Slashdot Mirror
US Marine Corps Bans Social Networking Sites
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."
My grandfather was a Marine in Korea and moved up the ranks from enlisted to officer very quickly. When I asked him once how he got to be an officer so fast he joked (I *hope* he was joking, anyway) that any Marine who could read and write was immediately promoted to officer. On the other hand, considering the level of discourse on most social networks, maybe modern Marines are better off not refining their writing skills there anyway.
However, it does seem bizarre that guys who are entrusted to carry loaded automatic weapons around (and use them), aren't trusted to write a tweet to their buddies back home. A guy is given the power to shoot people, but not to blog or buy a beer (if he's under 21). Seems like a mixed message.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I guess the real question is who they define "on its network." Major systems, I can see this. A personal laptop? Not so much...
...Two words combined that can't make sense
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
A Marine buddy of mine just posted this on Facebook yesterday.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
...that's at least what the guy from Military Intelligence told us in a crash course on counter espionage in the middle of the cold war one long and grey german winter evenig. Somewhere somebody draws a big picture from all the minute details form hundreds of conversations: Troop displacement, how many sick, morale, comabt readiness and so on and so forth.Sounded a bit over the top, but made sense. What cost the KGB during the cold war at least a couple of drinks you can have today for a few lines of code. I have not made the experiment myself, but I'll bet that you can create a pretty acurate picture about which american or british unit operates where in Afghanistan and Irak. I think it makes sense: Do not blog, while in combat. Come home healthy and alive, write memoirs, bore your grandkids.
Marines are not soldiers. It's like calling someone who writes malicious code a hacker. Or something.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I'm sure there are many marine corps wives that are going to be rather upset at this one. If you thought that the marines were dangerous overseas, wait till the wives show up at the Pentagon demanding answers.
Where is that?
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Wow! I wonder how many bases didn't already have it blocked on their firewall. I'm guessing 100%. Mine did.
Whale
Because they signed on the dotted line to uphold and defend the Constitution, they lose part of their free speech. The Uniform Code of Military Justice has clauses in it that make it a prohibit things like participating in rallies in uniform. The military is an extension of the government, therefore its members cannot "make statements." Official statements must come from the Public Relations officers. Anything else can and will be subject to censorship. Any ill spoken of the President is speaking ill of your commanding officer. It doesn't matter if you like him or not, he is your Commander-in-Chief. Don't put a bumper sticker (pro or anti) about a politician on your car if you're in the military either. Note that military service members are not prohibited from writing to their congresscritters. They are also allowed to vote. They are not permitted to run for office other than a local one (same goes for Reserve and Guard members). They are not permitted to campaign for a candidate at least while in uniform... I don't remember about out of uniform.
There shouldn't be a problem with personal blogs or social networking, as long as they don't identify themselves as members of the military and restrict any comments about the government and its officials, the military, and their locations when deployed.
OCO is Loco
I've been at the NIH for two years, and they've banned all of these sites ever since I've been here. I was told that it was to prevent the wasting of tax payer money, but security concerns are an equally good justification. This really isn't a big deal. Corporations must do this too. Nothing more.
EXACTLY!
One of the more fascinating things coming out of intelligence circles today is how much we are learning from those minute details, and how much of that data we are releasing to the press. Things like being able to tell how old video of Kim Jong Il is by looking at foliage in the background, or what time of day a Bin Laden tape was filmed (notice that those videos are all against a white sheet, or in windowless rooms now). I bet you could even identify a particular camcorder model (or even unit) by the noise it introduces into a tape.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
I heard someone say on the news story last night (WTOP in the DC area, was listener call in's): "Soldiers are here to defend democracy, not practice it"
Now I do not necessarily agree with that statement, I am just saying its something I heard that provokes some thought on the matter.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Two things:
1) They are blocking these sites on GOVERNMENT NETWORKS. This is no different than your company blocking Twitter. These Marines remain perfectly free to use personal Internet connections however they see fit, assuming they don't pass on classified information. You do not rely upon government networks to provide you Internet access in barracks or housing. Even in Baghdad we had civilian Internet connections available to us.
