More restrictions: Military puts Myspace, Youtube, other sites off-limits

[milesce]

Just a couple of weeks ago we had the discussion about restricting blogging within the Army. This article just came to my attention, ironically sent to me on myspace by a friend in Iraq.

Quote:

DENVER, Colorado (AP) -- Soldiers serving overseas will lose some of their online links to friends and loved ones back home under a Department of Defense policy that a high-ranking Army official said would take effect Monday.

The Defense Department will begin blocking access "worldwide" to YouTube, MySpace and 11 other popular Web sites on its computers and networks, according to a memo sent Friday by Gen. B.B. Bell, the U.S. Forces Korea commander.

The policy is being implemented to protect information and reduce drag on the department's networks, according to Bell.




http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/05/14/military.sites.blocked.ap/index.html

I wonder where this fits in the information operations vs. opsec discussion. A quick glance at the US Army group on myspace shows more than 28,000 members.

[MTanji]

No doubt there is an OPSEC angle here, but as one who advocated as forcefully as possible for a comms pipe to both forward areas for an actual mission-related activity I can tell you that while the rest of the world is in the info age, the deployed military is not.

In the battle between bandwidth for "the job" and bandwidth to watch AFA cadets make fools of themselves in their dorm room, I'm siding with those who opt for the former.

The "official" military move into YouTube, MySpace, etc. does seem to complicate things a bit, though I'm sure someone is using Smith-Mundt Act language to help justify the thing.

[milesce]

...I can tell you that while the rest of the world is in the info age, the deployed military is not.

Makes sense. I did some IT consulting for State Department about ten years ago, and it seemed like all of the technology was ancient. Bandwidth was a particular problem, and we weren't dealing with the mobility issues the military has to consider.

[Uboat509]

To my knowledge YouTube has been blocked for some time now for the simple fact that downloading video eats bandwidth. Fair enough. I don't get the Myspace thing though.

On another note, I remember B.B. Bell from EUCOM. He was the EUCOM commander who lowered everyone's COLA right before he left. A lot of married people lost a lot of money out of their paychecks. He was also the reason why my battalion never deployed to war. We got plenty of time wasting taxpayer money in Africa but no combat tours.

SFC W

[VinceC]

On another note, I remember B.B. Bell from EUCOM. He was the EUCOM commander who lowered everyone's COLA right before he left.

I'm pretty sure Bell was with USAREUR, not EUCOM. I'm also not sure he would have had much to do with the COLA drop. That's handled by the boffins in Washington.

Back on topic, the explosion of YouTube's popularity has been pretty quick over the past year. It's gotta be hogging bandwidth. On the other hand, it's a careful balance ... troops today are so much more connected to world.

I can remember going to the bank in Germany in the early 1980s to get a tall stack of 5-DMark coins, then waiting in line for the barracks pay phone to call home at something like $3 a minute. You made plans for a 20-minute phone call the same way you made plans for a nice weekend out. Then there's the not-so-noble story of the Public Affairs officer who chased infantry troops out of the Dhahran International Hotel, where they had trucked in to use pay phones at a couple dollars a minute. The press officer said they were dirty and didn't project the right image of the American Soldier and told them never to come back.

[120mm]

The question I have, is where are the Army's priorities? There may be not enough bandwidth to "surf the web", but I bet there is plenty of salad dressing as well as iceberg lettuce at the dining facilities across Iraq. For all the unnecessary crap the Army resources, why not a functional internet?

And I would rather supply a "real" internet pipeline to deployed troops than worry about some of the crap that the Army thinks is important to get to them.

Back in 2003, I remarked to a co-worker that it was time to give adequate planning and resources to an internet connection that works. Especially since the .mil stuff is getting bigger and bigger in size.

In my current work, I am technically forbidden from downloading YouTube, though I find some of my best stuff, there. Theoretically, DCSINT is supposed to decide what I want/need and download it for me, but we all know how centrally controlled anything works.

[jonSlack]

To my knowledge YouTube has been blocked for some time now for the simple fact that downloading video eats bandwidth. Fair enough. I don't get the Myspace thing though.

Because alot of mySpace profiles are heavy with bandwith eating graphics, audio files, and video clips.


