US army monitors soldiers' blogs

WORLD / America

US army monitors soldiers' blogs

(AP)
Updated: 2006-10-30 09:30

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.

Author Matthew Currier Burden stands at the Pritzker Military Library
with a copy of his book containing a collection of entries from bloggers
who served in the war called , 'The Blog Of War,' in Chicago, Ill., in
this Oct. 26, 2006 file photo. [AP]
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."

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