Pentagon squashes fun
In an increased effort to kill what little joy might still live in the hearts of our dedicated service men and women, the Pentagon has blocked access to YouTube, MySpace, MTV.com, and 10 other sites. Users will no longer be able to access these sites from military computers, or from base owned wireless access points. This comes on the heels of a decision to curtail the use of blogs by service people, requiring any member of the armed forces with a desire to blog to register their site and submit their proposed content for official review. This move could justifiably be seen as an attempt to create a more secure and controlled environment, but also runs the risk of seriously affecting morale. As a young soldier writes, “These sites are like modern-day forms of writing letters, the same sorts of letters that soldiers in the trench holes in World War II wrote,” said Corey Robinson, 22, who served a total of 20 months in Iraq and Afghanistan in the Army. “When we were able to use the Internet, there was a huge difference in our morale,” Mr. Robinson said.
[Via NYTimes]
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