Military web restrictions to continue as House panel passes on amendment

The House Rules Committee passed on an amendment that would have stopped the military from filtering news websites on its bases.

Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., added the change to the Defense Appropriations Bill last week after reading about the Army's restriction of The Guardian news site at the Presidio of Monterey and other installations.

"This was a decision by the Republican leadership, and the Republican leadership alone," Grayson said by email Wednesday. "I think it's unfortunate that the Republican leadership thinks that we need to keep our own soldiers in the dark, and prevent them from reading what every other American can learn about."

The 12-person committee ? eight Republicans and four Democrats ? pushed through five of Grayson's other amendments on Monday, including an anti-torture statute and increased funding for research of Gulf War illness.

An individual vote on amendments was not available because the committee voted on the bulk of additions carte blanche.

The House approved a $598.3 billion appropriations bill Wednesday. The overall bill must still be voted on by the Senate.

Presidio employees were the first to tell The Herald last month that the news website for The Guardian, which recently broke stories on data collection by the National Security Agency, was being restricted.

It later turned out the filtering, which Army officials described as preventive "network hygiene," was Armywide.

In an interview on Monday, the commander of the Presidio of Monterey and its language school addressed the restriction for the first time.

Col. Danial Pick said the decision was made outside of the Presidio, but that "all sorts of businesses manage their networks for their employees, and the Department of Defense is no different."

The NSA debate was front and center in a vote on the appropriations bill on Wednesday as the House narrowly defeated an amendment by Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., to stop the agency's collection of so-called telephone "metadata."

Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, joined many Democrats who voted for the amendment in opposition to the wishes of the Obama administration.

Phillip Molnar can be reached at 646-4487 or pmolnar@montereyherald.com.

Source: http://www.montereyherald.com/localnews/ci_23726480/defense-bill-wont-have-amendment-restricted-web-access?source=rss

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