This posting and its comments chart the unfolding story ...
news24.com, via Joi Ito:
Cellphones fitted with digital cameras have been banned in US army installations in Iraq on orders from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, The Business newspaper reported on Sunday.Quoting a Pentagon source, the paper said the US defence department believes that some of the damning photos of US soldiers abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were taken with camera phones.
"Digital cameras, camcorders and cellphones with cameras have been prohibited in military compounds in Iraq," it said, adding that a "total ban throughout the US military" is in the works.
Joi Ito comments:
The increasing reliance of this administration on secrecy is really disturbing. When your government starts to strip the people of their privacy and civil rights and consistently marches forward with a variety of efforts to hides its own movements, you know you're in real trouble.I've worked on whistleblower protection bills and thought a lot about the importance of the ability for people to come forward outside of the chain of command. It is an essential protection measure against coverups and corruption. I can understand arguments about why allowing random photos could be bad, but I'm sure the importance of having "eyes on the ground" outside of the "main channel" out-weigh the risks.
And (via Boing, Boing) an editorial comment by Clarence Page — writing in The Chicago Tribune:
If I had my way, every enlisted man and woman in the military would be issued a digital camera. As we've seen in the scandal about abused Iraqi prisoners, the little gadgets help boost morale by providing snapshots that can be e-mailed back home. They also can come in handy when you need to gather evidence. I like those little cameras because certain power elites don't.
And now, 26.5.2004, Wired News reports:
The rapid proliferation of digital cameras, phonecams and wireless gadgets among soldiers and military contractors is giving senior military officials concern, in the wake of images that showed abuse in an Iraqi prison and snapshots that showed rows of coffins of American soldiers. The Defense Department said it hasn't banned the devices and doesn't plan to -- as the Business Times of London and two wire services have reported. But the Pentagon is telling commanders in the field to strictly monitor the use of consumer wireless technology through Directive 8100.2 -- Use of Commercial Wireless Devices, Services and Technologies in the Department of Defense Global Information Grid -- issued last month."We're in the situation today where everyone is using a cell phone, BlackBerry or some sort of wireless device that can be carrying voice, imagery or text -- and we either need that to be highly encrypted, or off of DOD systems altogether," said Department of Defense spokesman Lt. Col. Ken McClellan. "We don't want to be in a situation where anyone with a scanner can figure what we're about to do."
In a nutshell, the directive tells all soldiers, contractors and visitors to Defense Department facilities that they can only carry wireless devices that conform to the military's security standards. These specify that the devices use strong authentication and encryption technologies whenever possible. In addition, the devices cannot be used for storing or transmitting classified information. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz signed it in April after two years of internal debate. ...
While Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld may not have signed a ban on new consumer digital-imaging technologies, he did express clear concern about the unforeseen impact of such technologies during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on May 7. "People are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise, when they had not even arrived in the Pentagon," Rumsfeld said. According to [DoD spokesperson Lt. Col. Ken] McClellan, some Defense Department lawyers may be reviewing how the spread of consumer digital-imaging technology among military contractors and enlisted personnel affects the military's obligation to abide by a Geneva Convention article against holding prisoners up to public ridicule. "Lawyers may have looked at that and said, 'It's probably a good idea to get these things out of the prisons.' There's no Pentagon-induced rule in the theater at this time ... but there may or may not be some discussion taking place as to how the [Pentagon's April 14 directive on commercial wireless technology] might be supplemented in Iraq to prevent things we saw at Abu Ghraib."
