[Infowarrior] - Air Force Blocks Access to Many Blogs

[Richard Forno]

Air Force Blocks Access to Many Blogs
By Noah Shachtman EmailFebruary 27, 2008 | 2:28:02 PMCategories: Info War

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/02/air-force-banni.html

Cybercommand The Air Force is tightening restrictions on which blogs its
troops can read, cutting off access to just about any independent site with
the word "blog" in its web address. It's the latest move in a larger
struggle within the military over the value -- and hazards -- of the sites.
At least one senior Air Force official calls the squeeze so "utterly stupid,
it makes me want to scream."

Until recently, each major command of the Air Force had some control over
what sites their troops could visit, the Air Force Times reports. Then the
Air Force Network Operations Center, under the service's new "Cyber
Command," took over.

    AFNOC has imposed bans on all sites with "blog" in their URLs, thus
cutting off any sites hosted by Blogspot. Other blogs, and sites in general,
are blocked based on content reviews performed at the base, command and
AFNOC level ...

    The idea isn't to keep airmen in the dark -- they can still access news
sources that are "primary, official-use sources," said Maj. Henry Schott, A5
for Air Force Network Operations. "Basically ... if it's a place like The
New York Times, an established, reputable media outlet, then it's fairly cut
and dry that that's a good source, an authorized source," he said ...

    AFNOC blocks sites by using Blue Coat software, which categorizes sites
based on their content and allows users to block sub-categories as they
choose.

    "Often, we block first and then review exceptions," said Tech. Sgt.
Christopher DeWitt, a Cyber Command spokesman.

    As a result, airmen posting online have cited instances of seemingly
innocuous sites -- such as educational databases and some work-related sites
-- getting wrapped up in broad proxy filters.

"A couple of years back, I fought this issue concerning the Counterterrorism
Blog," one Air Force officer tells Danger Room. "An AF [Air Force]
professional education course website recommended it as a great source for
daily worldwide CT [counterterrorism] news.  However it had been banned,
because it called itself a blog. And as we all know, all blogs are bad!"

He's joking, of course. But blogs and social networking sites have faced all
sorts of restrictions on military networks, for all sorts of reasons.
MySpace and YouTube are officially banned, for eating up too much bandwidth.
Stringent regulations, read literally, require Army officers to review each
and every item one of his soldiers puts online, in case they leak secrets.
And in televised commercials, screensavers and fliers, troops are told that
blogging is a major security risk -- even though official sites have proven
to leak many, many more secrets. Now there's the Air Force's argument, that
blogs aren't legitimate media outlets -- and therefore, shouldn't be read at
work.

But this view isn't universally held in the military. Many believe blogs to
be a valuable source of information -- and a way for ordinary troops to
shape opinions, at home and abroad. Gen. David Petraeus, who heads the U.S.
effort in Iraq, has commended military bloggers. Lt. Gen. William B.
Caldwell IV, who replaced Petraeus as the head of the Combined Arms Center
and Fort Leavenworth, recently wrote (in a blog post, no less) that soldiers
should be encouraged to "get onto blogs and [s]end their YouTube videos to
their friends and family."

Within the Air Force, there's also a strong contingent that wants to see
open access to the sites -- and is mortified by the AFNOC's restrictions.
"When I hear stuff this utterly stupid, it makes me want to scream.... Piles
of torn out hair are accumulating around my desk as we speak," one senior
Air Force official writes in an e-mail. "I'm certain that by blocking blogs
for official use, our airmen will never, ever be able to read them on their
own home computers, so we have indeed saved them from a contaminating
influence. Sorry, didn't mean to drip sarcasm on your rug."

One of the blogs banned is In From the Cold, which examines military,
intelligence and political affairs from a largely right-of-center
perspective. It's written by "Nathan Hale," the pseudonym for a former
journalist and Air Force intelligence officer, who spent more than two
decades in the service. He tells Danger Room, "If knowledge and information
are power -- and no one disputes that -- then why not trust your people and
empower them to explore all sides of issues affecting the service, air power
and national security?"

    Obviously, DoD [Department of Defense] can decide what internet content
should be filtered -- they spent billions on the IT architecture and
billions more to maintain it. But if it's a matter of "ensuring worker
productivity" and deterring "wasteful surfing of the internet," does it
really make sense to block relatively small blogs (that just happen to focus
on military and security issues), while allowing everyone to access ESPN or
FoxSports?  Wonder how much work time will be lost on filling out "March
Madness" brackets, versus reading a military or intelligence blog?
     
    In short, there doesn't seem to be any consistency in the current DoD
policy.  And that's no surprise.  A few months ago, a senior Pentagon P.A.
[public affairs] official told me that his service had no plans to engage
the blogosphere, because their studies showed that "people don't rely on
blogs for news and information." And he said it with a straight face.

The Air Force recently launched an $81 million marketing campaign to
convince lawmakers and average citizens of its relevance in today's fights.
By making it harder for troops to blog, an Air Force officer says, the
service had undermined "some of their most credible advocates."

"The Air Force isn't getting the planes that they want because they are
incapable of communicating their usefulness and applicability in this new
war. Because Air Force officers talk more like corporate bureaucrats than
cocky war fighters, no one is inspired or convinced of their pressing (and
quite legitimate) need to modernize the force," he adds.  "Air Force
bloggers spoke the lingo of someone heavily invested in the fight, because
they operate outside the survival-minded careerist world of public affairs,
with many of them penning blog posts from theater."

Perhaps, says retired Air Force Col. Tom Ehrhard, who's now a Senior Fellow
at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. But there are
legitimate security reasons why blogs need to be restricted. Adversaries may
be using blogs to take advantage of airmen, he notes.

    It is increasingly clear that active exploitation could take advantage
of airmen and civilians who want to inform and correct the often outrageous,
false assertions on these blogs. In doing so, it is easy for well-meaning
insiders to violate operational security (OPSEC) tenets, either directly or
tangentially. We are in a different world today when it comes to sensitive
military information, and foreign intelligence operatives surely understand
this and will exploit it. As a former member of Strategic Air Command, where
OPSEC was (rightly) an obsession, this has been obvious to me for some time
in reading aerospace-oriented blogs. This policy strikes me as a timely
reminder to Air Force professionals that they should be on guard when
blogging, because someone is watching.

UPDATE: I'm getting a lot of conflicting data about exactly which blogs are
blocked, and which ones aren't.   Shoot me a note if you're currently in the
Air Force, and would like to help set me straight.  All off-the-record,
naturally.