DoD Blocks Millions of Computers From Viewing Alternative News

After the initial surge of web traffic to alternative news websites following The Guardian breaking the NSA spying story, traffic has slowed considerably despite the continued interest in the NSA story as well as other alternative headlines. This dramatic drop in traffic may be due to broad censorship by the Department of Defense on "millions of computers". What began as a rumor that the military brass was ordering soldiers not to view news about the whistleblower revelations that the NSA is spying on all Americans has swelled into a confirmed military-wide censorship campaign using a high-tech computer filtering system. The US News and World Report is reporting that the DoD is blocking access to all articles related to the NSA scandal from all DoD computers. The filter reportedly effects millions of computers and potentially thousands of alternative news and civil liberties websites.

According to U.S. News:
The Department of Defense is blocking online access to news reports about classified National Security Agency documents made public by Edward Snowden. The blackout affects all of the department's computers and is part of a department-wide directive. "Any website that runs information that the Department of Defense still considers classified" is affected, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Damien Pickart told U.S. News in a phone interview.

According to Pickart, news websites that re-report information first published by The Guardian or other primary sources are also affected.

"If that particular website runs an article that our filters determine has classified information... the particular content on that website will remain inaccessible," he said. Pickart said the blackout affects "millions" of computers on "all Department of Defense networks and systems."
This is perhaps one of the most shocking displays of blatant censorship in the history of the United States. The idea that classified information should still be treated as "off limits" to regular military personnel after its broad release to the public makes no sense.

Just the beginning for these ???!!!???  If they are not trying to cut public funding for national public broadcasters (like they've done in Greece where the national broadcaster has been eliminated completely) they go into attack mode like in Canada where they want to privatize Library & Archives Canada digitizing the entire collection and make taxpayers pay to access what was once public records!

This in my email:
This 29 year-old analyst just gave up his whole life -- his girlfriend, his job, and his home -- to blow the whistle on the US government's shocking PRISM program -- which has been reading and recording our emails, Skype messages, Facebook posts and phone calls for years.

When Bradley Manning passed this kind of data to Wikileaks, the US threw him naked into solitary confinement in conditions that the UN called "cruel, inhumane and degrading".

The authorities and press are deciding right now how to handle this scandal. If millions of us stand with Edward in the next 48 hours, it will send a powerful statement that he should be treated like the brave whistleblower that he is, and it should be PRISM, and not Edward, that the US cracks down on:


PRISM is profoundly disturbing: it gives the US government unlimited access to all of our personal email and social media accounts on Google, Youtube, Facebook, Skype, Hotmail, Yahoo! and much more. They're recording billions of our messages every month and the CIA can now or in the future use the information to prosecute, persecute, or blackmail us, our friends or our families!

Edward was horrified by this unprecedented violation of individual privacy. So he copied large amounts of files, sent them to the Guardian newspaper for publication and escaped to Hong Kong. His bravery not only exposed PRISM, but has started a domino effect around the world, shining a light on secret spy programs in Canada, the UK and Australia in just days! Now he's trapped in Hong Kong, waiting to be arrested. A global outcry could save him from extradition to the US, and encourage other countries to grant him asylum.

We can't let the US do to Edward what they did to Bradley Manning. Let's urgently stand with him, and against PRISM:

Some useful links:


Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations (The Guardian)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance

Edward Snowden Contact Glenn Greenwald Should Be 'Disappeared', Security Officials 'Overheard Saying' (Huffington Post)
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/06/10/nsa-leaker-and-journalist-should-be-disappeared-overheard_n_3414346.html?utm_hp_ref=canada&ir=Canada

NSA PRISM program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others (The Guardian)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data

Prism scandal: Government program secretly probes Internet servers (Chicago Tribune)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-nsa-prism-scandal-20130607,0,301166.story

PRISM by the Numbers: A Guide to the Government’s Secret Internet Data-Mining Program (TIME)
http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/06/06/prism-by-the-numbers-a-guide-to-the-governments-secret-internet-data-mining-program/

Anger swells after NSA phone records court order revelations (The Guardian)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/obama-administration-nsa-verizon-records

Data-collection program got green light from MacKay in 2011 (Globe and Mail)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/data-collection-program-got-green-light-from-mackay-in-2011/article12444909/


BTW if the European Union thinks they're immune from NSA's spying through PRISM definitely not the case.

Another useful link:


CISPA Will Legalize PRISM Spy Programhttp://www.activistpost.com/2013/06/cispa-will-legalize-prism-spy-program.html

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