The Army really doesn't want soldiers reading about the NSA leaks

And liberal critics are steamed

Marine in Afghanistan
(Image credit: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

The Army is blocking access on its computer networks to reports by Britain's Guardian and other online news outlets on Edward Snowden's leaks on National Security Agency phone and internet data mining, according to the Monterey County Herald. Gordon Van Vleet, a spokesman for the Army Network Enterprise Technology Command, told the California newspaper that the Defense Department is using online filters as part of its routine "network hygiene" aiming to limit fallout from unauthorized disclosures of classified information.

This is not a first. The military did the same thing in 2010 to block the websites of The New York Times and other news organizations for hosting once-secret U.S. diplomatic cables provided by WikiLeaks. As the White House explained at the time, "classified information, whether or not already posted on public websites or disclosed to the media, remains classified, and must be treated as such by federal employees and contractors, until it is declassified."

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.