From GCN:
The Pentagon has announced that, effective today, access will be blocked to 13 “entertainment sites†on the Internet, to protect the availability of network resources for official Defense Department activities.
Gen. B. B. Bell, commander of U.S. forces in Korea, announced the change in a memo released May 11.
But the memo also makes clear, without using his name, that Lt. Gen. Charles Croom, who serves both as the head of the Defense Information Systems Agency and as commander of Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations, is behind the move.
“The Commander of [JTF-GNO] has noted a significant increase in use of DOD network resources tied up by individuals visiting certain recreational Internet sites,†the memo reads. “This recreational traffic impacts our official DOD network and bandwidth availability, while posing a significant operational security challenge.â€
The blocked sites are youtube.com, 1.fm, Pandora.com, photobucket.com, myspace.com, live365.com, hi5.com, metacafe.com, mtv.com, ifilm.com, blackplanet.com, stupidvideos.com and filecabi.com.
On the social networking side this is an opportunity for the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan to make use of Facebook which is not on the blocked list (as per the memo).
The really funny part that I noticed is they have avoided a complete subset of internet traffic, the porn. I have seen an Inmarsat B link (not that it’s fast to start with) dropped to it’s knees due to porn usage by mil personnel. Bandwidth issues are something that can be fixed. Just track down some of the cash that was delivered (and went missing) to Baghdad.
These people are giving their lives. Cut them some slack. They’ve earned it.
[tags]US Military, DOD Blocks Sites, Censorship, Iraq War, Afghanistan War[/tags]