a similar  
program, the Joint Web Risk Assessment Cell, but the Army program is  
apparently the only operation that monitors nonmilitary sites.

Now soldiers wishing to blog while deployed are required to register  
their sites with their commanding officers, who monitor the sites  
quarterly, according to a four-page document of guidelines published  
in April 2005 by Multi-National Corps-Iraq.

Spc. Jean-Paul Borda, who has indexed thousands of military blogs for  
a site called Milblogging.com, said in an e-mail interview that the  
military still is adapting to changing technology.

"This is a new media — Blogging. Podcasting. Online videos," wrote  
Borda, 32, of Dallas, who kept a blog while he was deployed in  
Afghanistan with the Virginia National Guard. "The military is doing  
what it feels necessary to ensure the safety of the troops."

Warnock said the Web risk assessment team has reviewed hundreds of  
thousands of sites every month, sometimes e-mailing or calling  
soldiers asking them to take material down. If the blogger doesn't  
comply with the request, the team can work with the soldier's  
commanders to fix the problem — that is, if the blogger doesn't post  
anonymously.

"We are not a law enforcement or intelligence agency. Nor are we  
political correctness enforcers," Warnock 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.

Warnock contended that soldiers should not be discouraged from  
blogging altogether.

Military bloggers "are simply expressing themselves in a wide open  
forum and want to share their life-changing experiences with the rest  
of the world," Warnock said. "Giving soldiers an outlet for free  
expression is good. American soldiers are not shy about giving their  
opinions and nothing the Web Risk Cell does dampens that trait."

Matthew Currier Burden, 39, a former intelligence officer who wrote  
"The Blog of War," a collection of entries from bloggers who served  
in the war, said soldiers' Web sites can go a long way toward  
portraying positive aspects of the war and other "stories that need  
to get told."

But he said it's legitimate to fear that some information could be  
used the wrong way.

"The enemy knows the value of the blogs," Burden said. "The biggest  
thing that we fear is battle damage assessment from the enemy. We  
want to deny them that."