The question I have, is where are the Army's priorities? There may be not enough bandwidth to "surf the web", but I bet there is plenty of salad dressing as well as iceberg lettuce at the dining facilities across Iraq. For all the unnecessary crap the Army resources, why not a functional internet?

The ban covers 13 sites: YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos and FileCabi, MySpace, BlackPlanet, Hi5, Pandora, MTV, 1.fm, live365, and Photobucket.

I can see S-2s and PAOs wanting access to some of those sites, like youTube or Photobucket, for professional reasons, but not everyone. Who needs StupidVideos or MTV.com in order to do their job while deployed?

While I think the restrictions on blogs, and almost every other form of electronic communication known to man, the Army is/was pitching are/were a bad idea, the ban on these sites makes sense. Besides, all it says is you cannot get to sites on the government network. It does not say anything about them being blocked at MWRs or other places where access to the internet is offered over a non-government connection.

Honestly, at the end of the day, if I want to get a clip or a set of pictures uploaded on youTube or PhotoBucket and I cannot do it from my location downrange, I will burn it to a CD or a DVD, mail it home, and have my family or one of my friends upload it.

[VinceC]

It occurs to me that banning specific sites will leave you playing catch-up as the popularity of sites rises and falls. Can't use Photobucket? Then maybe you'll switch to Flickr. No YouTube? Then use Yahoo Video or something similar.

[Jimbo]

Internet works one of two ways in Iraq. It is either provided by the military (crappy bandwidth, etc.), or you try and purchase a satellite system locally (with spotty bandwidth and other issues). It was a pain in the butt to link to forum type sites and graphics intensive sites. Now, the military stuff (i.e. in your place of duty) is better, but not great. Bandwidth is a big issue, especially since that is how cost is determined.

[jonSlack]

It occurs to me that banning specific sites will leave you playing catch-up as the popularity of sites rises and falls. Can't use Photobucket? Then maybe you'll switch to Flickr. No YouTube? Then use Yahoo Video or something similar.

Network operations sections have the ability to exercise initative and discretion in banning sites on the networks they run. A good section of system admins will be analyzing their logs for the sites chewing up the most bandwith and will block access if there is not an professional need for the majority of personnel to access those sites. For example, mySpace has been banned over here on the government network for months already.

[BobKing]

I surely hope that the DoD is taken to task and forced to reverse themselves on this decision.

First, it's just not possible or feasible to control information and access like this anymore.

YouTube blocked? Simply go to a site like http://youtubeproxy.org and put in the URL of the video you want. If they block that site, use one of the other 5000+ proxy servers available from www.proxy.org.

It's not that hard to figure out and what truly frightens me is that the people IN CHARGE of our networks do not understand how easy it is to bypass their restrictions.

Second, to our current generation of soldiers this is akin to banning letter writing. It is THE WAY they communicate and it's not fair to them, or their family members, to remove access to these sites.

There are articles coming out today stating that executives at the various blocked sites were never contacted by the DoD regarding this action. Perhaps they could have been consulted to come up with mechanisms to limit the bandwidth usage?

For example: All of the access coming from Iraq and Afghanistan will be associated with a distinct range of IP addresses. On the server side (at YouTube, MySpace, etc) they could examine the IP address of the requesting client and offer a lower bandwidth alternative. This is NOT hard to do. Furthermore, if the choice were to have their site entirely blocked or to provice limited access, the content providers would most likely cooperate to make it work.

There are other, more serious, implications to these bans. For instance, the 2008 Presidential season is heating up and many of the candidates have an online presence. As YouTube is now the de facto standard for video sharing, the candidates are posting videos there and linking to them from their campaign sites. The current decision is now restricting the ability for tens of thousands of deployed soldiers, airmen, marines and DoD civilians to remain engaged and informed on the political debate.

Some DoD installations have also blocked eBay. However, there are other, less well known, auction sites that are not blocked. I'm not a lawyer, but it seems that eBay would have a good case against the government for prejudicial treatment. Many of the other sites could have as well. Live365.com (a streaming audio site) is blocked but dozens of other streaming audio sites are not. Could the owners of Live365.com not have a case that the capricious blocking of their site adversely affects their business?

