Army audits show official sites breach security, not milblogs

Noah Shachtman at Wired News "Danger Room" blog writes,

For years, members of the military brass have been warning that soldiers' blogs could pose a security threat by leaking sensitive wartime information. But a series of online audits, conducted by the Army, suggests that official Defense Department websites post far more potentially-harmful than blogs do. The audits, performed by the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell between January 2006 and January 2007, found at least 1,813 violations of operational security policy on 878 official military websites. In contrast, the 10-man, Manassas, Virginia, unit discovered 28 breaches, at most, on 594 individual blogs during the same period.
The results were obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, after the digital rights group filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act.
"It's clear that official Army websites are the real security problem, not blogs," said EFF staff attorney Marcia Hofmann. "Bloggers, on the whole, have been very careful and conscientious. It's a pretty major disparity." The findings stand in stark contrast to Army statements about the risks that blogs pose.

Of course. If sensitive information gets leaked, it's these guys who are writing blogs who will take the heat (bullets, bombs, what have you). The guys who put stuff on official websites don't have that problem. In many cases, they ARE journalists within the military and THEY need to produce good stories in order to get promoted etc.