Washington: The US Air Force has blocked
from its network more than two dozen media websites, including The New York Times, that have posted secret American cables
released unauthorised by whistleblower website WikiLeaks.
Such a decision has been taken to avoid having
"classified incidents on our unclassified systems," US Air
Force spokeswoman Maj Toni Tones told Fox News.
Among other sites that have been blocked include
Germany's Der Spiegel, France's Le Monde, Britain's Guardian
and Spain's El Pais, Tones said.
The process of blocking these websites began in
August, and so far more than two dozen such websites have been
blocked.
"We work diligently to use our resources in the most
effective and efficient manner possible. And blocking access
to the WikiLeaks' material diminishes our need to go through
the labour and resource-intensive process of cleaning
unclassified machines that have been compromised with
classified materials," she told Fox News.
Pentagon spokesman Col Dave Lapan said that so far
this restriction is only on the Air Force network and is not a
Pentagon-system wide restriction.
Bureau Report
First Published: Wednesday, December 15, 2010, 11:52