[Jimbo]

Bob,

You are kind of barking up the wrong tree. Many sites that are banned by the government are banned for either content (porn, etc.) or "productivity" issues (people used to spend their day doing e-bay business instead of their job). The USG and in particular the DoD has had written policies in plavce for a while of what you can and can't do on a government provide LAN internet access. So yes they can do this. The Army is palcing regultions now, in order to add some teeth. In theater, bandwidth is a huge issue, especially given how bandwidth intensive many DoD products are. This has nothing to do with allocating resources, it has everything to do with satellite availability, which is awhat the DoD utilizes over there. It ain't cheap.

[BobKing]

Jimbo - I understand perfectly the productivity issues.

My point has always been that one should punish the behavior and not ban the tool.

Person A: Uses eBay all day while at work in pursuit of his home-based business.

Person B: Uses Excel all day while at work to write up a business plan for his home-based business.

Person C: Reads comic books all day while at work. (Note, did not require the use of any IT resources whatsoever)

In all three situations the employee is doing something other than their primary job function. Where's the supervisory element? Where are the measures of performance for what the employee SHOULD be doing?

On the other hand, perhaps Person C is very efficient and completed all of his tasks well ahead of schedule. Ideally he approaches his supervisor and seeks out more duties, but what if he's in a situation where there's zero-reward for getting things done faster?

I'm just disillusioned about how we continue to treat new-media and IT tools differently than the other tools in our life.

Most organizations allow people to make personal phone calls on a limited basis to take care of necessities: banking, making appointments, following up on car care, etc.

But, instead of a 5-10 minute phone call, someone wants to check a bid on an eBay auction that's about to close and that's forbidden behavior?

Maybe it's because I've grown up thinking of computers not as something different, but just as another available tool, that it peeves me to see all of these additional restrictions and rules on their use.

[Jimbo]

Case B- Against regulations as well.

Case C- You go onto task number 2, 3, or whatever the 1SG/CO come up with.

[goesh]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18672314/

A former gunner, Colby Buzzell, has just written a book, "My War: Killing Time In Iraq" and got himself the 10K Blooker Prize and publication, pretty much a transcription from his blog, which the Army had shut down after about 8 weeks or so. My hunch is the book is a blow-'em-away take on the war.

[milesce]

This one I've read -- it's quite good. Buzzell has a pretty cyncical take on the Army, and on life in general. I gave it to my nephew when he was considering enlisting in the Marine Corps (he leaves for boot camp in June).

[dusty]

My hunch is the book is a blow-'em-away take on the war.


Anything endorsed by Huffington is definitely suspect in my eyes.

[El Machetazo]

I think everyone can agree that service personnel should not be using myspace at work. This holds true in CONUS as well as in Iraq. The real problem I see, however, is banning myspace in the internet cafes in the FOBs. I don't think we should be limiting the way that service personnel contact their families on their down time. It may take up some bandwidth, but it can't be more than webcams and internet chat sites do.

[selil]

I think everyone can agree that service personnel should not be using myspace at work.

I don't agree.

The ability to collaborate, exchange ideas, increase intelligence, and amass information should not relegate service members to also ran status in the digital millennium. Agree, disagree, or pout the fact remains the genie is out of the bottle and maintaining draconian rules of conduct that associates digital or computer aided communication with sin is about as silly an idea I've heard.

You would have the members of the military drug back to the card indexes, and papyrus paper? Perhaps slate and chalk is far enough back? While the rest of the world mentally, cognitively, and associatively leaps ahead in mental acuity using modern tools. Are there abuses to be found to the very nature of humanity? Absolutely. Not much worse than I've seen at a Military e-club. Punish poor behavior, and support technology adoption and utilization.

Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIN, and a large group of advancing collaboration and social engines are changing the features of the thinking world. To pop on SWC and say that "well we all agree" is to challenge the veracity and utility of SWC. Dangling the red herring of MySpace in the face of those who might not understand it is abysmal. The fact is SWC is just a much more targeted and moderated face of the same coin that struck MySpace. In the rigid thinking of the incremental legislative and regimented regulation minded the answer is "No, I don't agree and neither should you".

