When Air Force personnel on the service’s computer network try to view the Web sites of The Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, the German magazine Der Spiegel, the Spanish newspaper El País and the French newspaper Le Monde, as well as other sites that posted full confidential cables, the screen says “Access Denied: Internet usage is logged and monitored,” according to an Air Force official whose access was blocked and who shared the screen warning with The Times. Violators are warned that they face punishment if they try to view classified material from unauthorized Web sites.The Times refrains from noting the USAF's permissiveness regarding access to homophobic, antisemitic and other hate sites.
Some Air Force officials acknowledged that the steps taken might be in vain since many military personnel could gain access to the documents from home computers, despite admonishments from superiors not to read the cables without proper clearances.
Cyber network specialists within the Air Force Space Command last week followed longstanding procedures to keep classified information off unclassified computer systems. “News media Web sites will be blocked if they post classified documents from the WikiLeaks Web site,” said Lt. Col. Brenda Campbell, a spokeswoman for the Air Force Space Command, a unit of which oversees Air Force cyber systems. “This is similar to how we’d block any other Web site that posted classified information.”
The report notes that -
Colonel Campbell said that only sites posting full classified documents, not just excerpts, would be blocked. “When classified documents appear on a Web site, a judgment will be made whether it will be blocked,” she said. “It’s an issue we’re working through right now.”Don't look (at least on an official network) and don't tell, presumably.
Spokesmen for the Army, Navy and Marines said they were not blocking the Web sites of news organizations, largely because guidance has already been issued by the Obama administration and the Defense Department directing hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors not to read the secret cables and other classified documents published by WikiLeaks unless the workers have the required security clearance or authorization.
In a forthcoming paper on the Wikileaks imbroglio I will be questioning the security rhetoric, notiong that one reason the leaks have occurred is because the 'war on terror' has been characterised by US government information sharing that features access by several hundred thousand servicepeople, other officials and contractors to a plethora of low-level intelligence information. Ostensibly inculcating respect for secrecy is unlikely to be effective if the same USAF personnel are able to see the non-leaked versions of the cables on the official networks, ie they'll access much of the content without having to visit the NY Times, the Guardian or other bastions of subversion.
