Full List Of Sites The US Air Force Blocked To Hide From Wikileaks Info; Includes NY Times & The Guardian
from the sticking-your-head-in-the-sand dept
When the State Department cables leaked via Wikileaks, some government employees and agencies were put in a tough position, in that they couldn't officially view those documents, since they were still classified. As we've noted in the past, this is stupid. In business, any boilerplate non-disclosure agreement says that if some info becomes public due to a third party, the NDA no longer applies. The US government, for reasons that escape me, refuses to do the same thing for classified info that leaks -- even after the press has run stories on it.We heard all sorts of bizarre stories about government agencies trying to block access to this content which was everywhere, including reports that any Techdirt article that mentioned "Wikileaks" in the title was blocked from Defense Department computers.
Jason Smathers decided to submit a Freedom of Information Act request (via the awesome Muckrock.com platform) to the US Air Force to find out what sites it was blocking. And while the Air Force initially denied the request, on appeal it just changed its mind and handed over the list, which you can see below. Most of the blocked URLs are to various Wikileaks mirror sites, but it also covers the major media properties that Wikileaks initially worked with on releasing these documents, including the NY Times and The Gurdian.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: blocked sites, state department, us air force, wikileaks
Companies: wikileaks
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Personally, I don't understand why people want to give up their most basic freedoms to serve, but I'm glad they do.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Sacrifice your freedoms to 'defend' them ... seems ... non-sequitur. You're fighting to defend the loss of your freedoms to defend your freedoms.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Teamwork
The 'teamwork' effect, when all persons work together as a single unit, is an amazing multiplier of effectiveness.
That being said, military effectiveness is rooted in creating teams--and the first step is shared common experiences. Foremost among these shared experiences is basic training, MOS training, reduced/altered rights, uniforms, etc. It is simply a necessary step in creating an effective military.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
If you lose the freedoms you're supposedly defending, all you're doing is shooting people (and getting shot at) because some dictator told you to.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Military intelligence is an oxymoron.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
In every war movie I've ever seen, all the soldiers/sailors/marines/airmen do is bitch about everything from the officers to the food.
Yet, the second the shooting starts, it's "all for one, and one for all" and "semper fi" and...well you get the idea!
When did that change?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Payback for the Pentagon Papers case?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Pretty Clear
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I happen to agree with leaks to clear out the drivel
The government's only recourse then is to hunt down the person who leaked the information to prosecute them, and *that* should act as a deterrent. My only caveat is that if the leaked "secrets" are drivel (i.e. they shouldn't have been secret in the first place) then the prosecution should be required to be dropped.
To the point that if a leaked "secret" should no longer be considered "secret": then the act of announcing it is no longer "secret" confirms that the leak was correct -- and wouldn't that be a security violation in itself?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: I happen to agree with leaks to clear out the drivel
Of course by going after Wikileaks for posting the "secrets" is saying those "secrets" also confirms that the leak was correct. So confirming them by dropping the "secret" or suing and arresting for posting "secrets" does the same thing, confirms they are legit.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
News had just come in that the officers working military intelligence go home, download the cables, then talk about them over the water cooler.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
OLPC.com
How did they end up on this list? Did I miss them hosting a mirror or something?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: OLPC.com
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What the...
All hope for humanity is now over.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Searching
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
kind of stupid
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
typo
--> Guardian
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Your requested host "guardian.co.uk" could not be resolved by DNS.
For assistance, contact your network support team
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Par for this course is -100
Dumbasses - all the way to the Dumbass in Chief.
They've kept us safe, no thanks to them.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
And who says that Air Force is not a good organization to compose and maintain a list of "rogue sites"? As we can see here, they can be perfect at this! If this is not enough, just add block lists from Navy and the Army. That is to complete those lists from MPAA and RIAA.
And then we can ban the whole Internet thingy!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Security Theatre
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]