The US Army and Army National Guard has created an "Army Web Risk Assessment Cell" to spy on the personal blogs and forum posts of soldiers and their families, according to a confidential military document released yesterday by the controversial document-leaking website Wikileaks.

The cell's mission is to:

"Conduct routine checks of web sites on the World Wide Web for disclosure of critical and/or sensitive information that is deemed a potential OPSEC compromise. Web sites include, but are not limited to, Family Readiness Group (FRG) pages, unofficial Army web sites, Soldiers’ web logs (blogs), and personal published or unpublished works related to the Army. The AWRAC will ensure a review and analysis is conducted on the suspected data found on the Internet."

According to the Army directive, US Army Operational Security OPSEC 530-1 (2007), the Army OPSEC Support Element - the office which carries out the internal espionage - will "track and report, on a quarterly basis, open source OPSEC compromises on the World Wide Web. As required, [the OPSEC Support Element] will report deficiencies and corrections to the Army OPSEC program manager, Army CIO/G–6 and JWRAC."

While the effort may seem like an invasion of privacy at first, there are two cold realities which actually justify its existence.  First, the office is looking at information which is already publicly available.  They aren't rifling through emails; they are looking at blogs and conversations that are publicly accessible via the web.  So the expectation of privacy just isn't there to warrant any type of violation.

Second, by monitoring the blogs and forums for the release of "critical information," the Army is protecting national security interests.  A casual slip in a forum that reveals a weakness in US security might just end up in the hands of our enemies.  If the mission of the military is to defend the country from all enemies, foreign and domestic, then efforts to control to public release of national security secrets or other information useful to those wishing to do the country harm are essential and necessary.  Besides, it's not like the Army has banned blogging or other cathartic conversations altogether; they have simply created a means to protect national interests through a mild, internal monitoring program.   Businesses call it a quality assurance program.  We call it common sense.  

And if Army personnel want to write about issues pertaining to their workplace but are afraid of retribution because of this program, they can send their articles to us.  We've cover the issues and keep their identities safe.