[Culpeper]

Like I mentioned on the other thread. Corporate America as well as federal and state governments are already blocking these types of sites in the work place. I understand that being overseas in a battle zone should be an exception but there is more going on with these types of sites than just loved ones and friends maintaining contact with each other. Also, I doubt a majority of the abusers of these types of resources are stationed on firebases, outposts, and so forth. For example, I was keeping up with this one particular individual on YouTube. This person was in Japan. He would continually posts video of U.S. Forces being hit by IEDs and snipers filmed by insurgents, terrorists, and so forth. This individual was eventually kicked off of YouTube only after he made the mistake of posting a copyright video of a well known retired FBI agent demonstrating how to properly shoot an M40. I saw to that but up until then nothing was done about this individual and he is probably back on under a different name. I also doubt that the reasoning is to block a military person from having contact with his or her family and so forth. There are still other resources for this type of input and output online. There is just a lot of inappropriate crap on these particular types of sites that make it an issue for the work place and now the military. It really sucks. But I try to look at both sides of the coin. And I may error on the side of security and the long term safety of those in harm's way where the military is concerned. We all know when we joined the military that the idiot in the rear with the gear gets to sit back and create the suck for the people up front and center. When I look at something like this I think of the people that are doing the most primitive of the fighting. Not some lump of #### sitting in an aircraft carrier's head or frying omelets in a nice quite chow hall for desk officers. There should be an exception to the rule but everybody has to treated the same these days. Someone might get their feelings hurt.

[marct]

Hi Culpeper,


Like I mentioned on the other thread. Corporate America as well as federal and state governments are already blocking these types of sites in the work place.

You know, this is a pretty basic philosophical issue, and it really comes down to the question of where does responsibility for individual action lie. Personally, I tend to agree more with Selil on this particular one, and my reasoning runs like this.

Assumptions:

Assumption 1. Organizations (actually institutions; organizations are particular instantiations of institutions), in and of themselves, are socio-cultural constructs that have no independent existence outside of the minds of those with whom they interact.

Assumption 2. Humans use organizations as a way to fulfill basic needs (we are pack animals).

Assumption 3. The goal of organizing is to meet these basic needs, and the rules of organizations should be adapted to their operational environment, including that produced by other organizations.

Assumption 4. Organizations operate using one of five basic forms (Weberian "ideal types") of social relationship: Equality Matching (aka "reciprocity"), Authority Ranking (mutual ties of obligations up and down a status ladder), Communal Sharing, Market Exchange or No Relationship (the null set).

Assumption 5. The "best" way (i.e. form of social relationship) to meet a given need in a given environment changes depending on the need and the environment.

Corollary: "Adaptability", for an organization, is the ability of that organization to shift within and between forms of social relationship.
Observations:

Observation 1. "Our" society, i.e. North American and the Western World, has, in general, shifted from a general social form of Authority Ranking to one of Equality Matching, at least in the non-governmental sectors of our lives. As an example, consider the shift in both job search tactics and the concepts of "career" in the private sector. This shift started, at least in North America, in 1968 (disgustingly long Ph.D. dissertation on this available on request :D).

Observation 2. Organizations which use an Authority Ranking relationship require trust that those "in authority" actually do have a better knowledge of the environment of the organization. Organizations that use an Equality Matching relationship require a) trust that all members of the relationship will "keep their word" when they commit it and b) that the collective "knowledge" of the environment is greater than the individual "knowledge" of the environment, even if individuals,regardless of the "position", do not.

Corollary 1: "Responsibility" in Authority Ranking organizations is vested in the organization and the offices that derive from that organization. Ideally, individuals cannot be held responsible for events that are "beyond their pay grade". In an Equality Matching organization, "responsibility" is vested in the individual, not the organization. Ideally, individuals are always held responsible for their decisions, but this responsibility is mitigated by the others in their network.

Corollary 2: Authority Ranking organizations lay out specific, and different, rights, responsibilities and access to resources based on the "rank" of each member of the organization. Changes in rights, responsibilities and access to resources may be "decreed" by the organization. Equality Matching organizations lay out specific, and different, rights, responsibilities and access to resources based on the "ability" and "network position" of each member of the organization. Changes in rights, responsibilities and access to resources must be "negotiated" by individuals within the organization.Observation 3. Our development of Computer Mediated Communications (CMC) has followed (not led) this general trend: MySpace, Facebook, SWC/SWJ, etc. are all examples of this.

Observation 4. People who have grown up in this new social contract "know" (gnosis or "knowledge from lived experience") that this is "right", and react poorly to "morality" imposed from a different form of social relationship.

Arguments:

Argument 1. Censorship, at the organizational level, is based on a morality inherent in an Authority Ranking social relationship, not an Equality Matching one.