2) Soldiers, Marines, Sailors, and Airmen do have rights, but not quite the same rights as you and I. When you join the military you contractually exchange your Constitutional rights for the rights granted by a code called the "Uniform Code of Military Justice" or UCMJ. You have most of the same rights as any civilian, but some are modified or taken away based on the realities of military operations. Upon leaving the service or existing active duty, you revert to the normal rights of citizens. The UCMJ is generally fair, and grants MOST Constitutional rights to service people, but one area where it is more restrictive than usual is Free Speech. You simply have more limited speech rights in the military than you do as a civilian. You agree to this as part of signing up.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
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 /.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
It's just a fact of defending the Constitution, you are bound by the regulations of the service you joined; very few service people realize that your rights are suspended when they join up. Given they are citing security concerns, I don't see the problem. If they were trying to ban total access to social networking sites on and off-duty, they can do it.
The patriot volunteer, fighting for country and his rights, makes the most reliable soldier on earth. (Stonewall Jackson
And then proceed to say that they include
Though it seems that even sites like slashdot could be grouped under that definition. For that matter other sites like wnd.com or the Huffington post could potentially be grouped similarly.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Facebook applications are one big, festering security breach.
I publish www.eDodo.org a humor site for Air Force Academy graduates and cadets. Of course, the Academy blocks us. It's a tricky issue, but the bottom line is that the cadet dorms are gov't property and they use a gov't network, so USAFA gets to filter them.
The original Dodo magazine was an uncensored cadet publication. When the administration started censoring it, eDodo.org was born. I'm hoping more and more cadets get internet enabled smart phones to access the "free" internet.
Back to the topic: The Academy doesn't block Facebook, and that's how we reach cadets now: www.Facebook.com/eDodo
Bigtime Consulting - "We're the best because we cost the most"
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.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
You can put the law on the books, but enforcing it is another matter.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The ironic thing is just last week we had a military official do a keynote address at Blackhat, and they stressed how important the internet was to the morale and effectiveness of their troops, and not just for operational needs, but social ones.
The official said, (paraphrasing) that they had talked to a carrier Captain and asked him what the most important system on the ship was. He said the internet, and pointed out that the average age of his sailors was 18.5.
I find it ironic that on the heels of this talk, we see this.
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
...While the "corporate" network is primarily For Official Use Only, some personal use (email, web browsing while "off duty") has always been allowed. All this regulation does it tighten up what is considered acceptable personal use.
The major emails (hotmail, gmail, yahoo) are blocked, and most things that look like a "send" button on blogs are blocked as well. The goal seems to be to prevent DoD users from posting to public places while on the job. Makes a lot of sense, but its really annoying if you need access to a support forum. Or Slashdot.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
A Marine friend informed me that this network access policy announcement completely conflicts with a new order for Marine recruiters that came out a few weeks prior to this message informing the recruiters to begin using social networking sites as a medium to tell the story of the Corps. In addition, Marine Corps News and Public Affairs have fully embraced social networking sites, and they have instructed their units to begin utilizing these sites as well. So if these commands have been instructed to utilize social networking sites, how are they going to be able to follow these orders if they will not be able to access those sites from their own office? Seems like there has been a breakdown in internal communication when it comes to creating policy within the Corps...
Wow. You totally didn't even look at the article before venting did you? It's people like you that it so Bloody hard to make an intelligent argument against any government policy. Someone will inevitably dig up something like this little rant to show how ignorant and reactionary the other side is.
First of all this is not the Pentagon (yet), it's the Marine Corps. While the Corps is a part of the Pentagon, the article (Hell, the summary) specifically states that the DoD is still working to formulate a coherent policy across the board. The Corps has done this in the mean time. The Army (again this is in the summary), which constitutes the bulk of the fighters in both Iraq and Afghanistan specifically ALLOWS social networking sites on its bases (including overseas bases). While the Pentagon may, or may not, decide in the end to limit this stuff on all DoD networks. They haven't yet.
