Digital Information Access for Members of the U.S. Military: An Abbreviated Timeline of Institutional Filtering

On September 30, 2015 the American Association of School Librarians will host the organization’s fifth annual Banned Websites Awareness Day; if all goes to plan, librarians, teachers, and students alike will gather across the country to discuss the impact that Internet filtering can have on learning in the classroom and in the library. It’s no secret that some schools have struggled with their blocking policies. When 400 high school students in Indiana received iPads, the first thing they did was reprogram the devices, so that they could access social media and game apps. Today, the Internet is glutted with websites explaining “How to Unblock Blocked Sites in School” and tips on how to access filtered websites. [This one explains how to copy and paste the URL of a blocked page into Google Translate.]

Institutional filtering is not a new concept. Schools, workplaces, and governments sometimes limit access to certain sites on internal networks for a number of reasons. Some filter in the name of technical concerns. Others, security and bandwidth. Then, there are those who filter because they believe that the Internet deters people from getting any work done.

Much of the existing research around Internet filtering focuses on governments that block their citizens from seeing certain websites. This post focuses instead on a different type of filtering, that which is institutional. It looks specifically at some of what the U.S. military has chosen to block on its own networks. 

The accompanying timeline examines how the U.S. military has treated various websites - ranging from Twitter to Infowars.com - on its own base computers. It’s by no means exhaustive but instead aims to make note of a few instances of filtering on U.S. military computers over the past eight years and how specific stakeholders responded. 

Date: May 2007 

Websites:

www.youtube.com www.myspace.com www.pandora.com   www.photobucket.com www.live365.com www.hi5.com www.metacafe.com www.mtv.com www.ifilm.com [inactive] www.blackplanet.com www.stupidvideos.com www.filecabi.com

Event: The Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations issues a directive to ban the aforementioned 12 websites on DoD computers in February, which takes effect in May 2007. "It is a bandwidth issue," says Army Lt. Col. Randi Steffy, a spokeswoman for U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha, Neb.

Other Details: Service members are still allowed to access the 12 sites on non-military computers but cannot use the U.S. government's bandwidth to do it. One Army infantry officer who is headed back to Iraq stresses, "It's a practical ma