Last week on wired.com Noah Sachtman looks at the April 19th U.S. Army directive restricting online activities for troops. This is the latest, most heavy-handed edict in an area the military has struggled with since blogging came into fashion. Censorship has been a reality of wartime correspondence since before the Internet–commanders did not want sensitive information sent home in letters or telegrams any more than they want it posted on Web sites today. However the public nature of blogging–in contrast to letters or emails–perhaps sped up what Sachtman and others see as a definitive end to combat blogs, or “milblogs.” The change, Sachtman highlights, is that it is now necessary to receive:

“an OPSEC review prior to publishing” anything — from “web log (blog) postings” to comments on internet message boards, from resumes to letters home.

Milblogger Dadmanly writes that as written the edict:

also means soldiers need to have their commanders review/censor every single email or IM they want to send. To comply, commanders would have no choice but to forbid their soldiers from using email or IM via the internet, or the Commander would have to go with them to the internet cafe.

What many fear is that the trade off for increased information security may be too great. By effectively silencing voices from combat the U.S. military stand to lose some of the most convincing advocates for the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.