Army blocks access to The Guardian website

[Streck-Fu]

after it broke several NSA stories....LINK

Restricted web access to The Guardian is Armywide, officials say

The Army admitted Thursday to not only restricting access to The Guardian news website at the Presidio of Monterey, as reported in Thursday's Herald, but Armywide.

Presidio employees said the site had been blocked since The Guardian broke stories on data collection by the National Security Agency.

Gordon Van Vleet, an Arizona-based spokesman for the Army Network Enterprise Technology Command, or NETCOM, said in an email the Army is filtering "some access to press coverage and online content about the NSA leaks."

He wrote it is routine for the Department of Defense to take preventative "network hygiene" measures to mitigate unauthorized disclosures of classified information.

"We make every effort to balance the need to preserve information access with operational security," he wrote, "however, there are strict policies and directives in place regarding protecting and handling classified information."

In a later phone call, Van Vleet said the filter of classified information on public websites was "Armywide" and did not originate at the Presidio.

Presidio employees described how they could access the U.S. site, www.guardiannews.com, but were blocked from articles, such as those about the NSA, that redirected to the British site.

Sources at the Presidio said Jose Campos, the post's information assurance security officer, sent an email to employees early Thursday saying The Guardian's website was blocked by Army Cyber Command "in order to prevent an unauthorized disclosure of classified information."

NETCOM is a subordinate to the Army Cyber Command, based in Fort Belvoir, Va., said its website.

Campos wrote if an employee accidentally downloaded classified information, it would result in "labor intensive" work, such as the wipe or destruction of the computer's hard drive.

He wrote that an employee who downloads classified information could face disciplinary action if found to have knowingly downloaded the material on an unclassified computer.

The Guardian's website has classified documents about the NSA's program of monitoring phone records of Verizon customers, a project called Prism which gave the agency "direct access" to data held by Google, Facebook, Apple and others, and more.

The source of the leaks, 29-year-old Edward Snowden, is on the run from American authorities. He is a former contractor for the agency.

Van Vleet said the department does not determine what sites its personnel can choose to see on the DOD system, but "relies on automated filters that restrict access based on content concerns or malware threats."

He said it would not block "websites from the American public in general, and to do so would violate our highest-held principle of upholding and defending the Constitution and respecting civil liberties and privacy."

The Guardian declined to comment, but its editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, sent a link to The Herald's story on Twitter.

[Irishsquid]

Because clearly, those Soldiers can't go read about it when they get home. Seriously...even if only 1 man-hour was wasted reconfiguring the proxies to block the Guardian, it was still a waste of taxpayer money. Oh what? I can't read about the NSA on my Army laptop? Good thing I have a smart phone. Same one I use to watch porn in the latrine.

What are they worried about? Some young impressionable PFC might decide he doesn't want the government spying on its own citizens, and lose faith?


I really do understand that idea that if they read something classified, it's "introducing classified information into an unclassified network or computer information system." I get it. I remember doing network security monitoring for the AF when Wikileaks was the big deal. I found the total lack of common sense just as big a waste then as I do now...

[BryanK]

I just checked, and the Navy took it down as well.

[SF_BHT]

Originally Posted by Irishsquid

Because clearly, those Soldiers can't go read about it when they get home. Seriously...even if only 1 man-hour was wasted reconfiguring the proxies to block the Guardian, it was still a waste of taxpayer money. Oh what? I can't read about the NSA on my Army laptop? Good thing I have a smart phone. Same one I use to watch porn in the latrine.

What are they worried about? Some young impressionable PFC might decide he doesn't want the government spying on its own citizens, and lose faith?


I really do understand that idea that if they read something classified, it's "introducing classified information into an unclassified network or computer information system." I get it. I remember doing network security monitoring for the AF when Wikileaks was the big deal. I found the total lack of common sense just as big a waste then as I do now...

It may seam stupid but DOD has regulations. No classified on Unclassified machines. If it happens for any reason they have to follow protocol. If you want to surf the web for this type of info do it on your own device and your own time.

