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YouTube, MySpace banned on DoD computers

Defense Department computer users will YouTube no more, as officials say troops’ use of that highly popular Web site and 11 others is interfering with the ability to send official data over the military’s own computer network.

“It is a bandwidth issue,” said Army Lt. Col. Randi Steffy, a spokeswoman for U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha, Neb.

The widespread use of the sites had become a network management issue, she said, with operational security an additional, but secondary, consideration.

“There is a benefit to blocking commercial sites that get a lot of DoD traffic,” she said. “More traffic from users opens [the network] up to malicious activity.”

Commands were notified of the ban, which took effect May 14, in an early February directive from Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations in Arlington, Va., said Army Col. Gary Keck, a Defense Department spokesman. He said the ban was not prompted by any event or study, confirmed that bandwidth was the issue and said the decision is “not about content.”

The 12 blocked sites are youtube.com, myspace.com, pandora.com, photobucket.com, live365.com, hi5.com, metacafe.com, mtv.com, ifilm.com, blackplanet.com, stupidvideos.com and filecabi.com.

YouTube allows users to post video content on the Internet for all to see. Military users, particularly those deployed to the war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, use it and other sites to post content ranging from messages for family and friends to homemade music productions to chilling reality footage of combat. MySpace allows users to create their own personal Web pages and share content with friends and family.

However, Keck said he was made aware late Monday that the ban has never been an issue for U.S. forces using DoD computers in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The guys in the theater have never had access on DoD systems since day one,” Keck said. “There’s not one guy in theater who was affected by [the new directive].”

Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have used — and may continue to use — computers such as those supplied by Morale, Welfare and Recreation Services, Keck said.

But until May 14, Defense Department computer users in the .mil domain in other areas of the world were able to access the 12 sites, Keck said. That included, according to John Donaldson of Naval Network Warfare Command, users of the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet and ships at sea — although extremely limited bandwidth for ships’ unclassified Internet access typically makes opening sites containing video links while underway an agonizingly slow process.

The net result of the latest change is that all access to the sites has been cut off for all Defense Department computers worldwide. The new ban affects every computer operating on the Global Information Grid, or “GIG,” in the unclassified .mil domain, said Timothy Madden, a spokesman for JSF-GNO, which falls under StratCom.

Service members are not banned from going to the 12 sites or surfing their content, Keck emphasized; they just can’t use the government’s bandwidth to do it. Troops who want to continue to use the programs will have to use computers linked to the Internet outside the .mil domain.

“We have to be able to operate on the Internet,” said Madden, whose organization directs both operations and defense of the GIG. “We can certainly manage the resources so that we can limit the negative aspects.”

Madden declined to provide an example of how much bandwidth use of the file-sharing programs takes up. “I’m not going to get into any metrics,” he said. “We consider that an operational issue.”

Despite the drag on bandwidth officials say use of the popular sites causes, some might question why troops deployed for upwards of 15 months in arduous conditions have not been able to use Defense Department computers to access the popular file-sharing sites to stay in touch with family and friends.

Steffy said officials were sensitive to that concern. “The command will always take into consideration the morale of the troops,” she said. “But the first consideration has to be the mission requirements.”

Madden said commands can request exceptions to the policy, but he declined to provide specifics. Keck declined to predict whether service members would have access to the banned sites on Defense Department computers in the future.

Steffy said there are other ways for deployed troops to communicate, pointing out that Army Knowledge Online, a password-protected site, includes a video messaging system. Madden declined to elaborate, saying only, “There are other avenues for people to do that.” Keck said that troops who want to upload and send personal videos to family members can also do so on computers outside the .mil domain via Web sites such as yahoo.com.

The new policy takes effect as the military has, ironically, aggressively turned to YouTube as a means of broadcasting what it considers to be the more positive aspects of its work in Iraq and Afghanistan as a way of countering what it considers to be negative news coverage.

Multi-National Force-Iraq established the site, http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=MNFIRAQ, “to give viewers around the world a ‘boots on the ground’ perspective of Operation Iraqi Freedom from those who are fighting it.”

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Staff writer Gina Cavallaro contributed to this report.