Second, this is on Marine Corps networks, not on Marines. Marines on their own Internet connections can post whatever they want (well, within reason, obviously they can't post classified information). Marines are perfectly allowed to get their own Internet connections, even overseas. While we were in Baghdad we had a Satellite connection to the Internet that we split the cost of. It was no more expensive than the monthly fee for an ISP provided service States side. If, for some reason you couldn't afford that, there were also Internet kiosks (some provided by the government for R&R, some run by local national companies) on base which all had unfettered civilian Internet. My Battalion provided about 10 computers with civilian Internet access for our soldiers for FREE out of our Morale and Welfare funds. So if you couldn't even afford the cafe fees, and could wait for ten minutes for a computer, you could use them.
Now after two completely pointless and poorly argued paragraphs, you make some decent points. I agree that a war on terrorism is silly, and I agree that the rhetoric surrounding these conflicts (especially in the beginning, less so now. Even Bush in his later years in office toned things down considerably) is, or was, unhelpful. Unfortunately these points follow after your first two paragraphs. I have a much harder time taking a person seriously when it is clear that they didn't even read the summary, let alone the article before posting a poorly argued screed. I suspect anyone else that might have agreed with you feels the same. I don't even want to click your link, since I can only assume it's just as poorly researched.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Indeed.
Army = soldier
Navy = sailor
USMC = marine
Air Force = airman
Wow, so the most advanced military in the world is stupid now? What a revelation! Crazy that you haven't been modded insightful yet, huh?
Hellloooo! People? He was joking. Please note the more obvious sarcasm of his second sentence, followed by a sentence fragment the intention of which is subtle self-deprecation. We humans call this "humor".
"Crude and slow, clansman. Your attack was no better than that of a clumsy child."
Restrictions on mobile devices are probably in order as well:
PFC Campbell is approaching the insurgents camp.
PFC Campbell is just a little downwind. They can't see a thing.
PFC Campbell this is going to be good, they have no idea we're here!
PFC Campbell is that a Blackberry that insurgent is holding?
PFC Campbell ohshit
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
When I was deployed we had a U2 crash very near our base where it was scheduled to land. We weren't allowed to tell anyone about it, not even that it had happened. By the time I got off my shift that evening CNN had an article about who what when where and speculating on why.
A service member cannot campaign for a candidate while in uniform, or identify him or herself as a member of the military to drive voters towards a candidate. They can't use their servicemember status to endorse a business either. The real distinction is not just wearing the uniform, as telling people you are a member in such cases is just as much an issue.
Former members certainly regain all their normal rights of free speech. I could, for example, go to a local military surplus shop with the owner's permission, set up cardboard backed posters, and stand around saying "I'm a former range operations officer and rifle and pistol instructor with the US Army, and I say we need to supply the guys currently in Iraq and Afghanistan with better body armor." (I could even have endorsed certain existing brands, although I kept it more classy than that). I could wear a set of my old fatigues, so long as they no longer had any unit insignia or the cloth tape reading "U. S. ARMY" over the breastpocket. (But I wore jeans and tee-shirt). An active duty servicemember could write letters to his or her congressman without mentioning his military status in any way, but to keep on the safe side, many of them prefer to discuss things with civilian friends or family and let them write the letters. In general, active duty means you rely on civilians to do a lot of your political speech for you until you get out.
