US Army to censor soldier's blogs, email, message board postings.

[Bluebear]

May 7, 2007--Bloggers who focus on military matters — known online as "milbloggers" — have been up in arms over new Army regulations about blogs published by active duty troops.

Some fear the new rules could end up silencing first-person web journals published from combat zones.

The uproar circles around an Army regulation issued April 19 which updates earlier language about operational security (or "OPSEC") and blogs.

Paragraph 2-1g says Army personnel must "consult with their immediate supervisor and their OPSEC Officer for an OPSEC review prior to publishing or posting information in a public forum."

The regulation applies to e-mail, blogs, message board, and other forms of digital communication.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10046006

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Why now?

Why, after the soldiers have been doing it for so long?

I smell fish.

[MADem]

2. I think they tried to track it, realized they couldn't and did what they always do when they don't

"get" it--they OUTLAW it.

OTOH, when you're at sea, right before you get into something operational, they shut down all the phones and email (such a treat to have them--in the old days it was just snailmail, and damned little of it, too!). So who knows?

It's either future ops that are worrying them, or they're just being the hamhanded bums they always are.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Their actual reason, and it might be an excuse

actually made sense

A trooper posted on a blog operational details for his buddies to read before deploying, such as what we were looking at when looking for IEDs... was written in one of the many stories people have posted

So if it is for OpSec it is a very legal and correct order

But we know it's probably much more grayer than that