Army monitors soldiers' blogs, Web sites

Spc. Jean-Paul Borda, who has indexed thousands of military blogs for a site called Milblogging.com, said in an e-mail interview that the military still is adapting to changing technology.

"This is a new media — Blogging. Podcasting. Online videos," wrote Borda, 32, of Dallas, who kept a blog while he was deployed in Afghanistan with the Virginia National Guard. "The military is doing what it feels necessary to ensure the safety of the troops."

Warnock said the Web risk assessment team has reviewed hundreds of thousands of sites every month, sometimes e-mailing or calling soldiers asking them to take material down. If the blogger doesn't comply with the request, the team can work with the soldier's commanders to fix the problem — that is, if the blogger doesn't post anonymously.

"We are not a law enforcement or intelligence agency. Nor are we political correctness enforcers," Warnock said. "We are simply trying to identify harmful Internet content and make the authors aware of the possible misuse of the information by groups who may want to damage United States interests."

Some bloggers say the guidelines are too ambiguous — a sentiment that has led others to pre-emptively shut down or alter their blogs.

"It's impossible to determine when something crosses the line from not a violation to a violation. It's like trying to define what pornography is or bad taste in music," said Spc. Jason Hartley, 32, who says he was demoted from sergeant and fined for reposting a blog he created while deployed to Iraq with the New York Army National Guard.

According to Hartley, the Army had forced him to stop the blog even before the oversight operation existed, citing pictures he had posted of Iraqi detainees and discussions of how he loaded a weapon and the route his unit took to get to Iraq.

Warnock contended that soldiers should not be discouraged from blogging altogether.

Military bloggers "are simply expressing themselves in a wide open forum and want to share their life-changing experiences with the rest of the world," Warnock said. "Giving soldiers an outlet for free expression is good. American soldiers are not shy about giving their opinions and nothing the Web Risk Cell does dampens that trait."

Matthew Currier Burden, 39, a former intelligence officer who wrote "The Blog of War," a collection of entries from bloggers who served in the war, said soldiers' Web sites can go a long way toward portraying positive aspects of the war and other "stories that need to get told."

But he said it's legitimate to fear that some information could be used the wrong way.

"The enemy knows the value of the blogs," Burden said. "The biggest thing that we fear is battle damage assessment from the enemy. We want to deny them that."

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