[Infowarrior] - USCG Hates the Internet, Maybe

[Richard Forno]

Coast Guard Hates the Internet, Maybe
By David Axe EmailMarch 07, 2008 | 9:15:00

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/03/coast-guard-hat.html

The Army cracked down on soldier-bloggers and Youtube. The Air Force blocked
blog-access on official networks. All this despite the military paying lip
service to New Media, the open-source phenomenon and information warfare.
Now the Coast Guard, America's smallest military branch, is finally checking
out this whole internet thing -- and last week it totally panicked, maybe.

Here's what went down.

Periodically the Coast Guard brass, including Commandant Thad Allen, will
pen messages addressed to the whole Coast Guard. These messages cover a wide
range of topics: I quoted one this week that admonished Coasties for being
rude to civilian sailors. Since the postings were unclassified but inside a
secure network, a couple of unofficial Coast Guard blogs had made it their
responsibility to re-post the messages for the general public.

The brass said stop:

    THE COAST GUARD HEADQUARTERS COMMUNICATION CENTER (HQ COMMCEN) IS
DESIGNATED AS THE ONLY AUTHORIZED CG ORGANIZATION TO POST MESSAGES TO THE
INTERNET. INDIVIDUALS ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO DO SO VIA ANY MEANS.

So what does this mean? It might mean that the public has lost some of its
best sources for up-to-date info on the 50,000 people it counts on to keep
it safe at sea. It definitely means confusion for Coastie bloggers, who
largely had applauded the commandant's stated support of greater openness
and who have read this as a step back.

Does this signal a coming crackdown on Coast Guard bloggers?

"Not yet," says Peter Stinson from the Unofficial Coast Guard Blog:

    But the scuttle is that something is in the works. We'll just have to
see. I believe that Admiral Allen is smart enough to realize that if he
places any limits on free speech made outside of work hours without
government resources, we'll just feed the hog.

What hog? The 1st Amendment hog, dude.

But wait just a sec! Coastie spokesman Jim McPherson says we've got it all
wrong. He says that Coast Guard headquarters only wants to clear information
through a single, centralized location before making it public on the Coast
Guard official website:

    The problem before was these messages were informally shared and
sometimes they were inaccurate. They were not updated and when they where
superseded, it was overlooked. The goal now is to have the uscg.mil site the
PRIMARY official source on these important issues ... NOT the only place to
see it. When you see it posted on uscg.mil it is official ... not a draft,
not superseded policy, etc. The responsibility is ours to make sure
superseded policies are removed and the information is current and official.
We want the information shared from this site.

Problem is that Coast Guard bloggers such as Stinson are reading this
increased centralization as an attack on freedom of information. Who's
right? Depends on whether you'd rather info come from an single, official,
vetted source -- or from multiple, but perhaps contradictory, unofficial
sources.

McPherson says have a little faith:

    We do not "own" the information. The public does and with obvious
security and privacy concerns, the Coast Guard moves a great deal of
information out to the public -- mostly good but sometimes bad. ... Admiral
Allen is completely supportive of these efforts and this is what the term
"transparency" means in action.