Tweeting From the Front Line 84
blackbearnh writes "There's an interesting article up on O'Reilly Radar talking about how the US military is reacting to the increasing use of social media by soldiers in hostile territory. In an interview, Price Floyd, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, talks about the trade-offs between operational security and allowing soldiers and the public to interact, and how social media has changed the way the DoD communicates with the public. 'I think that we need to become much more comfortable with taking risk, much more comfortable with having multiple spokesmen out there, thousands of spokesmen in essence. But, for me, there's nothing more credible than the men and women who are out there on the front lines, fighting the wars that we're in, sending messages back to their family and friends.'"
"DoD communicates with the public"??? (Score:4, Informative)
Ask Michael Yon.
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/ [michaelyon-online.com]
http://www.facebook.com/MichaelYonFanPage [facebook.com]
http://twitter.com/michael_yon [twitter.com]
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Misleading title (Score:1, Informative)
Spoken like someone who has never actually seen warfare in his life. There is no "front" or "rear" in Afghanistan, and there can't possibly be where there are not men in uniforms that can be clearly identified. In WWII you could confidently declare certain areas to be "front" or "rear" since you could identify the enemy as being present in certain areas. Not so in Afghanistan. You could be struttin down Disney Blvd on Bagram Airfield one second, on the largest and most secure base in Afghanistan, and the next second you could be blown to pieces by a mortar or rocket, or even a piece of unexploded ordnance/landmine/etc from Soviet times. You are not safe ANYWHERE in Afghanistan.