As far as other rights go, I used to have to carry a military version of the Miranda card civilian police carry - The service member actually has more rights guaranteed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice than the civilian does. At the same time, the UCMJ doesn't mean the military member retains such things as the right to a 12 person jury. Some rights are different, not completely absent - for example, enlisted military people being judged by a three member or five member military tribunal have the right in some circumstances to have a fellow enlisted member as one of their judges (and most junior accused wave this right, as that fellow enlisted member is an NCO, and not likely to cut them any more slack than a commissioned officer). There is still a right to a lawyer, to have them present during questioning, and other such rights, there are legal protections against self incrimination and at least some forms of unreasonable search and seizure, and the right to confront witnesses is at least as solid as the civilian version.
Who is John Cabal?
"Not only will we keep you in a baking hot desert for years on end, but you won't be able to chat with any of your friends back home."
I guess they are pretty confident they don't need any more troops. They can stop recruiting at high schools then, right?
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
One thing I've been curious about is whether guidance is provided to military personnel when posting anything on the internet. Just curious, since I've witnessed a few pretty heated debates between military personnel and civilians on some Canadian sites.
The private sector generally frowns on this sort of thing and it gives PR departments nightmares, although it's tough for them to control. For soldiers, I'd think the military would be keen to make sure a common message is being relayed, no? Certainly not saying they should enforce anything, just wondering if there's any 'code of conduct' of sorts when posting on public sites.
It's on America's tortured brow, That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
the rest of the world made them illegal too.
No, he said 'military'. The Air Force is like .. working for Shell Oil or something.
Naw, I'm kidding - just had to get the dig in. The Air Force is awesome as long as y'all remember the whole point of having one is to dominate the battlefield, not to play Top Gun.
Display some adaptability.
Actually, in the Marine Corps we pretty much always capitalize Marine. Just one of those things.
As we say, the CNO would never be called a sailor, but the Commandant is proud to call himself Marine. Also, it's the only service where you are not addressed as belonging to that service in boot camp. In Army basic training, you are a soldier. In Marine basic training, you are a recruit and must earn the title Marine on graduation day. If you make it that far.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I was using humor to make a point. Soldiers are not Marines and vice versa.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
You really are a poorly read bigot, you know that? A study was recently done on the demographics of the U.S. military, and to the author's surprise, every socio-economic, geographic, racial, ethnic, religious, and gender group was represented in the military to a rough extent to its proportion in American society. Except one.
Northeastern liberals were very underrepresented. Thankfully, people like you probably are, too.
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.
Army = soldier
Navy = sailor
USMC = marine
Air Force = airman
The thing that's always bugged me about that is as a result the best generic term the DOD could come up with was "warfighter". Ugh.
I didn't say anything about anyone pissing in their pants. 20% of returning Marines have serious mental health problems, 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.
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 /.
My grandfather was a Marine in Korea ... ... it does seem bizarre that guys who are entrusted to carry loaded automatic weapons around (and use them), aren't trusted to write a tweet to their buddies back home.
Ask him if his letters were censored. My grandmother saved the letters she received from her brothers during World War 2. Some letters have black ink painted over some text and other letters literally had scissors taken to them resulting in some text being carefully cut out. We don't have the human resources, nor is AI capable enough, to censor posts to social networks. Offhand I can't think of a better solution than kill the connection. While the USMC policy may seem like they are overdoing it given the nature of today's enemies, keep in mind that they are developing a general policy that takes into consideration he larger and more capable potential enemies of tomorrow. Data mining social network sites could be incredibly valuable. Look at what the British did with Enigma during WW2 with their decoding of every German communication, things like so and so going somewhere for training, being transfered to another unit, ... Little things like this added up and formed a mosaic of a larger picture, it helped. Social networks could be a similar information source, one that is plain text.
Yes, extremely high unemployment tends to produce that kind of thing. Don't go assuming they're doing it because they're gung-ho supertroopers who eat bullets and shit grenades. A lot of them don't have much of a realistic choice.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Being a former Marine myself with lots of friends still in and working in the defense industry, I don't have to do a lot of assuming. After 6 years, every Marine in the Corps has either come in since March 2003 or re-enlisted. And during the last 6 years, the economy has gone up and down, and re-enlistment rates have stayed high. Marines in Iraq have been asking for years to move to Afghanistan where there's still fighting. They don't whine about going home, like copponex suggested. Like the Spartans, they ask not how many the enemy is, but where the enemy is. Maybe it sounds corny, but it's true.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
That may be the case, but it is comical that they are supposedly denied constitutional rights in order to preserve them. It's like perpetual war for peace, or as George Carlin would say, screwing for virginity.
