US Marine Corps Bans Social Networking Sites 202
Q-Hack! writes "Citing security concerns, the United States Marine Corps has issued an order banning access to social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter on its network for the next year. The Pentagon is now reviewing its social networking policy for the entire Department of Defense, which should be completed by the end of September, according to a report from CNN. The policy for the entire military is somewhat fragmented, as the Army ordered military bases to allow access to social media sites in May."
Re:You can shoot people, son, but don't blog! (Score:4, Insightful)
They're only allowed to shoot people on command.
Do not talk to somebody in a bar about the army... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You can shoot people, son, but don't blog! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You can shoot people, son, but don't blog! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure why this is even a news story - plenty of employers, my own included, don't want their employees using company hardware or infrastructure to surf Facebook, et al. And they're well within their right to impose those restrictions.
When you're on the job, you're on the job. Unless you're a professional blogger or some kind of pop culture researcher, chances are Facebook and Myspace aren't part of your job.
Re:The devil is in the details... (Score:5, Insightful)
Personal equipment is not permitted on any DoD network by policy, only GFE (Government Furnished Equipment) is permitted. However, depending on the technical solutions in place, it may be possible to connect anything you want, but that could result in severe repercussions should the user get caught.
I can tell you that the major DoD facilities in the Washington DC area use port security and disable all ports by default, only enabling them when needed after the appropriate change request has been made and approved, with justification provided.
As for the original post, it is the Marines network, they can chose whatever to permit or deny at their own discretion, limited personal use is a luxury on government (and even corporate) networks, not a right. If they want, they can remove all outside access, and there is nothing you can do about it, short of quitting (not really an option for some military folks).
Also, as someone else stated, social network sights can result in breaches of security, even unintentional, but at the same time, so can most forums of any type (car, geek, hobby, etc). The ideal solution is of course training your personnel, but sometimes, even the best measures will fail, humans are not perfect, so the best way to prevent disclosure (not to mention that all those lovely facebook apps have access to all your personal info which in of itself could be conceived as a risk depending on your rank or position) or possible infection (how many virus's/trojans have been released due to advertiser sites being compromised, but in that case, it also affects every other site that uses the advertiser), is to remove the potential threat.
Re:YRO (Score:5, Insightful)
Then again, when your military consists mainly of Mexican thugs looking for weapons training and inbred hicks from Arkansas, maybe they aren't in a position to make intelligent decisions.
Wow, you are a fucking asshole, do you realize that? The military is one of the most diverse parts of American society. Take any reasonably sized military unit and odds are that you can find a service member from each of the 50 states, from each religion (ranging from the big three to smaller groups such as wiccans) and ethic group.
The military isn't perfect but to claim that it's only made up of "inbred hicks" is absurd. I'd like to see you have the balls to make that statement on the street anywhere in the United States as opposed to making it as an anonymous coward on /.
Re:Loose lips sink ships! (Score:5, Insightful)
a kid who's barely out of high school doesn't want to die, and is nearly cracking under the pressure of killing people in a country he couldn't point to on a map a year earlier.
Uh, sorry, that's really not an accurate reflection of the Marine Corps. More like a form of projection of yourself. Marines are re-enlisting at all-time high rates. This is a volunteer force who signed up in a time of war. They signed up for action and got it. Maybe you'd be pissing your pants in fear, but don't project that on the Marines.
Re:You can shoot people, son, but don't blog! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You can shoot people, son, but don't blog! (Score:4, Insightful)
Does your employer frequently take you to foreign countries for extended periods of time? Where there are no computers other than those owned by the company? Where there is no internet access other than what's provided by the company?
I didn't think so.
When someone is deployed to a combat zone (Iraq, Afghanistan) they should be able to keep in touch with their friends and family. It's a mental health issue. Twenty years ago soldiers/sailors/marines would write letters (delivered by the Post Office) and make an infrequent phonecall to their parents, spouse, or significant other. Those days are gone.
People now expect to be updated via blogs, social-networks, and to a lesser extent email. That's the world we live in and those expectations (social needs) don't go away just because someone's deployed.
