Free The Blogger

From the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan to here at home, soldiers blogging about military life are under the watchful eye of some of their own.

A Virginia-based operation, the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell, monitors official and unofficial blogs and other Web sites for anything that may compromise security. The team scans for official documents, personal contact information and pictures of weapons or entrances to camps.

In some cases, that information can be detrimental, said Lt. Col. Stephen Warnock, team leader and battalion commander of a Manassas-based Virginia National Guard unit working on the operation.

In one incident, a blogger was describing his duties as a guard, providing pictures of his post and discussing how to exploit its vulnerabilities. Other soldiers posted photos of an Army weapons system that was damaged by enemy attack, and another showed personal information that could have endangered his family.

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Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group, has fired an employee who admitted to the first publication on a Web site of Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record)’s e-mails to a former male page.

The e-mails and later disclosures of sexually explicit computer messages from the Florida Republican to other male pages sparked a campaign-season scandal that threatens the GOP’s majority in Congress.

Full full can be read here.

The Sudanese government Sunday ordered the chief U.N. envoy to leave the country within three days after he wrote that the Sudanese army had suffered serious losses in fighting with rebels in northern Darfur.

The official Sudan News Agency said the order was issued against the envoy, Jan Pronk of the Netherlands, because he had demonstrated “enmity to the Sudanese government and the armed forces” and was involved in unspecified activities “that are incompatible with his mission.”

Full story can be read here