US soldiers fighting in the Middle East are constantly monitored when writing on the Internet both from their military destination and once they have come back home. This news reported today by several American news papers cames as a further confirmation that when dealing with freedom of expression on the Internet we should not think that restrictions and censoring laws exist just in undeveloped countries.. they are here, surrounding us and there’s no way out.

The Army Web Risk Assessment Cell is the military organ which keeps official and unofficial blogs monitored, looking for any detail that could compromise security: not only documents and comments are checked but also pictures are scanned to avoid that any reference or small particular could be useful for the identification of military head quarters or operations.

As Lt. Col. Stephen Warnock, the team leader and battalion commander of a Manassas-based Virginia National Guard unit said, the consequences of the smallest distraction could bring about disastrous implications: it happened for instance that a blogger described his position and tasks as a guard providing the list of vulnerable points and elements on how to exploit them.

This is an emblematic case, but there are a lot of "potentially dangerous" occasion: publishing the picture of an American weapon damaged by the enemy during a war operation is considered as one of these occasions because the "guiding principle" of the whole Web Risk unit is that the USA is a nation at war, and the less the enemy knows, the better it is for soldiers.

The control on contents spread on the web by US soldiers begun in 2002 and it was reviewed in 2005 when blogs were included in the list of the items to be monitored. The Army keeps any reference on the tools used to carry out the constant monitoring and on the size of the operation , as a "State secret": it has been disclosed just the fact that the list of monitored web pages includes both military and non-military sites.

US soldiers whishing to keep a blog while deployed have to register their site to their commanding officers who will monitor it quarterly: hundred of thousands of websites are reviewed every month and dozens of emails asking to remove this or that element are daily sent. If the soldier doesn’t comply with the request, the Web Risk unit has to contact his commanders to find a solution that will convey a punishment for the disobedient soldier.

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

In this case we cannot condemn this initiative at all: come on! As said Matthew Currier Burden, 39, a former intelligence officer who wrote "The Blog of War", the enemy perfectly knows the power of blogs, and the slightest detail could turn out to be determining in operations where the life on many man and women, and the result of the operations themselves are at risk.

It is somehow comprehensible that a person who chose to become a soldier is also asked to behave as a soldier even once he comes back home, it is normal when his actions cold have bad consequence for his country.. but we can’t do without being disturbed by these continuous intrusions in people’s lives.

Actually, not only military web pages are daily controlled: everything can be examined and put under the decisional power of some High Official that will decide whether or not the publication of a "post", a comment, a document, can be acceptable. The problem is that there are no rules in it, because "for security reasons" the terms and conditions of the operation cannot be disclosed.

We just have to accept it. Sorry, but we don’t like that!

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Hhmm... Written by Guest on 2006-11-17 02:00:05

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