Re:You can shoot people, son, but don't blog! (Score:4, Insightful)
The military is slightly different than your job. We are often "at work" 24/7 in places far far from home. Contact with the "real world" is one of the things that keeps us sane.
Your job is different from my job in many respects. I and many others appreciate your service.
None of that changes the fact that your employer is still able to make policy on how the hardware it owns is used. More below.
Does your employer frequently take you to foreign countries for extended periods of time? Where there are no computers other than those owned by the company? Where there is no internet access other than what's provided by the company?
I didn't think so.
When someone is deployed to a combat zone (Iraq, Afghanistan) they should be able to keep in touch with their friends and family. It's a mental health issue. Twenty years ago soldiers/sailors/marines would write letters (delivered by the Post Office) and make an infrequent phonecall to their parents, spouse, or significant other. Those days are gone.
People now expect to be updated via blogs, social-networks, and to a lesser extent email. That's the world we live in and those expectations (social needs) don't go away just because someone's deployed.
I've been sent out of town for up to two weeks at a time for business, and my work computer still blocks Myspace and Facebook. Instead of going on about how it's my God-given right to use the company's computer however I damn well please to keep in touch with my family, I did things that were within the bounds of what my employer requires; I used email, instant messaging, my cell phone, and/or my own computer.
I wouldn't have any intention of forbidding deployed military personnel from keeping in contact with folks back home. I do, however, support their employer's right to maintain their own hardware and networks as they see fit. As far as I'm able to tell, the Marines' policy doesn't prohibit email, phone calls, texting, instant messaging, or other means of contact.
Any Marines smart enough to use the Internet? (Score:0, Insightful)
The Marines are the dumb jock force. The idea that one of them knows how to use the Internet is laughable!
Air Force are smart (got to be to fly planes), Navy less so, but still up there (you don't trust dummies to navigate thousands of miles from land), Army so so (they do have the core of engineers, you know), but Marines are just dumb jocks who serve our country by taking the bullets so the rest of the forces can actually win our battles.
The Coast Guard isn't a real force, they just do token drug busts and rescue the occasional dumbass that swims too far.
Re:You can shoot people, son, but don't blog! (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a theoretical tweet: "I have to leave at about 10PM to go on recon in Fadullah. Most of the guy in the platoon doing the patrol are okay, but Lt. Jones is incompetent."
So anyone following the tweet knows the time of the patrol, the strength and the name of one officer in the platoon. I was in army intelligence and getting just that much during an interrogation might take hours. To have someone simply give it to you is a dream come true. Some group picks up on this, knows that a platoon is doing recon and when, it is simple enough to set up an ambush, booby trap or whatever.
This is a smart move.
Re:YRO (Score:3, Insightful)
I find the GPs attitude very common among those who have little/no exposure to the military. Having been an officer in the Air Force, and having gone to college three times now (once for undergrad, twice for advanced degrees), I would say this: If you told me my very life depended upon an utter stranger doing a job properly, and my choices were between an enlisted person in the US military and a college undergrad - and that is the only information I would get - I'm going with the enlisted military. Shit, it's not even close.
Why are the marines still being stop-lossed? (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't say anything about anyone pissing in their pants. 20% of returning Marines have serious mental health problems [signonsandiego.com], whatever their performance was on the ground. Until now, they have been mostly recycled back into duty without treatment, since there aren't enough people signing up. So much so, Marines are still subject to stop loss. Doesn't sound like a volunteer force to me.
If there's any other propaganda you'd like to regurgitate, though, please feel free. I mean, as long as you have permission to do so.
And by the way, perhaps I would piss in my pants in that situation. I don't know, since I've never been in a war. But I also wouldn't sign up for any theater the US is engaged in, since it offers no benefit for our security or for anyone else's freedom.
Poor OPSEC In Action: Slashdot (Score:1, Insightful)
This reminds me of a /. poster a year back, who started rattling on about an intel-related capability on a US Army system he worked with. I went for Score: Funny while needling him for poor OPSEC, and he went off on me in a follow-up post, to the effect that surely he wasn't the first person to mention such-and-such general capability.
