After an official review of internet security and use, the U.S defence department has announced that troops in the American forces are now free to use Facebook and Twitter. Whilst a number of sites have always been blocked in the past over safety concerns, officials stated that the benefits to troops now probably outweigh any possible risks.
As the Pentagon revealed the changes, they added that social networking sites in addition to those such as YouTube would now be accessible to troops, whilst commanders would still be able to block services in the face of certain missions or bandwidth savings. They added that as the internet becomes a larger network for recruiting and public relations, the American forces can benefit from easy access to family and friends in addition to simply interaction with the Pentagon.
Meanwhile, any changes to policies still keep hate-crime, gambling or pornography sites blocked from use. The defence for information technology’s deputy assistant secretary David Wennergren explained “We need to take advantage of these capabilities that are out there – this Web 2.0 phenomena. And what we had were inconsistent approaches. Some websites were blocked and some commands were blocking things. The idea is be responsible and use these tools to help get the job done. There are two imperatives. One is the ability to share information. The other is about security – we need to be good at both.”