Argument 2. Attempting to impose the morality of one form of social relationship onto people who are operating with another form of social relationship is ridiculous and, inevitably, will fail. The end point of such an attempt is resistance against the organization attempting to do the imposition ("and all Iraqis really want Democracy!!!!").

Corollary Argument 1: the imposition of situationally inappropriate morality will reduce trust in the imposing organizational form.

Corollary Argument 2: the argument that "all organizations" do X is invalid. It is an attempt to project a particular value into a universal value.
Conclusions:

Conclusion 1: Morality must be appropriate to the social form that members of the organization perceive holds in a particular area. Since CMC is an area which is dominated by Equality Matching, an appropriate form of morality should be applied, and this is one of individual responsibility for actions within a network, no one of censorship.

Expansion: Please note that the concept of "operational security" is generally accepted and operate on an Authority Ranking model - in this instance, OPSEC is governed by a different morality and censorship is appropriate.
Conclusion 2: Attempts by the US Military to impose censorship "randomly" will lead to a decrease in trust of the US military (as an organization) as "knowing what it is doing".

Expansion: This decrease in trust will affect all areas that operate under an Authority Ranking form of social relationship. This will lead to a growing "disillusionment" with the AR component of the US Military, and act as a goad for people to leave and/or "work around" (if they stay) the AR system.

Case Observation: Consider the discussions on the Contrary Peter Principle (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/07/contrary-peter-principle/) and the Officer Critical Skills Retention Bonus (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/07/the-officer-critical-skills-re-1/) as examples.
**********

Hmmm, I hadn't intended to run on this long :D.

Marc

[selil]

marct keep going. throw in a few more citations and we've got a good journal paper.

[marct]

marct keep going. throw in a few more citations and we've got a good journal paper.

LOLOL - I may just do that :D.

[Culpeper]

marct

You brought up a serious psychological and philosophical approach to the problem. Basically, the overall needs of the organization comes before individual responsibilities. There is always a few bad apples that make it hard on everyone else. This is normal rather than abnormal. But organizations, like corporations and the military, actually own the resources that are being used. Not the individual. The organization set the policies on how their resources are to be used and what could be expected if these policies are violated.

[zenpundit]

I posted this on the Blog Watch section but it has some relevance to the DoD and "New media":

"Blogs and Military Information Strategy (http://swedemeat.blogspot.com/2007/07/blogs-and-military-information-strategy.html)"

[selil]

LOLOL - I may just do that :D.

I call second author.

[marct]

Hi Culpeper,


You brought up a serious psychological and philosophical approach to the problem.

Thanks; I'm trying to get the discussion out of the absolutist terms it is so frequently cast in :D. BTW, the social relations models (http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/fiske/relmodov.htm) I'm using come from Anthropology, not psychology, but they do draw on psych. What I found interesting about them was their universality - at least in all of the cultures we have looked at.


Basically, the overall needs of the organization comes before individual responsibilities.

I would have to say "sometimes". Organizations are socio-cultural constructs designed to meet specific needs and, if they don't meet those needs, they go by the wayside. Personally, while I know that it is a useful and adaptive convention, I have always been bothered by treating organizations as if they were "real"; they aren't, they are only something we build to meet a need. This is the problem with the human impulse to "reify" some concept (i.e. treat it as if it where a thing that could be perceived by the senses).

Organizations, as formalized nets of social relationships, also have responsibilities to their members - "stakeholders" is the usual term for these people. How the organization is set up also controls the way in which it operates. Let me toss out an example: COIN operates on an equality matching social relationship, while the "traditional" military Ii.e. industrial age model of formalized warfare) operates on an Authority Ranking model: pyramid vs. network if you want a visual image. Now, given that the charter of the military is to carry out missions in the national interest (as defined by politicians), what happens when someone succeeds using the "wrong" tactics?

This is where individual responsibility enters into it: there's a thread on the board dealing with the being vs doing paradox that captures this quite well. Since organizations do not, in actual fact, exist, then the "needs of the organization" is merely a shorthand term that leaves off the all important qualifier: "as decided by a particular person holding a particular position". It is all about individual responsibiliy - there is no other kind. As a case in point, when was the last time you and the Army headed out for a couple of beers :D?


There is always a few bad apples that make it hard on everyone else. This is normal rather than abnormal.

