(Newser) – Anyone in America can read the Guardian's blockbuster reporting on the NSA's surveillance programs—except, apparently, US soldiers. The Army has restricted access to the British newspaper at all of its bases nationwide, the Monterey County Herald has learned. While soldiers can visit the paper's US site, guardiannews.com, any links pointing to the British site—including those to the NSA reporting—are blocked. A spokesman for the Army Network Enterprise Technology Command (NETCOM) confirmed that the block was on, and that it was "Armywide." Army Cyber Command—which NETCOM works under—blocked the site "in order to prevent an unauthorized disclosure of classified information," explained an email sent to employees at the Presidio at Monterey base. If the classified documents the Guardian has posted wound up on an unclassified computer, the Army would have to go through a "labor intensive" process to wipe the computer, the NETCOM spokesman said, then whoever downloaded them would face disciplinary action—even though the "classified" material in this case is now public knowledge and widely available. Army Censors NSA Stories on Bases - The goal is to prevent soldiers from seeing classified info ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I ran into this several times over the years. The first time was when Bamford's book, "The Puzzle Palace" came out. I was at NSA headquarters at the time. A memo went around to all of the offices notifying us that if we brought a copy of the book into the building, it would be classified, and could not leave the building. If we attempted to sneak a copy back out of the building, we'd be charged with mishandling classified information. It struck me as rather bizarre at the time, and that particular incident still seems a bit odd to me; but I can see the Army's reasoning in this most current case. You can't have classified documents floating around on unclassified systems, regardless of the source of the document.
NMCI routinely blocks various sites like Worldnet Daily. They have been doing it for the last six years that I know of.
Not surprising. For months now, DoD has been blocking any web page that said "wiki" and "leaks" together, as one word. Nothing like good old fashioned censorship, courtesy of Big Brother, right??
