The State Department wants to make sure its staff can’t use Twitter to actually “twitter.” The department is seeking new rules that prevent employees from constantly chattering online or making any statements of public record without prior approval. Among proposed guidelines is a two-day period to review tweets by its staffers before they’re posted. Blogs and public speeches would require five days. Long-form works such as books would be in the queue for 30 days.

Citing political blog Diplopundit, the Washington Post says the department may be responding to embarrassing revelations in both a book and an ongoing blog by Peter Van Buren, a foreign service officer who helped in the Iraq reconstruction effort. Van Buren is no longer with the agency. The legacy of his truth-seeking could be new rules that might be well meaning but have that undeniable air of scary government overreaction. Among changes would be expanding confidentiality from classified information to what the State Department would define as “protected information.” There’s no word yet on whether the proposed rules are implemented.

Source: Washington Post