MilBlogs: Losing a Precious Resource
By haystack Posted in Blogosphere | Spotlight Blogs — Comments (9) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
“I see this expanding considerably with the communications tools that are out there now,” said Sgt. 1st Class Irwin Walters, who oversees personnel issues for the Manassas unit, and works in the IT procurement office for the IRS in his civilian life. “I have special concerns about Soldiers leaving their families vulnerable. They are giving up too much information that we know they (the terrorists) are capable of exploiting."
Read on . . .
While I am a fan of Rumsfeld, for the most part, I have had more than a few criticisms of him and some of his policies. This latest development is something we may not have much control over, but it needs our attention; letters to DoD, perhaps the Department of the Army, maybe CentCom, and certainly Rumsfeld himself may be in order. A little communique to the President may be called for here as well. Let me explain.
NEBV is a member, daily reader, and periodic contributor over at MilBlogging . They have done a fantastic job of setting up a place where all the MilBloggers can go to communicate with each other, and to afford access to their respective blogs by all the other Mil folks as well as the civilian readers inclined to hear about the War from THEIR perspective and the lives of our Soldiers that fight it in our stead.
MilBlogging has registered over 1560 MilBlogs, and has grown by leaps and bounds. SOME GI's started their own blog BECAUSE they knew they had a place to get their thoughts and experiences out there to share with others. The top piece over at MilBlogging features a Tanker Brothers piece titled "The Hardest Post I’ve Ever Had to Write". Scroll down about halfway at Tanker Brother's blog, and you'll see the intro to this piece:
This is, without a doubt, the most difficult thing I have had to write, in terms of this Blog.
I'm not going to mince words with you: TankerBrothers is about to go away.
Make no mistake, it has nothing to do with not wanting to Blog anymore: on the contrary, this has been a labor of love for me. I started this blog with one goal, and only one goal: to let the American Public know what was REALLY going on in Iraq. I wanted to tell people about the War being won in the streets of Baghdad, and in the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.
Unfortunately.... sometimes things don't always work out the way we want them to.
As my readers know, my little brother has already deployed to Iraq, and I'm literally on "the countdown" to when I get on a plane to join him. There was nothing more that I wanted to do than to continue this site, and even "kick it up a notch", since I would once again be on the ground.
With the new OPSEC paranoia, though, I don't think I would have the opportunity. The DoD is cracking down on MilBlogs, and I wouldn't be able to continue Blogging and still be compliant with AR 25-1, the Army's Regulation governing Personal Websites. With the "running out" of local commercial Internet Service Providers in Iraq, the only bandwidth available to me would be government-owned. AR 25-1 states that I cannot use government time or resources to maintain a personal Web Site.
That means that TankerBrothers has to go into hibernation for a while.
Now, unofficially speaking, I think the DoD is making a huge mistake crippling the MilBlog movement. MilBlogs have been instrumental at keeping the American Public informed, and getting the good news of the War on Terror out to people that would otherwise never hear it. And the American public is hungry for news like that. The American public is starving for news like that.
Instead of embracing the movement, instead of helping MilBloggers fight the IO war home and abroad, using their own words and their own experiences, the powers that be have decided instead to put up as many roadblocks as possible to silence the movement.
Many can site First Amendment protections to try and keep the movement alive, but let's be honest. As a Soldier, I'm here "to defend Democracy, not practice it." I have a job to do, and if what I have to say, MilBlogging my thoughts, insights and experiences, has been identified as an OPSEC risk... then I will not put the lives of my fellow Soldiers at risk.
That's one thing I won't do.
Hoping this was an isolated incident, I did a little more research. Here's what I know.
AR 25-1 , or "Army Regulation number 25-1" is titled
Army Knowledge Management and Information Technology
It describes all the usual rules and regs about Army resources in the IT and KM end of things. It's a long and very ho-hum read. It DOES, however, indicate that internet use and server access by Army personnel are governed by its requirements, and this ultimately means MilBloggers are technically mis-using Army resources; at the very least, leadership in the Army has begun to suggest that MilBlogs may have an associated risk of violating OpSec [operational security].
This is all fine and good, and sensible technically speaking. The flip side of the argument is something we can't ignore.
