Friday, June 28, 2013

U.S. Army Admits To Blocking NSA Leak News From Military Members

By Susan Duclos


On Thursday the U.S. Army admitted to an Armywide restriction from The Guardian website, the publication where NSA leaker, Edward Snowden has revealed multiple instances of domestic spying on Americans committed by the Obama administration, via the NSA.

According to employees of Presidio of Monterey, The Guardian website has been blocked since the initial leaks about the extent of data collection by the National Security Agency, which includes a FISA court order published showing that the NSA was collecting three months of user data on all Verizon users, on a daily ongoing basis, as well as the secret NSA Prism program where the Obama administration is collecting data from large tech companies which include Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple.

Gordon Van Vleet, an Arizona-based spokesman for the Army Network Enterprise Technology Command, or NETCOM, said in an email the Army is filtering "some access to press coverage and online content about the NSA leaks."

He wrote it is routine for the Department of Defense to take preventative "network hygiene" measures to mitigate unauthorized disclosures of classified information.

"We make every effort to balance the need to preserve information access with operational security," he wrote, "however, there are strict policies and directives in place regarding protecting and handling classified information."

In a later phone call, Van Vleet said the filter of classified information on public websites was "Armywide" and did not originate at the Presidio. 


While Obama has publicly insisted the extensive data mining being done by his administration are just "modest encroachments on privacy," in 2011 the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ruled that some of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs under the FISA Amendments Act, were unconstitutional.

I'll repeat what I said when reports about the Air Force banning their personnel from accessing news on Obama's spying programs, to which in part, has been ruled unconstitutional by the court, because the point needs to be hammered home--- While Americans are debating Obama's expansion on domestic spying and whether the scope of the NSA surveillance under Obama, violates every day Americans' constitutional rights, the very men and women who take an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic," and put their lives on the line to do so, are forbidden from obtaining information about what their own government is doing.

Our military members swear to defend the constitutional but are forbidden from accessing news on their commander-in-chief's violation of those constitutional rights afforded to every American.

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Full Wake up America NSA scandal coverage found here.