Blogs are CENTCOM's New Target
13 February St. Petersburgh Times - Blogs are CENTCOM's New Target by William Levesque.
Quote:
It begins almost imperceptibly, one lonely posting on a blog. It says that U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan use candy to lure children so they can be used as human shields.
Patently untrue.
But in an age when the lines between traditional media and the blogosphere are blurred, a dark rumor can spread like a kindergarten virus, unchecked and unchallenged.
U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa is taking notice.
Since 2005, CentCom officials have jumped into the blogging fray, facing the realities of a new electronic age in hopes of combating misinformation on the Web, or just getting its own news out.
A three-person team monitors blogs - Internet journals with commentary from ordinary citizens and, often, links to news articles - that concentrate on CentCom's area of responsibility, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan...
Efficacy Is Often In The Eye of The Beholder
Regarding the 'muscle' of a primary blog and its many affiliates and attachments, Obama may have a mighty machine at play but I note he has already developed some serious political baggage with his recent comments about the KIAs in Iraq. One comment in a non-blog environment, transmitted in a non-blog venue and he has taken a serious hit. MSN is already starting to spin that comment. Howard Dean's much vaunted Deaniacs seemed all the rage and an awesome force to be reckoned with until he screamed like a banshee that time in a non-blog venue and it was transmitted in non-blog venues, like the National News and Newspapers and it crippled him. John Dean's campaign just now took a technical hit via Amanda Marcotte resigning. She was the prime blog mover-n'-shaker in his cyber campaign. She got considerable flak and pressure from the people she was attacking in non-blog venues via phone calls and letters and emails. Conversely, look at the PR hit Zaqawri took when he couldn't even handle a machine gun. Rember when some video was recovered showing him fumbling around and his aides burning their hands on the barrel? All it took was a couple of people (Monitors...) who instantly capitalized on it and wham! it spread and he became the laughing stock and his image of being a Saladin was insantly crippled. You bet - his cyber followers got to see al-killer unable to even handle a simple machine gun. Everything starts small and I find it most encouraging that our military is venturing into these uncharted waters.
US Military -v- Internal blogging & Access to WWW
What the hell is the Army thinking?
I've had this conversation with friends who are military before: there are security implications and security violators, I get it. Well, way to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In this war, for the first time, service members have been able to offer virtually real time critique of the press coverage of the war from the combat zone. It is impossible to measure what impact or influence that has had, but the military keeps saying it believes this is an information war, and keeps acting as if information is completely irrelevant to the conduct of the war or to the ability to sustain support for the war.
Here's the reaction from one of the best known and best supported milbloggers: (no, I still haven't figured out how to embed links successfully, you'll need to cut and paste.) http://www.blackfive.net/main/2007/0...sec_regul.html
For those of you near decent university libraries, at the risk of sounding as if I'm self-promoting, there's this cite:
“Life in Wartime: Realtime War, Realtime Critique; Fighting in the New Media Environment,” in Military Culture, vol. 4 of Military Life: The Psychology of Serving in Peace and Combat eds. Thomas Britt, Carl Castro, and Amy Adler (Westport, Ct: Praeger Security International, 2006):180-210
I don't know that it's that insightful, it's just the only piece I know of that's out there that traces the importance of the dern things.
I am absolutely gobsmacked that the Army would take this step. And now of all times.
Here I am, Stuck in the Middle with You...
On the Left - We Need to Start Winning this IO 'Stuff' -- On the Right - Shut Up and Toe the Line
Are the Soviets still with us?
This new policy reminds me much of Soviet attempts to keep the truth from the people. It's such a shame with all the good that our Marines/Soldiers/Sailors/Airmen are doing on the ground that we're resorting to something like this. If this policy rules the day, "strategic" corporal will forever be a defensive term only. Instead of going in this direction, I'd like the policy to encourage our warriors to photograph, videotape and transmit their actions to the world on the internet. Train them, teach them about war among the people, why the people are the center of gravity, why the will of the American people is so important, why the American people need to see more than IEDs and firefights and then let them run. We can win the IO component of this fight if we train our warriors and then let them speak. As a very wise Middle East and Terrorism expert said the other day, "We'd better tell our story at the tactical, operational and strategic levels because if we don't our enemy will, and we won't like what he has to say."
I hope this isn't an example of "military intelligence"
Check out the Army's own 1st Information Operations Command posted a briefing on "OPSEC in the Blogosphere," marked For Official Use Only:
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/army/opsec-blog.pdf
I certainly had no problems accessing it.
Marc
On a more serious note...
This is nuts! I *hope* that it is a knee-jerk reaction from some careerist dinosaur with delusions of living in a Stalinist state rather than something that has been "studied". Has anyone considered the effects that this will have on recruitment and on younger personelle in addition to its effects on the overall war?
You know, this is sounding a lot like a military version of the Democrat line - "The IO war is lost, so we will just tell everyone to shut up". Oh yes, at the same time, why don't we call everyone who is trying to find out what is going on a "traitor". Does this include members of Congress going on fact finding trips? Does this include journalists? Does this include researchers?
Sorry, I'm fuming over the idiocy entailed in this little piece of Sierra!:mad:
Marc
Marching Up To Freedom Land by Joan Baez
Author of OPSEC reg says it is not a big change
This is buried in a Washington Post story on milbloggers.
Quote:
...
... Army OPSEC Program Manager Maj. Ray Ceralde, who helped author the revision, said bloggers shouldn't be concerned.
According to Ceralde, the new regulation does not require bloggers to have each post approved by officers, but rather instructs bloggers to alert commanders and OPSEC officers when they initially create a blog. This is similar to the policy already put in place in Iraq, he said. "Soldiers have the right to express themselves as long as they don't reveal information that will subject their unit or personnel to harm," Ceralde said.
...
This is just a small part of a very long article and there still appears to be a great deal of uncertainty caused by the new reg. If Maj. Ceralde is right then the regulation as written is not a model of clarity based on all the educated people who thought it was a big change.
Are Bloggers Journalists?
You cannot imagine the difficulties surrounding that issue as it concerns civilian bloggers, before you even get into the distinctions between military and civilian law. I don't myself buy into the argument that bloggers are de facto journalists, although it is possible that on occasion they may be performing or engaging in a process that is akin to journalism. This has primarily come up as concerns shield laws (do bloggers have the same protections afforded journalists -- to the extent they have them -- when it comes to the right to not reveal sources or give up documents, video tape, etc. to govt. officials.) Here's the problem with that one: if everyone is a potential "journalist," then how does a society enforce some kind of norm that says everyone has an obligation to testify when called upon to do so?
Well, if military members are journalists, what does that do to their obligations to not publish information, footage, photographs, etc? Wouldn't their first amendment protections trump any other obligations?
Don't think so.
Bloggers, it seems to me, are press critics involved in a larger community conversation.
For all sorts of reasons, the larger military benefited from having its members' voices being heard, even when those voices were critical, in part because those voices were sometimes critical, because it was precisely the fact that those voices were sometimes critical that gave them credibility.