US Military Bans Personnel From Reading Website Devoted To Leaks
Local Editor
The US military is banning and blocking employees from visiting The Intercept in an apparent effort to censor news reports that contain leaked government secrets.
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 on the grounds that they may contain classified information. The ban appears to apply to all employees-including those with top-secret security clearance-and 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.
A directive issued to military staff at one location last week threatens that any employees caught viewing classified material in the public domain will face "long term security issues," reported The Intercept.
It suggested that the call to prohibit employees from viewing the website was made by senior officials over concerns about a "potential new leaker" of secret documents.
A military insider subject to the ban said that several employees expressed concerns after being told by commanders that it was "illegal and a violation of national security" to read publicly available news reports on The Intercept.
"Even though I have a top secret security clearance, I am still forbidden to read anything on the website," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject. "I find this very disturbing that they are threatening us and telling us what websites and news publishers we are allowed to read or not."
On Monday, staff within the Navy, Army, and Marine Corps separately confirmed that they could not access The Intercept 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 and a warning that they were "attempting to access a blocked website" that had been barred for "operational reasons" by a Department of Defense filtering system.
An Army spokesman had not responded to a request for comment at the time of this article's publication.
Last year, the Army admitted that it was blocking parts of The Guardian's 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 measures after the publication of leaked State Department diplomatic files.
Source: The Intercept, edited by website team
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