I did a couple of things: remind him more forcefully of his OPSEC responsibilities, and based on his Slashdot nick, do some research. By that time, he seemed to have gotten the message, and had gotten rid of his /. user page. Not so fast brother, retrieving it from Google cache. Within maybe 15 minutes, I was able to find:
- his unit, and current location of said unit in Germany
- where his unit had deployed in Kuwait within the year
- his rank and specialty
- his photo
- his CO, and POC for his system security ISSM
- his family, and a number of his associates back in the US
What really tied it together was using the same email address for his MySpace account. Now, in an of itself, this wasn't the end of the world. But, at the very least I could have ensured a visit from a superior, or (if I was a foreign intel agent) filled in a record in my opposing forces database, and started working some social engineering scenarios.
And all for a passing mention in /.
Re:You can shoot people, son, but don't blog! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You can shoot people, son, but don't blog! (Score:3, Insightful)
Define "certain information". I am really not trying to be insulting, but that is a very naive question. Each person would have to carry a 1000 page volume of the things not to talk about. You could TRY to generalized it by saying "no sensitive information", but just what is "sensitive information"? Is the fact your platoon leader is a jerk "sensitive information"? Well, it could be used as a means of gaining your trust when you "just happen" to get in a conversation with one of the workers fixing the shower. He was paid to gain your trust by using that fact. Sound far-fetched? It's standard practice and just one of many types of "social engineering".
There are flurry of tweets coming from a couple dozen people saying "I gotta sign off for today." Then 15 minutes later, someone on the outside of the compound sees a convoy of vehicles leave. The convoy arrives back several hours later and the tweets start up again. This same pattern happens over the course of a week. Even a bad intelligence analyst can say that it is likely that the tweets stop right before the unit goes out on patrol. What "sensitive information" did the tweets contain?
Military intelligence is rarely about getting the entire battle plan and quickly translating it for the generals. It is about piecing together little things. The big chunks are few and far between.
Then there is the human factor. People are not robots. People forget, people don't think that certain things are "sensitive". The complexities of this kind of thing are far greater than learning what to do in a fire fight. Further, when you come back from patrol after you friend had is leg blown off, you are not going to be thinking about whether your blog post is "sensitive". It might not carry any direct intelligence information, but if you are chatting with your wife about the horror you just experienced and describe the number and type of casualties, then the person who planned the attack knows how successful it was.
What about the picture on MySpace showing the guy and all of his buddies? The same photo is on six accounts. You now have the name of six people in the same unit. Useful military intelligence. Plus you have a picture of the inside of their compound including the entry area to the command post. Even more useful.
Experience has clearly demonstrated that allowing this kind of stuff is outright foolish.
Re:You can shoot people, son, but don't blog! (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, but if you're stationed in Iraq, you're basically "on the job" 24/7, with long periods of complete boredom. Further, you're unlikely to have your own computer equipment to use, and are totally dependent on the military to provide it for you.
I have to disagree with you on a few points. My brother is USMC and finished 2 tours in Iraq before going to Afghanistan. His M.O.S. is MP, and he got assigned to do convoy security, probably the worst job out there because of all the IEDs. First off, in Iraq he was not 'on' 24/7 and definitely never had periods of long boredom. He would pull 20 - 48 hour shifts driving from 1 end of the desert to the other. Then he would sleep for approximately 6 hours a night and continue. He rarely had any downtime but when he did he would use his own computer to access the Internet off-base in somewhere in Rhamadi, apparently one of the few places you can get Internet access. Occasionally he would be given Internet access on-base, but this was rare. When he came back, before going to Afghanistan, he told me that talking with friends online was one of the only things that kept his sanity in such a crazy place. Also some of you reading this may not like the war or why we're there, but just remember that there are people over there pulling insane shifts doing unimaginable things for next to nothing. Semper Fi.
they always blame the marines. (Score:3, Insightful)