Wikileaks wikileaks Wikileaks… did you hear about Wikileaks? The Air Force has decided that they will prove themselves to not be hypocrites and only block Wikileaks. Now they’re blocking several publications that released information on the leaked cables:
Air Force users who try to view the websites of the New York Times, Britain’s Guardian, Spain’s El Pais, France’s Le Monde or German magazine Der Spiegel instead get a page that says, “ACCESS DENIED. Internet Usage is Logged & Monitored,” according to a screen shot reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The notice warns that anyone who accesses unauthorized sites from military computers could be punished.
The Air Force said it had blocked more than 25 websites that contained the documents, originally obtained by the website WikiLeaks and published starting late last month, in order to keep classified material off unclassified computer systems.
I don’t think the Air Force really gets it. Once something is online you can’t censor it, you can prevent people from seeing it by blocking a few sites, the information has spread out to more sites than you can ever hope to censor. Once information has his the Internet it’s game over as far as controlling it. The only real option available to the Air Force is the creation of a white list of sites that it’s employees can access as opposed to their current blacklist of sites you can’t access.