Soldiers in the U.S. Army are being blocked from reading stories published by The Guardian about classified National Security Agency (NSA) programs.

It was first reported that computers at the Presidio of Monterey, California, were being filtered to deny anyone from viewing the British newspaper’s accounts of Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked details of the agency’s domestic snooping operations.

The Army then informed the Monterey County Herald that the ban was service-wide.

Gordon Van Vleet, a spokesman for the Army Network Enterprise Technology Command, told the newspaper that it was routine for the Department of Defense to take preventative “network hygiene” measures to mitigate unauthorized disclosures of classified information.

Soldiers can access the U.S. site for The Guardian, but have been blocked from seeing NSA articles on the British newspaper’s site, which includes copies of classified documents about the agency’s surveillance and data gathering programs.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

To Learn More:

Restricted Web Access to The Guardian is Armywide, Officials Say (by Phillip Molnar, Monterey County Herald)

The Guardian News Website Blocked at Presidio of Monterey (by Phillip Molnar, Monterey County Herald)