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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Sorry Soldiers, No More My Space or You Tube. No Big Deal...Right?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/14/AR2007051400112.html

Imagine that you're a soldier somewhere in the middle of nowhere: Afghanistan, Korea, Iraq. You see some pretty horrible things, are far from those you love, and are often excruciatingly bored. You look forward to your time on the web to communicate with loved ones, see what's going on back home, and just take in a little light entertainment. Sites like YouTube and MySpace surely go a long way in making your stay in a life-threatening environment a bit more comfortable.

But now the Defense Department decided has begun blocking access to YouTube, MySpace, and 11 other Web sites on its computers due to the "enormous amounts of traffic on those sites that could swamp the military's dedicated Internet network and disclose sensitive materials." No big deal, right? Wrong.

2 comments:

CoralPoetry said...

Hi,

YouTube is wonderful. Isn't there some way to compartmentalize parts of the Internet so that it doesn't interfere with Defence and other important channels?

Regards,
Coral

Joseph Ahdoot M.A. said...

I think your comment is smarter than you realize. The need to "compartmentalize" the web is massive but the question is how? Do you filter out parts of websites that include certain words? That is done in many locations to reduce viewing of pornagraphy but is far from perfect. If it isn't automatic then you are talking about devoting a great deal of manpower to manually filter the web... too costly I presume. If you come up with any ideas let us know.