Agreed. And, according to the morality of an Authority Ranking system, then the system must be tightened to avoid that possibility. However, in an Equality Matching system, then you turn the individual bad apples into apple sauce and let the rest of the people get on with their work. Again, it comes down to individual responsibility vs. abnegation of individuality. It might be useful to think about the concept of an "illegal order" here.


But organizations, like corporations and the military, actually own the resources that are being used. Not the individual.

Well, I'm not going to keep harping on the "organizations don't exist" line :D. Let me just say that, given this line of argument (which is actually a Market Exchange argument), then it would be perfectly valid for any soldier to bring over their own laptop and post from an internet cafe anything they wanted. In this type of social form, I could also note that soldiers could turn around and point out that their contracts with the military do not call for them to die, therefore their families have the right to sue the military for a breach of contract. Finally, I could also point out that the contract specified that soldiers would originally have contact with their families and that this is a unilateral rewriting of the contract - clearly it's time to start a union :eek:!


The organization set the policies on how their resources are to be used and what could be expected if these policies are violated.

And has consistently changed that contract on an "as felt" basis; which is a breach of contract. Believe me, you don't want to see the military based solely on a Market Exchange model!


I call second author.

Okay, you're on

Marc

[Culpeper]

marct:

So, in a nutshell, "Its an Army of One"?:wry:

[Tom Odom]

marct:

So, in a nutshell, "Its an Army of One"?:wry:


uhhh, yeah but it STRONG! :D

[marct]

Hi Culpeper,


So, in a nutshell, "Its an Army of One"?:wry:

LOLOL. Thanks for making my day start off well :D. Actually, it's the first nice day we've had up here in about a week or so.

If you get right down to the root of it, it is always an army of one; at least in the sense that all individuals must "buy in" to the organization and the social forms that operate in it. The reality, of course, is a lot more complex :wry:.

Fiske's research (he's the Anthropologist who developed the model I'm using) shows that people shift back and forth between relational models quite often; sometimes in the same sentence! He actually argues that models can be used as a way of defining a culture - at least in the sense of what is "right and proper" - and I think he is on to something. My own twist on his work is to tie his models into how organizations and communities "act" (i.e. situational construction of "right and proper"), and to tie that into evolutionary psychology and theory.

Let me go back to one of the assumptions I noted in that first post.


Assumption 5. The "best" way (i.e. form of social relationship) to meet a given need in a given environment changes depending on the need and the environment.

Corollary: "Adaptability", for an organization, is the ability of that organization to shift within and between forms of social relationship.If we look at the Army as an organization (it's really hundreds if not thousands of organizations linked together, so this is almost a "national culture" level of analysis), and look at the two main environments it operates in, one bureaucratic / political and one "operational" we can make some very interesting observations.

Let's start with the operational.

One of the things that everyone seems to be talking about is how the Army concentrated on training for "traditional" or "conventional" warfare (I prefer "conventional" myself, since the convention was state to state). For this type of warfare, an Authority Ranking system is perfect, given the actual environment (i.e. technology, social conventions of conflict, etc.). The organizational thrust (the neo-institutionalists call it an "isomorphic vector") has been to develop integrated systems that allow for maximum flexibility, control and firepower.

All of that relies on maximizing predictability in the application of force, whether it is by human or machine agency. The environmental assumptions, i.e. state to state "conventional" warfare, really are not examined - they are axiomatic, assumed, and part of the basic perceptual reality. There really is a good reason for this: in a state vs. state "conventional" conflict this is what works best (again, given the technological and social environments).

So, as long as the operational environment is skewed towards this type of conflict, this is the best type of social relationship for it. But what happens when the operational environment, or part of it, changes? Let's play this out a little more fully. First, if we look at Iraq, there was an ops plan that fit with this form of social relationship - GEN Zinni's comments about "ad hoc" organization for post war stabilization - and that is basically an occupation along the lines of the Marshal plan. Second, this type of a plan was vetoed by Rumsfeld et al. for political reasons; in other words, the political environment forced the Army to shift from an operational environment that would have worked within an Authority Ranking system to one that cannot work in such a system. So, as a result of social / political decisions in the US (and the CPA), the entire operational environment changes to a situation where an insurgency is inevitable.

