Deployed Bloggers Face Military Restrictions

You give up your rigghts to publish whatever you want willy nilly on the internet when you become a soldier if the Army deems it neccessary. You give up nearly all rights when you join the Army if the Army says you can't do it anymore. It is just a part of professional soldiering. Soldiers blogging in the face of orders should cease blogging, leave the Army, and then blogg until their angry hearts are content. Or they should be prepared for the full weight of military justice. When did orders become optional in the Army? When did the taxpayers decide they wanted soldiers who felt obligated to disobey orders when inconvenient?

When I first saw this order make its way down the pipe to our unit I had to call BS. West Point tried to do a similar thing to my personal webpage years ago while I was still a cadet. I challenged them and took the case to JAG who threw it out as an illegal order. Upon seeing this new order, I again went to JAG and the immediate response was incredulousness that such an order was even issued. It should, "never have passed the legal sanity check," the officer told me. After investigating, she found it was issued at corps level and could not find any legal precedent for it.

Now, I'm not saying that I don't understand the order - it makes perfect sense. From my JAG inquiry I found out a soldier from 10th MTN had kept a more accurate record of events on his 'blog than in the official log. It went as far as annotating deaths before official notification could be made. OPSEC is always a concern as who knows what soldiers are posting on websites which later become open source intelligence for the enemy.

But once the legal precedent has been established, where does it stop? Do I need to provide my personal laptop for file inspection? Will I have to turn over my username / password to all e-mail accounts so censors can inspect my mail? After all, there is probably more material floating on e-mail than on the web. That is, of course, how the Abu Gharaib photos surfaced. It is how our neighbor national guard battalion here was caught abusing detainees.

Who is to determine what content, postings and submissions are detrimental to the war effort? Is the "Through My Lens" article here on Omninerd a hazard? Depending on perspective, the photos and descriptions could be considered a breach of security.

The answer to the problem is proper leadership, training and discipline. There will always be bad apples in the bunch - but the answer is not to throw out the bushel.

At the risk of having romanizzo call me a barracks lawyer, I'd like to take a closer look at this policy. According to the policy, “MNC-I units or personnel owning or desiring to own or maintain a unit or individual web page, portal or site, must register that web site(s) with the unit chain of command.” The way I read this, it would apply to ANY site owned or maintained by a MNC-I soldier. So, if you own a website for your kid’s soccer team back home or maintain a Star Trek web shrine you would have to register it. I imagine that is not what the policy intends to regulate but there are no mention of content filters for registration.

As far as content goes, the following items are prohibited:

1. Classified information.

2. Casualty information before the next-of kin has been formally notified by the Military Service concerned.

3. Information protected by the Privacy Act.

4. Information regarding incidents under ongoing investigation.

5. For Official Use Only Information.

I’m willing to bet that DoD would not need this policy letter to punish a soldier who released any of the above information. It seems the public release of the above items would be covered under other regulations. For example, if someone posts classified information they would be punished under the applicable security regulations. As an interesting side note, the two soldiers I mentioned in the original post who were reprimanded for their webpage did not post any of the above listed information. It looks like justanothersoldier was punished for conduct unbecoming a non-commissioned officer for posting a picture of himself on the toilet. What SPC Leonard Clark is accused of is unclear but he was campaigning for public office and critical of the Bush administration. So, in my opinion, the list is reasonable. None of the above information should be posted by deployed soldiers. Perhaps the practical effect of this policy is promotion of regulations that already exist. Justanothersoldier did say that when he originally posted his blog he was unclear on what he could or could not post.

The regulation also states that “personnel who supply editorial content to but do not themselves administer a web page, web site, or web log must register any page or site to which they contribute editorial content…” “Supply editorial content.” What does that mean? Does every poster at sites like military.com forums have to register their posts? What if I write a letter to a newspaper and they post it online do I have to register that page? What if you are quoted in a newspaper article? If this policy is enforced, it seems like it runs counter to the efforts the military has made with embedded media. Many commanders encourage their soldiers to write letters to their hometown newspapers. In fact, one battalion commander was reprimanded after several of his soldiers sent good-news form letters to various papers. There are significant public relation benefits for the military to have soldiers speak honestly about their successes, hopes and fears. Of course, there is a risk that a soldier will reveal something embarrassing but the military faces the same risk by embedding reporters.

The last interesting piece of the policy is the quarterly review. Content does not need to be approved before posting but it is subject to a quarterly review. At that point the content would be removed if it fell into the prohibited content categories. If the military is concerned that soldiers might post operational secrets, the site may not be reviewed until long after the damage has been done.

Generally I feel that this is a good policy that will deter some irresponsible posting but I feel there are some areas that need clarification.

Watchyoursix is a reservist who has been mobalized. According to his subtitle he is a "a Citizen Soldier called to active duty on the far side of the world." He made it to a mobilization station at the end of May but has not deployed yet. In an email to me he said, "to be clear, I am not "openly defying orders" because I am not in Iraq and I don't work for MNC-I. If my current command issued such a policy, then i would shut this blog down before I registered it. to my knowledge, I am not currently violating any Army Policy. As many others have done before me, I would shut my blog down before I violated any such policy of a command I was in."

Watchyoursix, thanks for the clarification. It is interesting to note that watchyoursix (and other bloggers) decide to shut down their sites rather than register. Even though the policy does not restrict content (other than a few obvious concerns like OPSEC) bloggers don't want their commanders to know what they are writing. It seems to me that it would be difficult to actually report any information and still maintain anonomity. Sooner or later it seems that it would be pretty easy to figure out who is blogging from the content of their posts even without the registration policy.

Also, I've found some more information about justanothersoldier. He wrote a letter to the Army Times about his punishment that has been reposted here. He explains why he was punished, "My battalion S2 section made a hard copy of my blog and there was an investigation. It concluded that I had violated OPSEC, violated the Geneva convention (for photos of detainees), and that I was guilty of conduct unbecoming an NCO (primarily for a photograph of me sitting on a shitter, among other things)." He adds this about OPSEC, "The most interesting aspect of this entire fiasco is how OPSEC is defined, or rather not defined. Since there is no concise legal definition of what constitutes a violation of OPSEC (or at least not one anyone could produce for me when I requested it), 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. To make a convincing argument how OPSEC has been violated is trivial. You pretty much only have to smarter than the person you are trying to convince, or just instill in him enough fear, uncertainty, and doubt that he'll have no choice but to agree. It's like accusing someone of being a communist. If you disagree with the person making the accusation, you'll be considered a communist sympathizer, or maybe even a communist yourself. The fight is over before the gauntlet is even dropped."