The soldiers involved in blogging are doing a great service to us, themselves, and each other. To clamp down on them at a time when we need their on the ground truth more than ever, in the face of the bias and selective negative reporting schemes of the MSM is a tremendous setback to all of us.
I appreciate the need to ensure the safety and security of the control structure of the Army, and every other branch as well. I can not for the life of me believe that the Army doesn't recognize the value of these eyewitness accounts and personal expressions from the rank and file...whether they are positive OR negative in nature.
More blogs are starting to crumble in the face of tightened security, and now an Army "monitoring" program has begun to monitor all MilBlogs:
Big Brother is not watching you, but 10 members of a Virginia National Guard unit might be.
The Manassas-based Virginia Data Processing Unit activated a team in July for one year to scan official and unofficial Army Web sites for operational security violations.
The team, which works under the direction of the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell, Army Office of Information Assurance and Compliance, notifies webmasters and blog writers when they find documents, pictures and other items that may compromise security.
The team uses several scanning tools to monitor sites for OPSEC violations. The tools search for such key words as “for official use only” or “top secret,” and records the number of times they are used on a site. Analysts review the results to determine which, if any, need further investigation.
For the 10 Virginia Guardsmen, the mission often becomes personal.
They have apparently been assigned to monitor the blogs out there to ensure compliance. Increasingly, however, bloggers are just closing up shop and walking away. There are some who could actually GET their CO's to approve continued access TO, and use OF servers, bandwidth, and computers. For most of the rest, there seems every chance they will just give up and shut down.
I guess the reasoned among us can support or at least explain WHY this may be necessary, but it will ultimately resolve to a very precious resource being taken from us.
President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld, and others now have the DUTY to pick up the slack for these guys.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
1) There is value in bloggers talking about new techniques they've developed for the war on terror. If you have a good idea, share it. But, if you share it on the Internet, you're sharing it with the bad guys. Once you tip them off to the new technique/procedure, they can take steps to counter it. An alternative to this is to set up chat rooms/message boards on military websites (.mil address), where the soldiers can trade their ideas/comments in a more secure manner. This is being done. At my desk at work, I can log on with my .mil account and access several of these chat rooms. So, the DOD has provided an alternative to Internet chatting, which will allow our troops to exchange good ideas while still providing a higher level of security. I.e., the DOD is not indifferent to the need for troops to share good ideas.
2) Bandwidth isn't cheap, and it's not limitless. If the Army is providing the bandwidth for soldiers to blog, that means it most likely is cutting bandwidth allocations to some other staff element/function. A deployed commander can only use the comms systems the Army has given him. What brigade commander can buy more bandwidth from the DOD? If soldiers at a deployed site can only access DOD comms for their blogging, the CO might have to cut back said access because he needs the bandwidth for his own, official operational needs.
3) I can assert from painful experience that field soldiers often handle classified information carelessly. You provide them info that you tell them (5,000 times, in a loud voice) is classified. And, they then forget or just ignore you. That's one thing if they're in Iraq, and really can't share the info with anyone besides their buddies next door. But, if they can now get on the Internet and chat about some new high-tech tool they've been given, a tool which they've forgotten is a classified capability, the value of said tool (which may have taken millions of dollars to create) could be mitigated or lost altogether. In this high-tech GWOT, we're pushing new tools and new types of data forward to the front lines all the time. Tools/data types that, in the past, would have stayed locked in a secure office area. We don't want our own loose lips (or, fingers in this case) to render those tools useless, for everybody.
(A related antecdote: A few years ago, when the Navy started issuing phone cards to its sailors on long deployments, they found they had an immediate OPSEC problem. Suddenly, all the families at home knew EXACTLY where the fleet was and WHERE it was going!)
There is a real trade off between OPSEC and fighting the "information war" at home. Perhaps I'm biased, but I side with the security officer here. If the enemy is benefitting from our troops' online chatting, we need to clamp down on that. Freedom to speak does not include the freedom to say something careless that might get your buddy killed next week.
"Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?" (Macaulay)
I just wish that their was another outlet for positive news coming out of the war zones. I realize the blogs are not all positive, but at least they are not the MSM's versions of all the worst breaking news, all the time (and when there is no bad news they will predict it anyway).