They are not keeping little Johnny in the dark they are just following regulations. Little Johnny can fill his head with all he wants but not on DODs equipment and bandwidth. I wish the rest of the government would be a strait forward with following regulations.

[Team Sergeant]

Originally Posted by SF_BHT

It may seam stupid but DOD has regulations. No classified on Unclassified machines. If it happens for any reason they have to follow protocol. If you want to surf the web for this type of info do it on your own device and your own time.

They are not keeping little Johnny in the dark they are just following regulations. Little Johnny can fill his head with all he wants but not on DODs equipment and bandwidth. I wish the rest of the government would be a strait forward with following regulations.

You do realize that little Johnny reads/receives 100% of his news from the DoD controlled internet in the combat zone. While all the little Johnny's back home can scan news from multiple sources combat Johnny has only one.

So yeah, I'm against it as it's nothing more than a feeble attempt by the US Gov to filter what is being read by real patriots.

[SF_BHT]

Originally Posted by Team Sergeant

You do realize that little Johnny reads/receives 100% of his news from the DoD controlled internet in the combat zone. While all the little Johnny's back home can scan news from multiple sources combat Johnny has only one.

So yeah, I'm against it as it's nothing more than a feeble attempt by the US Gov to filter what is being read by real patriots.

I do I was just referring to here back home as the article was ref to the Presidio in CA.

I always assume that what is in the combat zone is filtered but if you setup news alerts you can get emails loaded with info that they block directly from sites. There is always a way around the watchers...... Most of the kids today know way more ways to get the feeds they want.

[SF18C]

As one of those "evil enforcers of network policy" what I will say is it is a direct violation of multiple regulations to have classified information on a unclassified government information system, regardless of how it got there!

We did the same thing for Wikileaks websites and all those that directly posted or hung documents that were clearly marked secret or higher.

If you have ever been involved in UDCI clean up it can take 100 of man hours, 1000 of dollars in equipment and result in tragic loss of data. Finding classified info on a govt laptop can result in that laptop harddrive being destroyed, with all other info on it! Send an email to 10 folks, those 10 hard drives could also be destroyed...but what a lot of folks forget about is the exchange server HDs could be crushed...resulting in 100000 of emails being lost. I have seen entire SAN dismantled due to some TS info finding its way to a NIPR file server. An entire BDEs preplanning deployment data lost...3-weeks prior to movement down range. The best one can hope for is a good back up the day prior to the event and that backup making a full restoration, a 50/50 proposition in my experience. That poor BDE...they got tails and some dumbass Major's career was absolutely crushed by just about every higher ranking individual that could get their hands on his OER. (fitting in my opinion too)

While I rarely disagree with the Team Sergeant, I will make the statement that the if folks knew what we paid for bandwidth down range, you would be shocked! Back in the 2007 time frame I recall signing a "check" for well over $10 Mil, for an annual contract, that didn't not cover all my AO requirements!

I am still surprised we allow so much "casual" internet surfing for non-mission requirements on the mil-nets. In other words, access to the internet is not a necessity for some - it is a mission related system to enable support for military operations! It is not free, we didn't put it there for personal pleasure and lil Jonny has more access to news than just DoD networks. The is sat-TV, commercial internet, satellite internet services, daily/weekly newspapers & magazines, and the good ol fashioned Military postal system. My father & 2 uncles never mentioned any problems getting thru Vietnam without Apple, Dell, Microsoft, or the internet. My grandfathers had no SMS texting, iridium phone or Skype in WWII/Korea.

I have always had two sayings since working for commo side of the house:

1) You wouldn't take the GOV car to the race track and run the shit out if just because it is sitting in the parking lot, so I don't know why folks think they can do what ever the want on a taxpayer funded network.

2) We spend a lot of fu¢king money trying to secure an unsecure network.


oh and to add some facts to the OP story...most of fucking of Presidio is on the .EDU net and not on the .MIL network! They found the MIL net to restrictive for their access to foreign websites, so I don't know why they are bitching!