So, now we have an insurgency and, after several years, the Army, as an organization, goes "Oh, my!", dusts off the COIN material and says to the troops "Now you have to be flexible". BTW, this is a gross generalization which completely ignores the excellent work done by then MajGens Mattis and Petraeus. In fact, their style of operations led the way in developing the push for COIN - still within an overall Authrority Ranking structure, but much more emphasis on Equality Matching. Think about Gen Mattis' popularization of Sulla's epithet - "No better friend, no worse enemy" - that could be the motto for Equality Matching (for a full discussion of how that type of system operates, see Marshal Sahlins' work Stone Age Economics (http://www.amazon.com/Stone-Age-Economics-Marshall-Sahlins/dp/0202010996/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-7529850-2413521?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1185714683&sr=8-1)).

As we all know, COIN requires lots of initiative, flexibility and adaptability from very junior members of the forces. Still, it is also the best way to survive in that type of an operational environment even though it inverts some of the power relationships from the "normal" Authority Ranking system. So we now have a very interesting situation in the organizational culture. The "formal" culture is based on an Authority Ranking system - for good reasons, don't get me wrong on that ;). However, the formal culture has also "formally" admitted that "non-formal" methods (i.e. COIN) must be used in a number of situations, and these situations are life threatening. The people who have been deployed and "get it" will, inevitably, react by adopting some of the basic assumptions of an Equality Matching system, especially since those assumptions happen to dominate civilian life in the private sector of the US.

Part of the "organizational culture shift" involved is a re-examination of doctrine and a re-writing, sometimes on the fly, of "the Book" - and this has been encouraged for the past couple of years via such online communities as the SWC and the various "in house" communities. In effect, the "formal" organization of the military has said "reach out to your network to get answers; eventually we will codify them for you but, until then, use your network".

Now, this push towards network building and other forms of Equality Matching is based on survival in a changed environmental condition. Actions that are contra-survival, especially in an immediate "hot zone", are still frowned on (to put it mildly!). In Equality Matching systems, the worst "sin" you can commit is to betray your network in word or deed. Your "social capital", to use a currently popular phrase, is your reputation (note, not your rank or office).

This is why certain actions are more "unforgivable" in an Equality Matching (EM) system than in an Authority Ranking (AR) system - breaking OPSEC is one (it endangers and is a betrayal of your network); breaking the honour code is another (again, a betrayal of the network and the reputations of everyone in it); and blindly following the "rules" is another (it endangers the entire network). On the flip side, EM systems encourage actions that are "unforgivable" in AR systems: challenging "authority" and "received truth" (Weber's Bureaucratic and Traditional authority) when it does not act the way it "should" (i.e. when it doesn't work); accepting responsibility for fulfilling your word (i.e. doing the "right" thing to get the job done) rather than just following orders (i.e. doing what the "authority" says is "right"); and modifying and adapting to the immediate operational environment. The corollary of this shift is that, for people operating primarily in an EM system, individuals are responsible for their actions.

So, in a round about way, we get back to the start of this entire thing - network access. The military has formally admitted that it is, in some cases, "good" and "useful". The question is who decides what is "good and useful": the military as an organization or the individual within the military?

I think that it is quite understandable that people who "get it" will use whatever network they can to get the resources they need to do the job at hand. The vast majority will use their network contacts in a "moral" manner (i.e. according to the morality of the EM system): they won't break OPSEC, they won't dishonour their network, and they won't break their word. For these people, anyone who does operate "immorally" - the bad apples as it were - deserves what they get.

On the flip side, we have people who "don't get it". These could be the "bad apples" who need to be turned into apple sauce, or they could be the people who just believe that they (or the "organization") know best. This latter type, the "naturally occurring bureaucrat", believes that if anyone makes a mistake, everyone pays for it. They will sit in their air conditioned offices and think up new regulations that will allow them to show how any action committed by someone in the field that might possibly make them (the person in the office) appear to have been lax was, in actual fact, against regulations. I believe that the old term for this type of person is REMF.

Culpeper, I am certainly not arguing that anyone in the military should be able to access any site or post anything they want to. What I am doing is arguing that unnecessary restrictions that make it harder to get the job done should not be implemented, and that individuals who "stray" should be punished as individual. Banning all access based on the actions of a few is analogically the same as decimating (in the old Roman sense) a unit that does not achieve an objective they are ordered to.

Marc