New rules mean uncertain future for soldier blogs
Revised U.S. Army regulations have sparked an online firefight over blogs by active-duty soldiers, but the real-world impact on military bloggers won’t be known until the battle smoke clears.
Early this month, Wired’s Danger Room blog was first to report on an April Army directive ordering troops to secure approval from supervising officers for all online communications. The revised rules “could mean the end of military blogs,” the story warned.
The Army responded with a fact sheet that seemed to back away from the updated regs. “In no way will every blog post/update a Soldier makes on his or her blog need to be monitored or first approved by an immediate supervisor and Operations Security (OPSEC) officer,” the sheet read. “After receiving guidance and awareness training from the appointed OPSEC officer, that Soldier blogger is entrusted to practice OPSEC when posting in a public forum.”
But as critics pointed out, the regulations directly contradict the Army’s statement. Which likely means different units will deal with blogging in different ways — and soldiers who post without obtaining an explicit sign-off will have to cross their fingers that they don’t run afoul of commanding officers.
Maj. Ray Ceralde, who revised the regulations, predicted as much in an e-mail exchange with Wired: “Some units may require that Soldiers register their blog with the unit for identification purposes with occasional spot checks after an initial review. Other units may require a review before every posting.”
As a journalist and citizen who believes the free flow of information remains essential to a strong democracy, I’m troubled by the potentially chilling impact of post-by-post approval. What soldier would write anything but happy talk with an officer looking over his shoulder?
But as someone who wants our troops to return home safe from Iraq and Afghanistan, I understand the need to screen out communications that could unwittingly aid enemy forces.
One irony of military service is that soldiers necessarily give up some free-speech rights in order to defend those rights for the rest of us.
But the key word there is “some.” Commanders who use the revised rules to crack down on blogs simply because they don’t paint a pretty picture of life on the front lines undermine the values of the nation they serve.
Between the extremes of no-holds-barred blogging and overzealous enforcement lies the judgment of well-intentioned men and women in uniform.
However, when we’re talking about the judgment of young adults used to treating the Internet as a brain dump — not to mention officers nervous about lenient enforcement of regulations harming their careers — mistakes are inevitable.
An unclassified Army PowerPoint presentation called “OPSEC in the Blogosphere” uses the following actual post from Iraq to underscore how the mistakes of milbloggers could cost lives:
“It is Monday again and we are still at K-2 airfield in Bayji. As a squadron, we are ‘demonstrating a military presence.’ That means the troops set up checkpoints and stop hundreds of cars, searching them and the people. They keep taking these ‘detainees’ … and I have partial responsibility for the ‘jail,’ which is a building here on the airfield. But we are not set up for this. MPs are supposed to come and get them almost immediately but they take a while.”
As noted last week by the military veteran behind the blog Dadmanly, that post revealed points of tactical weakness in real time: military police arriving late to an airfield that’s housing prisoners even though it is “not set up” to do so.
And with the increasing prevalence of cell-phone video cameras, the issue’s bound to get even trickier.
But I’d still prefer increased security training over a full-scale crackdown.