The U.S. Defense Department Is Blocking All Articles About The NSA Leaks

U.S. Army soldiers. Salon

Blackout: Defense Department Blocks All Articles About NSA Leaks From 'Millions' of Computers -- US News and World Report

The Department of Defense is blocking online access to news reports about classified National Security Agency documents made public by Edward Snowden. The blackout affects all of the department's computers and is part of a department-wide directive.

"Any website that runs information that the Department of Defense still considers classified" is affected, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Damien Pickart told U.S. News in a phone interview.

According to Pickart, news websites that re-report information first published by The Guardian or other primary sources are also affected.

"If that particular website runs an article that our filters determine has classified information... the particular content on that website will remain inaccessible," he said.

Pickart said the blackout affects "millions" of computers on "all Department of Defense networks and systems."

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My Comment: My regular readers in the Defense Department told me a few weeks ago that War News Updates was being blocked. It was only later that I realized the reason why was because of my extensive coverage on the NSA leak story .... my traffic dropped "big time" on the same day that I started to link to the Guardian website and their coverage of NSA leaker Edward Snowden. Is this a coincidence .... I will let you be the judge of that.

Am I surprised by this blacklisting .... no. I was warned a few months ago that DoD rules are very strict .... and linking to websites that reveal U.S. classified secrets is a big no-no. So .... I had a choice. Lose a thousand plus readers a day because of my coverage .... or edit my news to focus on issues that would not get me blacklisted. I choose to cover the story.

I do not have any regrets .... the NSA story is impacting everyone .... and it deserves to be covered. But do not get me confused with someone who publishes everything .... I do not. In the past I have refused posting stories that I knew would endanger U.S. soldiers lives .... case in point .... I refused to link to a well known and popular milblogger when he posted a story that detailed how U.S. soldiers were jamming IEDs in Iraq. I know that the enemy is smart .... and I know that they would pick up on such intel very quickly .... so why make their job easier .... and more to the point .... I want to go to bed with a clear conscious. As to covering the NSA leak story this is .... to me .... a no brainer. This is now a global story .... and it deserves to be covered .... DoD rules or not.

On a side note .... War News Updates is now receiving no traffic from any U.S. government server save one .... and this visitor is always visiting this website around lunch time (EST) for about five minutes (according to my sitemeter's referral log). What is that US government server .... cough cough .... it is the whitehouse.gov server.