US Military Surrenders To Social Media, Changes Access Restrictions

Thanks to a new policy by the Department of Defense, members of the US Military will now have limited access to social media sites. "According to the memorandum, members of military departments and all authorized users of the Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNET) can now use the publicly accessible capabilities of various social networking and user-generated content sites, instant messaging, forums, and e-mail. This includes YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and others. Access to porn, gambling, or hate crime sites will remain restricted, however, and commanders can cut down on social media use if they feel the need to 'preserve operations security.'"

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Re:no OPSEC here!

[GiveBenADollar]

Same general thing on ship. Internet secured prior to port visits for opsec, but half the officers have wives waiting for them in port. I just told my family that if they wanted to know where I was going they should just check the news because CNN would know before I did. Officers are assumed to be more responsible and therefore given more privileges, but in reality it doesn't work that way.

Re:Ugggh

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not an either or proposition, we have e-mail access to most web sites now. The bottleneck for most people in the field and on ships is bandwidth, not access.

What's driving this is the mid-to-high level chain of command, who has this fantasy that the next war is going to be fought over the Internet and we'd better not miss out, and don't understand the underlying security issues AT ALL.

And yes, being able to see what unit Johnny is in and who his friends are is a huge security risk. Now I can send him phishing emails with malicious attachments that appear to be from his wife, and all I have to do is look on Facebook.

We should be locking down the network, not opening it up.