The US Air Force has blocked its personnel from accessing Internet websites that publish leaked American diplomatic cables.
An Air Force spokesman said its employees have been denied access to at least 25 sites that include The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, El País and Le Monde. The decision is said to be in accordance with the force’s policy of blocking “inappropriate’' content and applies to work computers only. However, the agency stressed that accessing blocked information elsewhere requires clearance. Earlier, the US Defense Department decided to ban staff from visiting the WikiLeaks webpage or downloading classified documents from the site. British journalist Toni Gosling says these actions are marked with “massive amounts of hypocrisy.” “How can the US criticize China for blocking access to the Internet when it is blocking access for its own citizens, or at least for its military personnel, to sites like WikiLeaks,” Gosling said. “What they are doing here is a kind of blanket form of mass censorship.”