Controlling the Bandwidth of War

[Al-khiyal]

DENVER (AP) - Soldiers serving overseas will lose some of their online links to friends and loved ones back home under a Department of Defense policy that a high-ranking Army official said would take effect Monday.

The Defense Department will begin blocking access "worldwide'' to YouTube, MySpace and 11 other popular Web sites on its computers and networks, according to a memo sent Friday by Gen. B.B. Bell, the U.S. Forces Korea commander.

The policy is being implemented to protect information and reduce drag on the department's networks, according to Bell.

"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.

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.

Iraqi insurgents or their supporters have been posting videos on YouTube at least since last fall. The Army recently began posting 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 achievements - at least not on military computers.

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 the video-sharing sites YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos, and FileCabi, the social networking sites MySpace, BlackPlanet and Hi5, music sites Pandora, MTV, and 1.fm, and live365, and the photo-sharing site Photobucket.

Several companies have instituted similar bans, saying recreational sites drain productivity.

U.S. Defense Department blocks some Web sites

[amalgamate]

US soldiers will still be able to e-mail home, and army bloggers should still be able to post, but the web may become a quieter place after this week's Pentagon clampdown.

Thirteen sites have been declared off-limits on Department of Defense computer systems, ranging from MySpace to MTV.

The official reason given is that too much military bandwidth is being hogged to share photos, video clips and messages.

Ironically, the US military itself has just launched its own channel on YouTube, uploading clips of fire fights and troops helping civilians in Iraq.

"The US Army's not going to pay the bill for you to get on MySpace and YouTube," was how Maj Bruce Mumford, a communications officer serving in Iraq, explained the curbs to the Associated Press.

The decision is likely to damage morale for troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, US military bloggers, including Colby Buzzell, latest winner of the Blooker Prize, the internet blog equivalent of the Booker, have told the BBC.

Yet the US and other countries with armies in the field today have genuine concerns about how the YouTube generation makes war, and particularly the impact on public opinion of raw video recorded by troops during combat.

Footage that makes its way on to the internet usually goes through unedited. It has content that can at times be graphic and is often accompanied by foul-mouthed real-time commentaries by the soldiers involved.

'Distrust'

Colby Buzzell, author of blog-based war memoirs My War: Killing Time In Iraq, believes internet networking sites provide a vital breathing-space for troops in Iraq, and that the clampdown is a disaster.

"I think it's a great way to destroy soldiers' morale," he told the BBC Radio Four's Today programme.

"[In Iraq] going online is a great break from the war. The one thing a soldier looks forward to every day over there is going online, sending messages to people on MySpace or looking at videos on YouTube."

While admitting he did not know enough about computers to comment on the bandwidth issue, he said he was inclined "not to buy it" as a reason, and had "kind of chuckled" on hearing it.

Fellow ex-military blogger Bill Roggio believes that the clampdown is "creating an atmosphere of distrust among the bloggers and the military" but the real censorship test, he adds, is if the Pentagon starts blocking the sites at non-official internet cafes used by its troops in the field.

Pointing out that the 13 prohibited sites are predominantly video and audio, he told the BBC News website's Laura Smith-Spark in Washington there was a valid reason for rationing bandwidth.

"Corporations block access to certain websites routinely," he said.

"The military is taking the position that these sites are hogs on their network resources and they may have a point."

[amalgamate]

continued...

Dangerous diversions

"There is a very difficult trade-off between curbing soldiers' access to networking sites and not making them feel isolated," according to Peter Caddick-Adams, who lectures in military history and strategic studies at the UK's Cranfield University.

He recalls how a few years ago, a spoof of the pop song Way to Amarillo being sung by British soldiers in Kosovo proved so popular on the website of the British defence ministry (MoD), that the site collapsed.

But such technical problems have to be weighed against the morale value of providing soldiers in the field with direct, up-to-the minute, credible communications with their comrades, he told the BBC News website.

Mr Caddick-Adams believes that the YouTube age has also thrown up security problems both on the actual battlefield and for the war effort.

Troops in Iraq have been known to go into combat wearing helmet cams (mini-cameras on their helmets) to record the fighting live and these privately bought cameras can be a dangerous distraction, the military expert says, as troops may jeopardise their or others' safety in pursuit of exciting footage.

Coarse, brutal language and comments made in the heat of battle may find sympathy with other soldiers, Mr Caddick-Adams says, but the impact on civilians listening at home may undermine the war effort, and he feels this was an unspoken concern behind the US clampdown.

The MoD, he adds, may well feel obliged to follow the Pentagon's example "as US forces in the two main theatres of conflict are fighting in coalitions and it would be difficult to keep one set of rules for one army and a different set for another".


Controlling the bandwidth of war