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Thou art the Great Cat, the avenger of the Gods, and the judge of words...-Inscription on the Royal Tombs at Thebes
As a father of a 'tanker' I always want to know too much, things I have NO RIGHT to know. As an American I believe I have the right to know it all. This is a pandoras box.
My son is a tank commander with one of the cav regiments. He agrees with the lock down. His view is that our right to know is a big jepordy to his mission. While in the com-centers back behind the wire he has heard soldiers talking to loved ones on the phones about mission elements. Joe talks to Mary, Mary e-mails Bill, you get the picture. Next thing you know it is on CNN.
While I want our troops to exercise their freedom of speech and for us to have the right to know I believe we must exercise extreme caution. Let the debate continue, but until we find a balance let's not over react and cause even more harm.
I agree most of all that the priority is the safety of the Soldiers and the mission, and the security needed for victory.
I just also worry that the knee jerk from the bloggers will just be to "bail". If we could do ANYTHING to help find some 3rd alternative, I think we should try.
And, I agree letters need to be non-confrontational...we need to make sure THEY know we're all on the same side here...just don't want to lose such a valuable asset.
What we do in life echoes in eternity.
-Maximus Decimus Meridius
Gee this one has come up before on some of the other Mil Bogs and it's still not fixed....sad to see DoD can be so hung up on regulation for regulation sake.
Here's one proposed way around this conundrum
How about using MWR funding to set up hosting of Blogs under AFFES control for the Mil Bogs, but have the actual control of what goes up under direct military control. Active duty blogger that wants to maintain the blog can do so, but he/she would send the posting through a military run screen which does an OPSEC, Reg and other checks, then does the military folks do the actual uploads to the web sites. Heck, if the servers could be maintained by AFFES somewhere in CONUS. The only slight bending of the rules would be using .mil IT and networks to get to the servers, but I think that issue could be worked.
By the way, MWR funds are generated by the small profits made by the BX/PX system and are not funded by the tax payers.
This is sort of the same trick that was used in WWII, except reporters were sending their copy in through a military censors before going out to the wires. Same sort of thing in this proposal, and a very small restriction which I doubt many Mil Bloggers would object to.
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Another South Park Republican spouting off !
I am developing a story that may moderately offset "some" of what we lose with official blogs being squashed or abandoned because of AR 25-1...stay tuned.
Your bigger points here are all excellent though-we need security, we need safety of the Soldiers and the Mission. We need proper use of taxpayer funded military resources. We need the words and stories from those who fight in our stead.
There MAY yet be a decent middle ground. More to come.
What we do in life echoes in eternity.
-Maximus Decimus Meridius
Yes, AAFES and The Exchange program of the Navy fund MWR with a portion of their profits. However, AAFES cannot control a milblog community and it is a bad idea. The reason that you get the stories that you do from the front lines is that they are outside the scope of the chain of command. What needs to happen is that our guys need to know that they are doing the right thing and keep doing it. They don't need to bail. And as readers and supporters what needs to be pointed out to the powers at be is that more info than the troops get in their breifs (generally speaking) is out on unclassified sites on the web. I was married to a soldier and he could get better intel from me about Iraq than the S2 could give him and I only used legitiment unclassified sites online. I have not read every blog, but the many that I have have not talked about precise tatics or classified info about new weapons--unless ArmyTimes is now classified reading???? They are not giving away information that would put the guys in harms way. I hear you about Joe calling home and telling the wife something that he shouldnt and she respected his trust by telling the world. But most of those guys are not the ones that are writing these blogs (and if you are in or have been in you know why). So I think that we are talking about two different OPSEC issues when we bring up the phone call issue. I think the Pentagon needs to get off the panic button and get on with the business of completing the mission. But we will have to make noise to get the point across and that in its self will not guarentee any success, but complacency is out of the question.
Like you said this is a tough one. The blogs are probably the best source for truthful information about what is going on overseas, yet breaking spec ops...
And I think if letters are sent they need to be respectful, recongize legitimate military needs, and point toward some constructive way to turn this around. Maybe a qualification you could get covering how to blog safely with respect to OpSec, and if you have that qualification you are cleared to use military resources to do the blogging so long as they aren't need for a mission. There's a bit too much of a rebellious streak in me, so I steered clear of military service and am not sufficiently familiar with their practices to be able to better define what I'm trying to get at.