As long as you are not "representing" the US military, you have the same rights as anyone else. That is, if not in uniform, you can protest, support political candidates and so forth. Certain rights are restricted, like freedom of movement when you are ordered to go to Iraq, but it is just like any contract. If a civilian signs a contract to go to Iraq and doesn't he can be sued for damages. A soldier can end up going to jail, but that is the nature of the contract you sign. Anyone saying they have NO rights in the military does not know what they are talking about.
No kidding this story comes up slashdot every year with some branch blocking government computer access to some social networking site. Every other employer does it, but somehow when the military does it, it's censorship.
Meanwhile in every story about a breach of a government network, there are posts saying no government computer should be on internet.
It's simple:
There is operational networks that aren't on internet.
There is administrative networks that have network access with sites blacklisted.
Then there are MWR cafes for personal use (in places you can't just use your own internet connection).
The military has done this part right.
This story is akin to "Marines banned from playing video games" without posting the caveat that it's on government computers.
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.
Yeah, that's not even close. I'm going with the person who has been taught to make life and death decisions and is aware of the consequences of failing to perform his duty. A large percentage of the college undergrads that I've met in my life are spoiled rotten brats who can't be bothered to take their studies seriously and have an entitlement complex the size of Mt. Everest.
My favorite experience with a undergrad was the one who rear-ended us while driving Daddy's $40,000 BMW SUV and then tried to pass it off as our fault. I climbed out of the wreckage of our car and my first question was "Are you ok?" and the first words out of her mouth are "WHY THE FUCK DID YOU STOP????" My response to that was "Because the light was red you stupid ignorant cunt" at which time somebody got between us, which was probably for the best. The only saving grace was she was as nasty with the cops as she was with us and the police threw the book at her.
Mind you, they aren't all like that, but I'd place my life in the hands of the GI every day of the week without hesitation.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Neither of you is correct. The parent is using a specific terms, denying broader terms. You are using a broad term, disregarding the role context plays in determining an acceptable level of specificity. There is at least one level within each definition at which a Marine is not a Soldier.
In broad terms, a Marine is a soldier. In narrower terms, as in "especially in the army" vs "a member of the United States Marine Corps" a Marine is not a Soldier.
Since this thread is in fact about the United States Marine Corps, it is reasonable for someone to demand use of the more specific term, since the subject being discussed does not apply to all that fall under the broader term. The parent simply should have used caps to make the particular level of distinction they were trying to make more clear.
Marines are not Soldiers = TRUE
Marines are not soldiers = FALSE
Parent claimed the latter, so calling it false is accurate. However the context should have made it clear that they intended the former, so... you're just being pedantic. As am I. How's that for an old jarhead? :)
Right from Merriam Webster:
Main Entry: (2) marine
Function: noun
Date: 1669
1 a: the mercantile and naval shipping of a country b: seagoing ships especially in relation to nationality or class
2: one of a class of soldiers serving on shipboard or in close association with a naval force ; specifically : a member of the United States Marine Corps
3: an executive department (as in France) having charge of naval affairs
4: a marine picture : seascape
Which only supports my analogy.
Dictionary.com defines hacker as 1). a computer enthusiast and 2). a microcomputer user who attempts to gain unauthorized access to proprietary computer systems.
The dictionary fails in both instances of how we self-describe ourselves. Marines vehemently object to being called soldiers. Those who work on computers and call themselves hackers object to crackers and script-kiddies also being called hackers, even though the dictionary plainly defines them as such. I'm less convinced the hacker thing is a real problem, but I was trying to relate it to the non-military type geeks.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Oh my, what timing! The military needs to deploy these propaganda posters immediately!: "War propaganda for the new millennium" http://www.flickr.com/photos/doctabu/sets/72157620497679512/
There shouldn't be a problem with personal blogs or social networking, as long as they don't identify themselves as members of the military and restrict any comments about the government and its officials, the military, and their locations when deployed.
I don't think it's about outbound information, it's about inbound.
There's a reason to separate military people from their friends and family - close contact is going to make them harder to control, and less likely to follow orders.
This may not be an unreasonable decision for the Marine Corps - it's just such a lame pansy excuse to blame Twitter for internal trojan propagation. How about your IT guys do their jobs and deploy secure machines on secure networks?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
according to SecDef Gates, currently the Army is the only service that uses the stop-loss program. As of January, 13,217 soldiers had tours extended under the stop-loss policy.
The Marines have met their recruiting quotas for the last several years, as has the Air Force. The Army has not.
I see, so when the Iranians protested the election results and exposing the criminal gangster regime for its crimes a month ago, the US government criticized Ahmadinejad for infringing on people's freedom of expression. Now that the USMC wants to disrupt social networking site access for its employees (read "slaves"), the explanation is called "security concerns". This is so typical of our gangster government. The only difference between the US and Iranian governments is that the Iranian government doesn't put an extra effort to cover up its illegitimacy.
Loose lips sink ships - War Cartoon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgABkFTAyVE
10: PRINT "Everything old is new again."
20: GOTO 10
I joined the Marine Corps just over a year ago, and one thing they taught us in recruit training is that anytime the name Marine occurs in a news story, there will be a huge blowup over the issue, and the fact that the marines are involved. For example, if an army soldier gets in trouble, they say Private Whomever. If a marine gets in trouble, the headline goes something like, "MARINE GETS DUI" or "MARINE BEATS HIS WIFE". This story definately highlights that point. They have banned social networking sites on their own intranet. They have not banned me from viewing such sites via other means. Many of my fellow marines who have deployed tell me about how they can to to a USO or MCCS tent and do pretty much what they want on the internet while deployed (depending on availability, of course). Hell if i remember correctly, when i used to work for G.E., they did similar things on their intranet, and that was 10 years ago. No one made too much noise about it then, probably because it wasn't the marine corps.
The biggest reason with social networking and the military is that when a service member dies, his buddies tweet, facebook,etc. before the military has enough time to contact the next of kin. You guys can see the problem here. The other reason, is when the service member drops clues to his next mission, ie, "tomorrow is another big day, going to ______." And if the enemy wants to see what they are up against, all they have to do is look in the photos of weapon systems.
Consider the networking software law enforcement uses to create charts of the relationships of bad guys. Such software is, in a manner of speaking, like the reciprocal of a networking site. When you aggregate a person's friends you have much of use about the private person, that is, the real person. In a networking site the network of contacts is fully exposed instead of being teased out of investigative data. Things that are usually hard to find out about a person are made very easy.
Soldiers are by nature involved in many classified things. A person's social site contacts can tell the thoughtful investigator (this time a bad guy) much. They could expose compromising relationships. Or questionable activities. Even the appearance of impropriety might give a bad guy undue leverage. Look at this kerfuffle over the new MI6 chief And to think his wife posted with no privacy settings at all. Admittedly this was not compromising, just insecure, embarrassing, and possibly dangerous for her very own family. People with classified access should think long and hard about what they do with these admittedly appealing and engaging (for some) social networking resources.
On the other hand, having such a site makes life very easy for security clearance investigators and potential employers.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
I didn't knew Alkaeda and Oosama were scanning/browsing twitter and Fbuk for information...
My friend in the army (stationed in Iraq) told me a couple months ago the way the insurgents were assassinating some soldiers was by using information from sites like myspace and facebook. I'm not surprised at all that this rule has been adopted.