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.

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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.

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.

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Originally Posted by MTanji

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

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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.

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

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

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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.

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.

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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.

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

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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?

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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.

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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?

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.

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.

Case B- Against regulations as well.

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

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.

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).

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Originally Posted by goesh

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

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Anything endorsed by Huffington is definitely suspect in my eyes.

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.

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Originally Posted by El Machetazo

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

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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".

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.