The decision to block Youtube, and twelve other sites, is a gift to anyone, Valleywag included, who assumes government incompetence is intrinsic. That it's the Department of Defense that is mounting the clampdown, and US servicemen in Iraq are the victims, makes the story even more compelling. Pentagon, IT, Iraq: that's a trifecta of easy points. Easy points, but wrong ones, writes this US Army officer, from his second tour of duty in Iraq. (He preferred to remain nameless.) We'd rather meet this Valleywag reader in battle than in argument. Read on, and you'll understand why.

Bottom line up front: I don't think that the policy change is that big of a deal. Its' purpose is twofold: Protect sensitive information and conserve valuable bandwidth. Although not a perfect solution, it does accomplish both. Was this latest DoD policy a "typically misguided display of bureaucratic ineptitude?" I hardly think so. I do think, however, that the article's author should spend less time randomly throwing darts at a thesaurus when forming the narrow-minded opening sentences of any future articles he/she may write.

SENSITIVE INFORMATION: The handling of "classified" material is very well-controlled by the military. There are separate computers, separate media storage devices, separate markings, separate networks, separate facilities, required security clearances, etc. What the military has a bit of a tougher time getting their arms around is material that is "sensitive but unclassified." This information (files, documents, videos/pictures, times/dates/locations, etc) may seem innocuous when it stands alone, but when pieced together with other such information begins to paint a clearer picture about our operations for our adversaries - a picture that we do not necessarily want them to see. In the "IwantitALLandIwantitNOW" day and age, information sharing is almost too easy. This is a double-edged sword... One example of a million: I no longer have to run to the photo shop with negatives in hand and get 50 reprints of my son taking his first steps (had I actually been home to see them), then put those reprints in envelopes, address them, and drop them in the mail to send to friends and family. The flip side? If your buddies bring a camera on a guys' night out when you have a bit too much to drink, a clip of you "talking on the big white phone" in the mens' room can be posted online and downloaded by thousands before your hangover even wears off (the second example is not cited from personal experience.) Now consider this technological advance from an Operations Security standpoint: much of the intelligence that our enemies gather (and that we gather on them) comes from "open sources." Sensitive information can be rapidly and widely disseminated through the internet with potentially devastating consequences, and there are simply too many potential outlets to be effectively policed by leadership oversight and training alone. Restricting certain sites that make it particularly easy to inadvertently release such information isn't meant to be a panacea, but it is a small part of a comprehensive plan to keep sensitive information out of the hands of our adversaries.

BANDWIDTH: Iraq and Afghanistan, unlike corporate America, aren't exactly awash in T1, fiber optics, or broadband cable lines. Practically all of the secure and non-secure digital traffic has to be pumped into and out of theater through satellites (separate ones for secure and non-secure, of course.) Many of those systems sacrifice speed and throughput in the name of deployability, ruggedization, compact size, and robustness... typically not top concerns for stateside corporations. Some of our systems are just old. In order to keep the links that we DO have up and running, it only makes sense to lessen the load by limiting non-official usage. Nonsecure military networks already block a large number of websites and categories of websites (for example: online gambling, chatrooms, or auction sites). Which sites are specifically blocked is up to the network administrators, but it's fairly constant across the board from what I've seen in several units and over the past several years. This critical step is taken to ensure that those lines of communication remain open so that the military can conduct its official business. Almost all of the computers in the area where I currently work had most of those 13 sites blocked well before this policy went into effect.

Why those 13 sites? Why not others that serve a similar function? I strongly suspect that DoD took a long hard look at the "worst offenders" in both of the above categories and composed the list based upon that research. The fact that the author of the Snafu article to which I was linked thinks (or even suggests) that the DoD expects this policy will magically curtail all unauthorized information leaks and speed up our networks leads me to believe that he/she is, quite frankly, depriving a village somewhere of an idiot.

So the military has something against those sites? I don't think that has anything to do with it. In fact, military Public Affairs Offices use several of those sites (Youtube springs to the forefront of my mind as a prime example) for information dissemination and recruiting purposes. As referenced in the original article, the military does "exploit them to its advantage."

Why is the military cutting off servicemen and womens' access to their families back home? Most members of the military deployed to fairly well-established operating bases pay for commercial internet access in their living areas and/or utilize commercial or unit-sponsored Morale Welfare and Recreation (MWR) facilities to make calls or send emails home. I'm typing this letter in my room right now, and (although it costs an arm and a leg) my internet access is not restricted by the Department of Defense. The DoD has set these systems up or allowed them to be set up not because they HAVE to, but because it is good for the families. Any servicemen or women (or their families) that take such access for granted should remember that the DoD is not obliged to provide much more than access to email or a 10-minute phone call every couple of weeks; it wasn't too long ago when GIs were calling their families from overseas only a few times during an ENTIRE TOUR, using HAM radio operators to relay their messages. "'I love you... Over.' 'I love you too... Over and Out.'" The military FAR exceeds this minimum standard in all but the most austere environments I've seen.

Does the military really expect to stop intelligence leaks with this policy? By limiting access to certain sites at work (even if they are still accessible by personal computer through a commercial system mentioned above), that's one more step that sensitive information has to take in order to get out, or that viruses/spyware/etc. must take in order to get in... in addition to passing through well-maintained firewalls and software designed to catch such intruders. The original poster's presumption about personal computers clogging the DoD's network illustrates that he/she has a tenuous grasp on the "big picture" at best... only DoD computers are allowed on the DoD network and personal computers must connect through a privately-procured commercial network as mentioned above. The best tool the military has for preventing such leaks is leader-enforced training. Maintaining Operations Security is EVERYONE'S job... nobody comes to my room and looks over my shoulder while I type emails home or post bulletins on my MySpace account, but I've been well-trained to know what information could potentially benefit our enemies and I take great care to ensure that I am not the reason that such information becomes available to them.

Last but certainly not least, allow me to address the Snafu article's author's jab at "the Pentagon's IT department." Since there is no "Hal 9000" supercomputer in the basement of the Pentagon through which all DoD digital traffic flows, I can only assume that he/she is referring to the communications technicians down at the unit level where servicemen and women are acting as the end-users of these systems. The uniform-wearing personnel that administrate the military's digital resources are, by and large, extremely good at what they do. Not only are they at least on par with corporate IT personnel in terms of training and experience level, but they are far more dynamic problem-solvers... they develop workable solutions on a daily basis in conditions that would make your average stateside techie wet his chinos. It's hard enough administrating a network in an air-conditioned office building where all of your clients are located within a couple of floors... try doing it from a bombed-out hangar in 120-degree heat in the middle of the desert with an unreliable power source, semi-outdated equipment, and clients spread all over the base. Oh yeah, and you're also being mortared every few days. On top of their technical expertise, our IT personnel are also fully-functional members of the best-trained military in the world... I speculate that your average "Microsoft-certified network administrator" couldn't fight his/her way out of a wet paper sack. The author of that article should consider him/herself lucky that military techs are willing to forego the quadruple-or-more pay they could be getting in the civilian sector to leave their families behind, travel halfway around the world, and put themselves in harm's way to defend the author's right to insult their abilities and the Department of Defense for whom they work.