The US Army confirmed on Thursday that access to The Guardian newspaper’s website has been filtered and restricted for its personnel.
Gordon Van Vleet, spokesman for the Army Network Enterprise
Technology Command, or NETCOM, said in an email to the Monterey
Herald that the Army is filtering “some access to press
coverage and online content about the NSA leaks.”
The spokesman said the procedure was routine part of “network
hygiene” measures to prevent unauthorized disclosures of
sensitive 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 conversation he clarified that the filtering was
“Armywide” rather than restricted to some US Army facilities.
Van Vleet said NETCOM, which is part of the Army Cyber Command,
does not determine what sites its personnel can have access to,
but “relies on automated filters that restrict access based on
content concerns or malware threats.”
The Guardian’s website has posted classified information
regarding the NSA’s surveillance activities, including PRISM, the
massive domestic spying program that has Internet companies
collude with military intelligence to keep tabs on Americans’
online habits.
The Herald inquired about the issue after staff at the Presidio
of Monterey, a military installation in California, told the
newspaper that they were able to access The Guardian’s US site,
www.guardiannews.com,
but were prevented from accessing articles on the NSA that
redirected to the British site.
Republished with permission from:: RT