Speaking of military appreciation: The Department of Defense has banned soldiers from accessing social-networking Web sites like YouTube, MySpace and MTV.com. Why? Ostensibly because they take up too much bandwidth downloading videos of their child’s first steps or a piano recital, you know, life stuff. Like any big corporation, the DoD doesn’t allow soldiers to use DoD computers for personal stuff, though they can access AOL or Yahoo! to send e-mails to loved ones.
Hardest hit by the ban are military families:
One woman, who could not be reached separately for comment, wrote: “My son is deployed in Iraq, I don’t get much news from him, letter writing is not his thing I guess. MySpace is a way for me to see that he is ok. I can just log on, go to his page and see that he has logged on for the day. That alone takes some of the worries away.”
Another woman wrote similarly, describing how difficult it was not to know what was happening to her son, who served with the Army’s Special Forces in Baghdad.
“We could not always connect via phone. Leaving ‘comments’ on myspace was his way of letting us know he was okay. He could send a note to everyone on his friends list in one posting. I lived to see he had logged on. His … unit already had myspace and youtube blocked. He had to search to find a DoD or private computer that would allow him to log on. The DoD has NO idea how much I lived for those log on’s. It told me MY kid was okay.”
Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) is on the case, but it looks unlikely that Defense will lift the ban.
What is the difference between this action and a military dictatorship?