Waging War Against Information

Defense Department sued over "censorship unit" disclosure

by Nate Anderson

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense and the Army that seeks more information on a military web censorship unit called the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell (AWRAC) after the DOD failed to answer the EFF's Freedom of Information Act request in an expedited fashion.

AWRAC's existence was revealed last October in an Army News Service piece that described the unit. The AWRAC team monitors hundreds of thousands of web sites each month and contacts webmasters and bloggers about any security concerns.

The EFF wanted more information, and on November 2, 2006, they filed a FOIA request with the DOD. In that request for documents and e-mails, the EFF also requested "expedited processing" and applied for the journalistic fee waiver. Both requests were denied on November 13. The FOIA examiner at the DOD told the EFF that "the information you have requested would not be considered the subject of a breaking news story because it has already been the subject of multiple national news stories." Furthermore, because the EFF is not primarily a publisher, the group did not qualify for the news media waiver.

The fee waiver decision was overturned on appeal, but the expedited processing decision was not. The EFF then chose to file suit in the DC Circuit Court, seeking to compel the DOD to turn over the information promptly. The government has not yet filed a response.

The FOIA request and subsequent lawsuit are part of the EFF's FLAG program that looks at government "technologies that invade privacy," but the group is not seeking to have the AWRAC program shut down. Marcia Hoffman, the EFF attorney who filed the complaint, says that she recognizes the need for some censorship of war information. "Of course, a military effort requires some level of secrecy," she says. "But the public has a right to know if the Army is silencing soldiers' opinions as well. That's why the Department of Defense must release information on how this program works without delay."

Original article posted here.