Doing my wee bit to expose military censorship – specifically the military’s efforts to prevent its personnel from viewing certain internet sites – is becoming a hobbyhorse of mine. I’ve blogged about such censorship before, here, here, and here.
And now, thanks to Eric Umansky, I learn of another category of web sites being blocked or filtered on military networks. A category that brings up the following message on our troops’ monitors:
Access Denied (content_filter_denied)
Your request was denied because
of its content categorization:
“Extreme;Politics/Religion”
No, these are not the web sites of religious or political extremists. These are sites that list military casualty figures for Iraq. Sites that post casualty figures released by the Pentagon. You got it. The military now prevents its personnel from viewing information it releases to the general public.
This is beginning to become amusing. In a 1984-ish sort of way.