well folks, an e-pal just sent me this link:
http://www.defensetech.org/...
"Army "Big Brother" Unit Targets Bloggers"
Bloggers: "Big Brother is not watching you, but 10 members of a Virginia National Guard unit might be," according to the Army. The Manassas-based Guardsmen are on a one-year assignment to clamp down on both "official and unofficial Army Web sites for operational security violations."
how about these bits:
"...Since the relatively wide-open days following the Iraq invasion in 2003, the Pentagon has been slowly tightening the screws on military bloggers. Officers started busting frontline diarists for their websites. In Iraq, new rules required bloggers to check with their commanders before posting."
".."So much for military blogging," said one officer, deployed in Iraq, when the ruling came down. Not that the officer -- an active blogger back in the States -- was doing much public writing while on the front lines. "The Army's guidance on OPSEC [operational security] has been broad and ambiguous enough to chill my speech," he wrote to me. "Discretion is clearly the better part of valor where OPSEC rules are concerned, because the sensitivity of any particular detail is in the eye of the beholder."
Other soldiers, even ones stationed back home, took similar measures.
"As of today, May 5th, 2006, I am officially shutting down my blog... There are certin [sic] commands out there that do NOT want me to blog... they have been trying very hard to find out who I am and shut me down... I really don't want to end my military career over a blog - it has gotten THAT bad!"
"..So you would think that the Defense Department would be doing everything it could to encourage positive coverage of the war -- to bring stories of brave American troops, risking their lives for Mideast democracy, to the Internet browsers everywhere. But Rumsfeld's penchant for secrecy -- and the military's fear that even the smallest, most innocuous detail about American operations could give insurgents the upper hand -- has scuttled this crucial media mission."
well, I'll leave ya with a good response from their discussion/responses:::
"Hewlett Packard just got into trouble because it was found out HP executives were 'spying' on other HP executives. Employers are well within their rights to monitor their employee's phone calls, e-mails and what internet sites they visit.
Corporate espionage is big business; so it old fashioned military espionage.
It wouldn't take but one photo or document seen by someone stateside to make a phone call and inside of an hour organize an attack on one of our units.
Each ground pounder knows his/her position; not the whole theater.
And then there's the propaganda war that's being fought 24/7 by civilians over the airwaves,
cable TV, printing presses and satellite dishes."
Makes me think of yon wisdom due Franklin: "Those who would give up Essential Liberty
to purchase a little Temporary Safety,
deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
What do ye fellow Kostars feel on this balancing act?
...too Orwellian ala neocon-era---balance for safety?
I say a slow precedent to
Orwell hell.