A soldier serving in the IDF’s elite 8200 military intelligence unit was sentenced to 19 days in prison on Wednesday for uploading a picture onto the Facebook social networking site.

The IDF would not comment on the exact nature of the photograph, but said the punishment was in proportion to the committed offense. Military sources said an IDF directive prohibits photography on bases without official approval.

The sources said the soldier in question would be punished for taking pictures on a military base without permission . . .

Last week, The Jerusalem Post publicized the fact that a special unit inside the IDF was working to remove hundreds of classified photos, documents and messages available on Facebook and that the Defense Ministry and the IDF, had issued a stern warning to anyone caught uploading this type of content onto the Internet.

The Post probe revealed that soldiers had posted pictures of advanced weapons training, interiors and exteriors of bases - including the equipment inside them - and troop exercises and locations onto Facebook.

The Defense Ministry said that anyone caught posting classified material onto the Internet would be court-martialed. The ministry said it had no information indicating that foreign intelligence services and terrorist groups were making use of the plethora of photographs and information on Facebook to gather intelligence on the IDF, but sources within the IDF confirmed that the army was racing against time to track down and remove classified information from the popular site

That means that if a comment is left on a site of this size on a comment field or in forum, a person who disliked that comment could sue the site for libel. To understand the import of this, it’s important to note that in Israel every major newspaper site, and most others, have functioning, open commenting enabled and those comments are often both anonymous and strongly-worded.

Lisa Goldman, an Israeli journalist and popular blogger wrote us about the bill:

I talked to Gal Mor and Jonathan Klinger a few days ago. They’re both well-informed and politically active, and they both think the law has a good chance of being passed because it was the initiative of a government minister, rather than an ordinary Member of Knesset.

Yisrael Hasson, the minister who submitted the bill, is a member of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party. However, this bill is still a *long* way from becoming law. It’ll have to go through three committee readings, then three readings on the Knesset floor.

My impression - and Gal agrees with me - is that Hasson is a dinosaur who simply does not understand the internet. None of the Israeli news sites can afford to hire full time staff to moderate the comments which sometimes come in at the rate of up to 150,000 per hour. Most of the comments are anonymous, and a high percentage are abusive. The wording of the bill highlights his ignorance of the internet: it refers, for example, to sites that receive a minimum of 50,000 hits per day - but it doesn’t specify page visits or unique hits.

As one commenter on Jonathan Klinger’s site put it: if Hasson wants to stop commenters from posting death threats, I can understand him; but if he wants to stop them from leaving comments along the lines of “Yisrael Hasson is a fascist and I hate him,” then we have a problem with an MK who does not understand democracy.

According to GV, the bill has already passed its “first reading.” Two more and it will become law. Should that happen, Israel’s vital online conversation will be muted and, distressingly, it will join Lebanon, Bahrain, Kuwait and Syria in prosecuting not bloggers but people who comment on blogs for illegal speech.

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Update: Lisa finally made a statement on her blog, On the Face. She has written for a piece about this situation in Ha’aretz soon.

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Update: Lisa told CPB that she has been inundated with bloggers’ expressions of support and questions, both from bloggers and traditional journalists. She said she’d be posting something today on her blog, On the Face.

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Lisa Goldman, a journalist who blogs at On the Face, was recently interrogated by Israeli police for “unauthorized travel to an enemy state,” according to Ha’aretz (via Israellycool).

Goldman, who traveled to Lebanon this summer for Israeli Channel 10 news, has been interrogated along with two other journalists.

Much more shocking than the charge (odd indeed, at least to a non-Israeli) is the type of support she is receiving from the Israel Press Council: none.

(From Ha’aretz)

Dalia Dorner, president of the Israel Press Council, said that “one of our missions is to preserve the freedom of the press - that is fundamental. The catch is that if a journalist commits a deed that is considered a legal offense, then of course we cannot get involved.”

Goldman was surprised at the suddenly-public nature of the charges.

Lisa Goldman confirmed to Haaretz on Thursday that she had been interrogated a month ago, but expressed great surprise that details of the investigation had emerged, given that the police had told her not to discuss it.

“I have no idea who leaked this story,” she said. “I was completely flabbergasted when an Israeli reporter telephoned me today to inform me that the investigation had been announced on the radio. I have no idea who leaked it and very surprised that it’s now been released. The police told me not to discuss the interrogation and I didn’t. Therefore I am very surprised that the matter is now being exposed in the media.”

Goldman said that she had been unaware that she had broken any laws, adding that, “if I had known there was no way I would have gone.”

She told Haaretz that she had received congratulatory calls from “very senior members of the Prime Minister’s Office” after her report from Lebanon had been broadcast on Channel 10 television, and it seems that they “were not aware of the law either.”

Goldman said that she had been surprised by the fact that police were investigating the issue at all, given that a significant number of Israeli journalists had traveled to Arab states in recent years.

“I’m very surprised that the police have now opened an investigation against three Israeli reporters when there must be at least 10 who traveled to Arab countries using foreign passports over the last couple of years alone, and there are certainly many, many precedents over the last decade.”

The anonymous blogger made accusations of impropriety against members of a city council in the town of Shaarei Tikva, who were running for re-election.

The settlement stipulates that 72 hours before a hearing on the case at the Rishon LeZion Magistrates Court, the council members would leave the blogger a message on his blog summoning him to the hearing, or else his IP address would be handed over. The notice would invite the blogger to disclose his identity, participate in the hearing, or oppose the disclosure of his identity by filing a motion as “anonymous”.

On the TechCrunch post, an anonymous Google source maintains the company did nothing wrong. It insisted that Google opposed the injunction and was subsequently court-ordered to provide the information.

In your comment to M Freitas you say “I’d note that Google voluntarily handed these details over, if the court had ordered them to do so, so be it but if they are serious about privacy they would have pushed it to that level, not just caved in at the first opportunity”. As you can see from the details above Google did oppose the injunction in court, we did not just cave in at the first opportunity and we did argue that the blogger in question should have the chance to make their case. But having considered all sides of the argument the judge ordered that the IP address be handed over.

In comments, TechCrunch owner Michael Arrington says Globe Online is printing a retraction.