Military

One of the original inspirations for WhenILeave.com

…was a story about a family who couldn’t access the email of a dead marine back in 2004.  The story reads:

Yahoo! continued Wednesday to refuse e-mail access to a Michigan father of a Marine killed in Iraq early last month.

The family of Justin Ellsworth, 20, is trying to gain access to the e-mail before the Yahoo! account is erased at the end of next month due to the company’s policy of deactivating unused accounts after 90 days. Read the rest of this entry »

A workaround to communications restrictions in the military

We don’t know if it changed, but in 2007, “[t]he U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer.”

Obviously, this would be incredibly stupid to prevent someone from being able to tell their loved ones their wishes and hopes especially if they died in the very dangerous military.  Can you imagine a soldier not being able to tell their mother “I love you” one last time before they were shot by accidental enemy fire?  How about not being able to tell your young wife that there was an account that was suppose to be a surprise for her and the daughter that was born just a few weeks ago — and then accidentally dying in a helicopter crash?  Read the rest of this entry »