Marines Ban Facebook & All Social Networks

Effective immediately, the United States Marine Corp is prohibiting the use of internet social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.

"These internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries," reads the Marine Corps order issued August 3, 2009.

"The very nature of SNS (social network sites) creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage that puts OPSEC [operational security], COMSEC [communications security], [and] personnel... at an elevated risk of compromise."

"OPSEC is paramount. We will have procedures in place to deal with that," Price Floyd, the Pentagon's newly-appointed social media czar, said.

"What we can't do is let security concerns trump doing business. We have to do business... We need to be everywhere men and women in uniform are and the public is. If that's MySpace and YouTube, that's where we need to be, too," Floyd said.

The Marines say they will issue waivers to the Web 2.0 blockade, if a "mission critical need" can be proven. And they will continue to allow access to the military's internal "SNS-like services." But for most members of the Corps, access to the real, public social networks is now shut off for the next year.
　
　
　

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