WASHINGTON– The U.S. Navy is taking a major step to restrict press access to information about service members by no longer publishing information about any sailor’s service history, information the service has provided for free for decades.

The move, which officials say is being driven by heightened security threats and harassment concerns, comes amid a series of other restrictions on press access pushed largely by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The restrictions, which include a policy that journalists must be accompanied by an official escort on Pentagon grounds, come amid growing tension between President Donald Trump and media outlets whose content or reporting practices anger him.

Last Thursday, the Navy’s top spokesman, Rear Admiral John Robinson, released a policy requiring the maritime service to remove all public information about its commanding officers. Capt. Candice Thresh, spokeswoman for the Chief of Naval Personnel, said the office had decided to expand the policy to deny access to service information for any sailor, in the interest of equality.

Thresh told The Associated Press that the Navy would still confirm whether someone is a sailor, but only if it deemed the request to be “of high public interest,” and would not offer other details until the undefined threat had passed.

Information about sailors’ service history, such as the units they have been assigned to and the awards they have earned — information the Navy says it will now retain — is critical to providing information and context when service members participate in major news events. It is also information that, under a constellation of federal laws and Pentagon policies, should be available upon request.

The Pentagon’s governing document on its privacy program notes that information such as a service member’s rank, duty assignments, awards, and service status is classified as information “that is normally discloseable” and “may be disclosed without a clearly unwarranted invasion of his or her personal privacy.”

However, Thresh, in an emailed statement, said they will now only release these details if the sailor is “a public figure or there are extenuating circumstances.” These are terms that the Navy can define for itself, and early indications suggest that the maritime service is not willing to use these exemptions.

First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams noted that the Navy’s new policy could make reporting wounded or injured sailors much more challenging. “Such an effort to suppress speech is flatly inconsistent with the First Amendment,” Abrams said.

He said the policy seemed “an obvious effort to limit information, however interesting, that could lead to questions about public policy decisions…there is no reason to think this is anything less than an effort to prevent ‘bad’ press about the administration’s conduct with respect to our service personnel.”

The Navy cited the new policy last week after the AP requested the biography of a pilot from the Blue Angels, the Navy’s demonstration squadron, following a controversial maneuver over a crowded beach. Robinson’s office declined to provide the pilot’s biography even though his name, photograph and other service details were posted on the Blue Angels’ official website. Thresh personally provided a copy of the biography after the AP began asking about the policy.

Robinson’s office did not respond to questions about the Chief of Naval Personnel’s expansion of his policy.

The restrictions are just the latest in a series of measures the military has taken to restrict access to information. Last month, the Army asked Congress for the ability to withhold certain types of unclassified records from the public.

The legislative proposal, first reported by CBS, would create a new section of federal law that would allow the Secretary of Defense to exempt certain “controlled unclassified information,” or CUI, from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

Transparency advocates, and even the Pentagon’s own internal watchdog, have described the term CUI as inconsistently applied and overused. Critics have argued that it is used arbitrarily to prevent embarrassing information from becoming public.

Last year, the Pentagon attempted to impose significant restrictions on journalists working inside the Pentagon, which, in turn, led most media outlets to hand over their access credentials and walk away rather than accept the new rules. The policy is now being litigated in federal court.

This summer, the Pentagon went a step further and declared that its press office was now a classified space inaccessible to journalists.

___

Noveck reported from New York.