Army Blocks Time Warner (Updated)

The military often blocks websites for the oddest and most obscure of reasons. But this has to be one of the strangest digital blockades to date. The Army is choking off web and e-mail traffic with all companies who rely on Time Warner's servers for their online presence.

"The Army has not said what prompted the decision, which came out of its Theater Network
Operations and Security Center at Fort Huachuca, Ariz," reports the Watertown Daily Times -- the hometown paper for Ft. Drum, New York -- in a subscription-online story.

The blackout affects anyone whose domain name is managed through Road
Runner's business class domain name server, or DNS, and is not limited to Northern New York, Mr. Unaitis said. Road Runner is Time Warner's
Internet service.

Businesses across the country whose Web sites and e-mail accounts are managed by
Road Runner's commercial DNS cannot exchange mails with Army accounts, and the Army cannot access those businesses' Web sites...

An e-mail to Paul D. Dailey, Fort Drum deputy director of information management, from a colleague at the Installation Management Agency, which oversees all U.S. Army bases worldwide, explained it's "a very high-level block and they won't even say why."

Daily Times reporter Nicolas Zimmerman tells DANGER ROOM that he "first figured this out because our Web site relies on Road Runner's DNS, and I've been getting emails to Army folks bounced for the last week."

When he asked if the paper, which cannot communicate with Fort Drum via e-mail and whose Web site is inaccessible from Fort Drum, could get some kind of waiver, the Army said, literally, "no chance."

UPDATE: WWNY-TV is quoting "a Pentagon source [who] said the Army blocked Time Warner Business Class servers because of a network security breach."

The source said the Army does not blame Time Warner, but must protect the security of its network.

According to Gordon VanVleet, a public affairs officer for Network Enterprise
Technology Command in Arizona, the Army's block is permanent.

That's, at best, a head-scratcher of an explanation. It may even be pure spin. If there's some sort of
temporary security breach, why have all Time Warner sites been *permanently *blocked?