The Washington Post reported today that the Department of Defense is now preventing soldiers from accessing several social networking, video and photo sharing, and other popular websites — including MySpace and YouTube — via the Department’s computers and network. This strikes us as a poorly considered decision by military leadership. The blocked websites are invaluable channels of communications — both for military families and the broader public. CDT encourages the Pentagon to reconsider its position given the value that these websites provide.

The value of these globally popular websites can’t be overstated. Soldiers use MySpace, YouTube and other sites to stay connected to family, friends and their communities back home. For many troops, these websites are the primary means of keeping in touch with loved ones. The need for this sort of connection is especially vital in light of the extended and repeated tours of duty that both regular and reserve soldiers now face. At a time when the Pentagon is making more and more demands of our troops, it strikes us as shortsighted to cut those troops off from their families back home. These websites also allow soldiers to keep updated on national and global developments, and let’s not forget — troops use these websites to provide the public with alternative, riveting, and graphic insight into the challenges soldiers face in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Pentagon claims that this change in policy is primarily a bandwidth issue: that soldiers viewing videos and photos online, or uploading their own, may so clog DOD pipes that the military will be hampered in performing its core functions. The Department itself admits that this move is simply a preemptive measure, noting “The popularity of the sites has not affected operations yet, but blocking them prevents them from causing such a problem.” Since the site-blocking policy is not responding to an immediate concern, the Pentagon should take the time to reevaluate and develop a better, less restrictive means for addressing bandwidth concerns.

Even assuming that soldiers’ use of these websites truly poses a significant risk to the availability of military bandwidth for mission-critical purposes, it’s not clear that wholesale blocking is the Pentagon’s only option. The Post article explains that under the new policy troops may still access MySpace and YouTube on non-military computers, including private computers and those found in Internet cafes. But given that soldiers in the field often do not have personal computers or easy access to Internet cafes, it is unclear why DOD could not give soldiers direct access to the public, non-military Internet so that they can continue using these popular sites in a convenient way without taking up valuable military bandwidth. Additionally, as Lewis Maltby of the National Workrights Institute suggested in the article, DOD has not explained why it could not somehow ration its network. We also wonder why DOD could not allocate part of its budget to properly bolster its network to accommodate both professional and legitimate personal traffic.

There was also a hint in the article that the Pentagon’s policy is based on the security concern that troops are posting sensitive combat information online. If so, it seems that the military should emphasize to soldiers in the field the importance of following the Operations Security (OPSEC) guidelines about what’s appropriate to post publicly, rather than simply blocking an arbitrary list of sites.

It’s curious that the military has taken such a drastic step to alleviate not-yet-realized “bandwidth” pressure at the same time the public is becoming increasingly impatient with the course of our military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Prior to this cutoff, the American public had been able to get unvarnished, first-hand accounts of the lives of soldiers through their blogs and posts on MySpace and other websites. The Pentagon’s recent actions make it much harder for this type of information to reach a wide audience in the U.S.

It is important to also recognize a bigger-picture impact of the blocking policy. The government, industry and public interest communities in the United States are engaged in an international debate over global Internet freedom. Every time the U.S. government takes a step backward with regard to human rights in the digital age — whether by snooping on Americans without warrants, or blocking U.S. troops’ access to key websites — our nation’s credibility in the international community on these matters diminishes. Other governments struggling to understand what it means to respect freedom of speech in the digital age may look at censorship or unauthorized surveillance by the U.S. and conclude that such activities are proper. The U.S. should set an example for the rest of the world, and should start by reconsidering this significant limitation of our soldiers’ ability to communicate with their families, and with the country as a whole.

For a vivid illustration of how important these sites have become to soldiers and their families check out these memorials on YouTube, and these soldiers‘ sites on MySpace.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 5:58 pm and is filed under Free Expression. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.