More restrictions: Military puts Myspace, Youtube, other sites off-limits
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/interne....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.
More Bandwidth, INFOSEC than OPSEC
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.
DoD Failing to Embrace New Media
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?
Again, I don't disagree with this
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.