Noah Shachtman, writing for the Wired News defense blog "Danger Room," says:
The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or
sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content
with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued
April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops' online activities
since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the end of military
blogs, observers say.Military officials have been wrestling for years with how to
handle troops who publish blogs. Officers have weighed the need for
wartime discretion against the opportunities for the public to
personally connect with some of the most effective advocates for the
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq — the troops themselves. The
secret-keepers have generally won the argument, and the once-permissive
atmosphere has slowly grown more tightly regulated. Soldier-bloggers
have dropped offline as a result.The new rules, obtained by Wired News, require a commander be consulted before every blog update.
"This is the final nail in the coffin for combat blogging," said retired paratrooper Matthew Burden, editor of The Blog of War
anthology. "No more military bloggers writing about their experiences
in the combat zone. This is the best PR the military has — it's most
honest voice out of the war zone. And it's being silenced."
Read the full post, including updates from active duty milbloggers, here: Link.
Previously on BoingBoing:
