Tweeting From the Front Line
blackbearnh writes "There's an interesting article up on O'Reilly Radar talking about how the US military is reacting to the increasing use of social media by soldiers in hostile territory. In an interview, Price Floyd, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, talks about the trade-offs between operational security and allowing soldiers and the public to interact, and how social media has changed the way the DoD communicates with the public. 'I think that we need to become much more comfortable with taking risk, much more comfortable with having multiple spokesmen out there, thousands of spokesmen in essence. But, for me, there's nothing more credible than the men and women who are out there on the front lines, fighting the wars that we're in, sending messages back to their family and friends.'"
JUS KILD SUM HAJIS LOL !1!!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Where do you define the front line in asymmetric warfare? Chances are those support personnel have just as much chance to get blown up by an IED while conducting a logistics convoy or from a mortar round lobbed at the base, and that is not even accounting for the growing number of support personnel that are doing traditionally combat roles... perimeter defense, access control points, roadblocks, etc.
A lot of my friends are infantry types that manage to tweet or get on facebook while deployed. We had decent internet access during OIF I back in 2003...