{"id":46543,"date":"2014-08-25T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2014-08-25T11:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=46543"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:30:42","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:30:42","slug":"u-s-military-bans-the-intercept","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/08\/u-s-military-bans-the-intercept\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Military Bans The Intercept"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>

A portion of an email (redacted and slightly altered to protect the source) sent to staff last week at a U.S. Marine Corps installation directing employees not to read this web site.<\/p><\/div>\n

20 Aug 2014 – <\/em>The U.S. military is banning and blocking employees from visiting The Intercept<\/em> in an apparent effort to censor news reports that contain leaked government secrets.<\/p>\n

According to multiple military sources, a notice has been circulated to units within the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps warning staff that they are prohibited from reading stories published by The Intercept<\/em> on the grounds that they may contain classified information. The ban appears to apply to all employees\u2014including those with top-secret security clearance\u2014and is aimed at preventing classified information from being viewed on unclassified computer networks, even if it is freely available on the internet. Similar military-wide bans have been directed against news outlets in the past after leaks of classified information.<\/p>\n

A directive issued to military staff at one location last week, obtained by The Intercept<\/em><\/a>, threatens that any employees caught viewing classified material in the public domain will face \u201clong term security issues.\u201d It suggests that the call to prohibit employees from viewing the website was made by senior officials over concerns about a \u201cpotential new leaker\u201d of secret documents.<\/p>\n

The directive states:<\/p>\n

We have received information from our higher headquarters regarding a potential new leaker of classified information.\u00a0 Although no formal validation has occurred, we thought it prudent to warn all employees and subordinate commands.\u00a0 Please do not go to any website entitled \u201cThe Intercept\u201d for it may very well contain classified material.<\/em><\/p>\n

As a reminder to all personnel who have ever signed a non-disclosure agreement, we have an ongoing responsibility to protect classified material in all of its various forms.\u00a0 Viewing potentially classified material (even material already wrongfully released in the public domain) from unclassified equipment will cause you long term security issues.\u00a0 This is considered a security violation.<\/em><\/p>\n

A military insider subject to the ban said that several employees expressed concerns after being told by commanders that it was \u201cillegal and a violation of national security\u201d to read publicly available news reports on The Intercept<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though I have a top secret security clearance, I am still forbidden to read anything on the website,\u201d said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject. \u00a0\u201cI find this very disturbing that they are threatening us and telling us what websites and news publishers we are allowed to read or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

(If you work for the military or the government and have received similar instructions, please let us know<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

On Monday, staff within the Navy, Army, and Marine Corps separately confirmed that they could not access The Intercept<\/em> from work computers. Two Navy sources said that if they tried to view the site they were served with the insignia of the Strategic Command<\/a> and a warning that they were \u201cattempting to access a blocked website\u201d that had been barred for \u201coperational reasons\u201d by a Department of Defense filtering system.<\/p>\n

An Army spokesman had not responded to a request for comment at the time of this article\u2019s publication. Marine Corps spokesman\u00a0Capt. Eric Flanagan admitted that\u00a0Marine Corps staff were notified \u201cas a precautionary measure that theintercept.com may contain classified information.\u201d The Navy and Air Force both referred requests for comment to the Department of Defense.<\/p>\n

In an emailed statement, Defense Department spokeswoman Lt. Col. Valerie Henderson said that she had not been able to establish whether the DoD had been the source of \u201cany guidance related to your website.\u201d Henderson added, however, that \u201cDoD personnel have an obligation to safeguard classified information. Classified information, whether made public by unauthorized disclosure, remains classified until declassified by an appropriate government authority. DoD is committed to preventing classified information from being introduced onto DoD\u2019s unclassified networks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, after the publication of two Intercept<\/em> stories<\/a> revealing classified details<\/a> about the vast scope of the government\u2019s watchlisting program, Reuters reported that \u201cintelligence officials were preparing a criminal referral<\/a>\u201d over the leaks.<\/p>\n

The ban on The Intercept <\/em>appears to have come in the aftermath of those stories, representing the latest in a string of U.S. military crackdowns on news websites that have published classified material. Last year, the Army admitted<\/a> that it was blocking parts of The Guardian<\/em>\u2019s website after it published secret documents from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. In 2010, WikiLeaks and several major news organizations were subject to similar<\/a> measures<\/a> after the publication of leaked State Department diplomatic files.<\/p>\n

Flanagan, the Marine Corps spokesman, told The Intercept<\/em> that The Washington Post<\/em> was also blocked by some military agencies last year after it published documents from Snowden revealing covert NSA surveillance operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust because classified information is published on a public website, that doesn\u2019t mean military people with security clearance have the ability to download it,\u201d Flanagan said.<\/p>\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

Ryan Gallagher is a Scottish journalist whose work at <\/em>The Intercept<\/em> is focused on government surveillance, technology, and civil liberties. His journalism has appeared in publications including <\/em>Slate<\/em>, the<\/em> Guardian<\/em>, <\/em>Ars Technica<\/em>, <\/em>Huffington Post<\/em>, the <\/em>Sydney Morning Herald<\/em>, the <\/em>Financial Times<\/em>, the <\/em>Independent<\/em>, and the <\/em>New Statesman<\/em>. Since 2011, Ryan has broken a series of national and international stories about controversial surveillance technologies, shining a light on spy agencies and uncovering links between Western technology firms and governments in repressive countries. He took home an award for his reporting at the 2013 Information Security Journalism Awards and he has received acclaim for his writing on a diverse range of subjects, encompassing everything from the FBI\u2019s attempted infiltration of WikiLeaks to mass protests in Madrid and homelessness in England. Most recently, Ryan has been reporting from Rio de Janerio on the cache of secret files leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

20 Aug 2014 – The U.S. military is banning and blocking employees from visiting The Intercept in an apparent effort to censor news reports that contain leaked government secrets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-whistleblowing-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}