Tweeting Marines

The Marines have just passed a ban on Web 2.0 use for a year. Their reasoning? Tweets, status updates, and YouTube videos could be compromising soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. I can see how this might be a problem, YouTube videos in particular. If the enemy could take a small amount of information from a large number of Marines they might be able to piece together things like location, numbers, equipment, etc. Knowing any of this information could be extremely detrimental to Marine operations.

That said, all internet usage by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is already monitered. There are restrictions on what can and cannot be shared, and consequences to face if that information is leaked. Could this Web 2.0 ban be to simply divert resources that have been keeping tabs on Marine social sites into something more constructive? I doubt it's a single soldier in a tent watching over all incoming and outgoing messages, there must be teams of people at work. I can agree, it certainly seems like a better use of resources to have them doing something else.

Still, we get a lot of information directly from soldiers right now. Very little of it, if any, could be used by the enemy to procure game changing information. What we get from them is unadulterated news, something untouched by US news outlets. I think we can all agree that kind of honesty is hard to come by when news stations feel the need to put a positive or negative spin on an event.

Web 2.0 also allows citizens to keep track of loved ones in the field. I have a friend in the Army who uses Facebook freqently to keep all of us up to date on what life is like in Iraq and, most importantly, whether or not he's still alive. I suppose I could live if I didn't have daily knowledge of his health, but without Web 2.0 I wouldn't have monthly (or even yearly!) knowledge of how he's doing.

This is ground the Marine decision makers are going to have to tread carefully. I can't imagine the soldiers are happy about it, much less their loved ones. We'll probably hear more about this in the near future.