May 3rd, 2007
The death of milblogs
For soldiers, the Army's hands-off attitude towards blogging must have been like that period in the 1960s before LSD was criminalized was for hippies. Jerry Garcia once said of that period, "They didn't know and it wasn't illegal and it was like, that was a really good year." All good things come to an end, though and for GI bloggers, the boom has finally come down, Wired reports.
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. 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.
Wired posted a copy of the rules (PDF), which require a commander to be consulted before any and 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."
And it's not just blogs. Any online statement - from "web log (blog) postings" to comments on internet message boards, from resumes to letters home, Wired says - must be cleared. Don't take it seriously? The punishment can be a court martial, disciplinary action or criminal charges.
With the regulations drawn so tightly, "many commanders will feel like they have no choice but to forbid their soldiers from blogging — or even using e-mail," said Jeff Nuding, who won the bronze star for his service in Iraq. "If I'm a commander, and think that any slip-up gets me screwed, I'm making it easy: No blogs," added Nuding, writer of the "pro-victory" Dadmanly site. "I think this means the end of my blogging."
Oddly enough, even though the new rules affect contractors and civilian employees as well as soldiers - even soldiers' families must comply - the directive is only posted on a restricted intranet site that many contractors don't have access to.
"Even though it is supposedly rewritten to include rules for contractors (i.e., me) I am not allowed to download it," e-mails Perry Jeffries, an Iraq war veteran now working as a contractor to the Armed Services Blood Program.
