[NYTr] Pentagon Blocks Cannon Fodder from YouTube,MySpace Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 14:00:33 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit [Oh, the richness of the irony, since Papa Bush, the dimwit's daddy, was the one who commercialized the Net in the first place. They did nothing about the war-gore-for-porn posts last year by troops who sent in photos of dead Iraqis in exchange for free access to a Florida porn site. But now the net's too hot for them to handle. They've gradually been intimidating soldiers from posting to blogs for months now. (Of course booze is also outlawed in Iraq. Friends and family send it to the troops in Listerine bottles with appropriate dye. Best article on this latest absurdity is the Register's-NY Transfer] AP/CBS News - May 14, 2007 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/14/tech/main2798132.shtml Pentagon Bans YouTube, MySpace DENVER, Colo., May 14, 2007(CBS/AP) The Pentagon has opened up a new line of demarcation in an Information War, and U.S. troops and their families may be caught in the digital crossfire. The Defense Department has announced it will begin blocking access on its computers and networks "worldwide" to YouTube, MySpace and 11 other popular Web sites, according to a memo sent Friday by Gen. B.B. Bell, the U.S. Forces Korea commander. Soldiers serving overseas will therefore lose some of their online links to friends and loved ones back home. A high-ranking Army official said the ban would take effect Monday. The military says it's worried that personal use on military computers is stealing bandwidth and perhaps hampering operations, reports CBS News correspondent Steve Kathan. They're also concerned that too much information may be getting out. "This recreational traffic impacts our official DoD network and bandwidth ability, while posing a significant operational security challenge," the memo said. The armed services have long barred members of the military from sharing information that could jeopardize their missions or safety, whether electronically or by other means. The new policy is different because it creates a blanket ban on several sites used by military personnel to exchange messages, pictures, video and audio with family and friends. Some of the sites provide important family links for soldiers overseas. Soldiers may miss out on homemade tributes or in sharing their videos and pictures from the fronts. The flip side of this battle, too, is that soldiers will not be able to see videos posted by insurgents. Iraqi insurgents or their supporters have been posting videos on YouTube at least since last fall, and the Army recently began posting its own videos on YouTube showing soldiers defeating insurgents and befriending Iraqis. But the new rules mean many military personnel won't be able to watch those videos. Members of the military can still access the sites on their own computers and networks, but Defense Department computers and networks are the only ones available to many soldiers and sailors in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the restrictions are intended to prevent soldiers from giving or receiving bad news, they could also prevent them from providing positive reports from the field, said Noah Shachtman, who runs a national security blog for Wired Magazine. "This is as much an information war as it is bombs and bullets," he said. "And they are muzzling their best voices." The sites covered by the ban are: * Video-sharing sites YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos and FileCabi; * Social networking sites MySpace, BlackPlanet and Hi5; * Music sites Pandora, MTV, 1.fm and live365; and * Photo-sharing site Photobucket. Several companies have instituted similar bans, saying recreational sites drain productivity. B) MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. *** The Register - May 14, 2007 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/14/no_youtube_for_you_soldier/ US forces to block YouTube, MySpace on DoD network Say they need bandwidth for killer robots By Lewis Page The US forces will "block worldwide access," to a range of websites including YouTube, MySpace and Photobucket from the unclassified Defense Department internet (or NIPRNET) as of today. In a widely-reported memo, General BB Bell (commander of US forces in Korea) announced the upcoming blocks. He suggested that the changes were as much to preserve bandwidth as to muzzle critical comment and news-media access. "Recreational traffic impacts our official DoD network and bandwidth availability," he wrote. It's true, of course, that modern warfare is intensely bandwidth hungry. In particular, unmanned combat platforms like the "Reaper" aerial hunter-killer and its smaller brethren need to send huge amounts of real-time video, which has to compete for satellite backhaul with the ordinary NIPRNET traffic from grunts on the ground. The General's assertion that resource issues lay behind the decree was lent some credence by the inclusion of internet radio site Pandora.com on the banned list, too, and it was stressed that soldiers were still free to access YouTube and the rest via their private ISPs or other non-DoD channels. A soldier could still upload his YouTube footage after returning to the States, for instance, or even during his tour if he/she could reach any affordable commercial providers while deployed. Nonetheless, many analysts have seen this as at best a foolish gag on some of the most positive reporters from the Southwest Asian frontlines. Military bloggers and uploaders overall tend to be quite on-message from the DoD point of view, and now this support for the cause will be largely stifled. Others, of course, interpret the blocks as a straightforward case of censorship. There could be an element of truth in all these positions. *** AP via Business Standard - May 14,2007 http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage_c_online.php?leftnm=11&bKeyFlag=IN&autono=23286 US army cuts access to YouTube, MySpace AP / Denver--US soldiers serving overseas will lose some of their online links to friends and loved ones back home under a department of defence policy that a high-ranking army official said would take effect today. The defence department will begin blocking access worldwide to YouTube, MySpace and 11 other popular websites on its computers and networks, according to a memo sent Friday by General BB Bell, the US Forces Korea commander. The policy is being implemented to protect information and improve security as well as reduce drag on the department's networks. "This recreational traffic impacts our official DoD network and bandwidth ability, while posing a significant operational security challenge," Bell said in the memo. The armed services have long barred members of the military from sharing information that could jeopardise their missions or safety, whether electronically or by other means. The new policy is different because it creates a blanket ban on several sites used by military personnel to exchange messages, pictures, video and audio with family and friends. Members of the military can still access the sites on their own computers and networks - but defence department computers and networks are the only ones available to many soldiers and sailors in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraqi insurgents or their supporters have been posting videos on YouTube at least since last autumn. The army recently began posting videos on YouTube showing soldiers defeating insurgents and befriending Iraqis. (PTI) *** NY Times blog "The Lede" - May 14, 2007 http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/14/pentagon-blocks-myspace-and-youtube/ Pentagon Blocks MySpace and YouTube By Mike Nizza The Defense Department has decided to make it impossible to reach 13 Web sites from its network, citing an overabundance of brecreational traffic.b In the policy released today, General B.B. Bell, commander in South Korea, said use of those sites bimpacts our official DoD network and bandwidth ability, while posing a significant operational security challenge.b The memo is available in pdf format. A spokeswoman for the United States Strategic Command was more specific in framing the issue as a technical limitation. bWebve got to have the networks open to do our mission. They have to be reliable, timely and secure,b Julie Ziegenhorn said in an interview with Stars & Stripes, an independent newspaper published for the American military. The ban also includes Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos, FileCabi, BlackPlanet, Hi5, Pandora, MTV, 1.fm, live365 and Photobucket. Private internet connections still have access, but most troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are limited to Pentagon service, Stars and Stripes notes. Todaybs Web site ban and last monthbs revision of military blogging policy were partly justified by operational security concerns. Both also prompted questions about whether leaders were trying to reduce the voices of individual soldiers by making it more difficult to publish their own material. The ban also arrived as the American military started to increase its profile on YouTube, posting official footage that aimed bto show another side of operations in Iraq beyond news reports of bthe car bomb of the day,bb the BBC said. A writer for Wired Magazine told The Associated Press that individual soldiers were also helping to present a more positive picture of the situation in Iraq. bThey are muzzling their best voices,b Noah Shachtman said. * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================