Military Defends MySpace Ban

The Defense Department isn't trying to "muzzle" troops by banning YouTube and MySpace on their networks, a top military information technology officer tells DANGER ROOM.   Rear Admiral Elizabeth Hight, Deputy Commander of Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations, says that the decision to block access to social networking, video-sharing, and other "recreational" sites is purely at attempt to "preserve military bandwidth for operational missions."

Not that the 11 blocked sites are clogging networks all that much today, she adds. But YouTube, MySpace, and the like "could present a potential problem," at some point in the future.  So the military wanted to "get ahead of the problem before it became a problem."

The Admiral won't say, however -- despite repeated questions during a Thursday conference call -- exactly how much bandwidth the sites were absorbing before they were blocked.   She notes only that they were these were the 11 Internet sites taking up the most network traffic on military networks.  And that checking these sites for viruses and malware before they hit Defense Department computers was also a significant concern.  Other sites -- including popular blogging sites, like wordpress and blogspot -- could be blocked in the future, if they appear to present network issues.

The decision to block YouTube and MySpace sparked controversy earlier this week -- especially coming after a new set of Army regulations on operations security, or OPSEC, which put severe restrictions on soldiers' blogging and e-mail.  Top generals have called the now-banned sites a "significant operational security challenge"; there's no telling, after all, what sensitive information troops might disclose in those videos or MySpace blog posts.  But the Admiral claims that "OPSEC played absolutely no part in the decision" to restrict access to the sites.

Troops will still be able to engage in their "recreational hobbies" by going to YouTube and MySpace, she says.  They just can't do it on official Defense Department computers.

Military officials who were using the video and social-networking sites -- Multi-National Force-Iraq has its own YouTube channel, for example -- will be able to request a waiver that allows them to continue to do so.  Individual troops, working on their own to spread the word about operations in Iraq or Afghanistan, say, may not be as lucky. 

When asked whether these Internet-enabled troops are a valuable part of the information war against insurgents and Islamic extremists,  Admiral Hight replies, "That's a great public affairs question.  And I'm not a public affairs officer."