Millitary Bloggers Face Censorship

I found this article on Wired, which reports that military commanders are cracking down on Miliblogs, or blogs written by military personnel. Officials are concerned that soldiers might inadvertently leak matters of national security, including information on troop movements and locations. Personnel will now be required to submit posts to their commanders for review before publishing them online. The Department of Defense put up an online alert that, "effective immediately, no information may be placed on websites that are readily accessible to the public unless it has been reviewed for security concerns and approved in accordance with Deputy Secretary of Defense Memorandum web site policies and procedures." The military says that this tightened security is only meant to protect national secrets, but it makes me wonder if the system could be used to censor dissenters against the war who show the uglier side of what's going on overseas.

I hope that this increase in censorship won't have too much of a chilling effect on what soldiers blog about. I think it's extremely important that soldiers in Iraq especially be able to candidly blog about their experiences. With the huge drop in embedded journalists covering the war (only nine left), and with the slanted media coverage that does get through, it's becoming harder to get a perspective on what's really going on at the front lines.