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. I'm at a complete loss as to what the Air Force thinks it accomplishes in blocking the entire NY Times website because some stories mention content that everyone already knows about. How does that possibly make sense?

Filed Under: blocked sites, state department, us air force, wikileaks
Companies: wikileaks