"Surveillance of Soldiers' Blogs Sparks Lawsuit"

This sounds like a serious tug of war (so to speak), over free speech & security:

"The FLAG Project at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit against the Department of Defense today, demanding expedited information on how the Army monitors soldiers' blogs.

"According to news reports, an Army unit called the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell (AWRAC) reviews hundreds of thousands of websites every month, notifying webmasters and bloggers when it sees information it finds inappropriate. Some bloggers have told reporters that they have cut back on their posts or shut down their sites altogether because of the activities of the AWRAC. EFF filed its suit [PDF] after the Department of Defense and Army failed to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests about the blog monitoring program.

"'Soldiers should be free to blog their thoughts at this critical point in the national debate on the war in Iraq,' said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. 'If the Army is coloring or curtailing soldiers' published opinions, Americans need to know about that interference.'"