YouTube and MySpace banned for troops

[MsDoodahs]

I missed this in the news when it happened.

Read here:

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0507/051707p1.htm

Or google news youtube banned and a lot of articles about it come up.

We NEED those men and women to hear Dr. Paul.

 

[Melchior]

I don't know the details of how military persons overseas take part in the election process. Do they even vote in the primaries?

Anyway, I don't understand the reasons for banning those websites, but I doubt there is much we can do about it (it's not like any rights are being violated, right?), there has to be some outlet for them to research the candidates though. Youtube and myspace aren't the only place you can use to read up on Ron Paul or any of the candidates.

 

[qednick]

Living in San Antonio we have a lot of military friends. All have mixed feelings about this. It's supposed to be for national security but they don't like their freedoms being infringed.

 

[MsDoodahs]

Why, of COURSE they take part in elections!

....

Wait....

They do, don't they?

Suddenly I'm unsure about this.

A little help here ??? do active in combat troops get a vote?

 

[mdh]

I can't say I disagree with this - the title of this post is misleading, youtube and myspace are not banned for troops. They are blocked on the official Department of Defense network because of the fact that the internet bandwidth being used by people accessing these sites on official Department of Defense systems connected to the official Department of Defense network was causing congestion that affected official communications. Basically, this is just a step to block personal use of "work" computers, with which I don't disagree. Commercial internet connectivity is not available everywhere in the world, but if you're so far out on the front lines as to not have access to commercial internet connectivity, then I doubt you have time for youtube and myspace anyway.

 

[mdh]

Living in San Antonio we have a lot of military friends. All have mixed feelings about this. It's supposed to be for national security but they don't like their freedoms being infringed.

I don't know who said this had anything to do with national security, but that's blatantly wrong. The reason is due to the strain it puts on official DoD network resources in terms of bandwidth - especially the sattelite bandwidth used to communicate with DoD networks outside of the US.

 

[MsDoodahs]

Okay, so this is just DoD making sure stateside employees are working instead of playing online?

lol..

Good luck with THAT idea, lol...

 

[mdh]

My tax dollars pay for government workers to work, not to surf the interwebs. ＞・＜

 

[MsDoodahs]

Remember that internal IRS study that showed some god awful number of IRS employees spent their days looking at porn online instead of working?

That was a few years back...still makes me laugh, though...

 

[mdh]

Oh, the stories I could tell - but won't because of work contracts and non-disclosure.

 

[Hawaii Libertarian]

Military Voting

One thing the military does do quite well is to have a strong absentee voting program. Having served in the military for over 22 years, it was always convenient to request absentee ballots for any election I wanted in my home state through my county office.

As a group, military people probably vote more than the average population. The largest challenge has been getting awareness of the candidates running when you're stationed overseas, especially in a combat zone.

Internet bandwidth on official networks is very expensive and precious in a deployed environment. Imagine trying to watch YouTube videos on a dial-up speed connection. That's what a lot of these men and women are facing, so the restriction on official networks makes sense.

Our military people do have access to morale networks at the larger bases, but obviously those are in high demand in remote areas for basic things like e-mail.

The good news is that many military people overseas have access to the cable news channels via the Armed Forces Network, so the recent CNN interviews were probably seen by quite a few military people.