Tweeting From the Front Line 84
Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the deja-what-now dept.
from the deja-what-now dept.
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.'"
Re:Tweeting (Score:4, Insightful)
It can be useful if you find something interesting to follow. Hint Hint: @climagic.
Misleading title (Score:3, Insightful)
It should be Tweeting From Just Behind the Front-Line.
The Front-Line folks are too busy getting shot at to Tweet. It's the support folks who get to do the tweeting (and have all the other fun)...
Re:Tweeting (Score:2, Insightful)
On the other hand, your posts are almost always far more inane than even the most inane twitter posts.
Re:American "Freedom" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Misleading title (Score:5, Insightful)
Where do you define the front line in asymmetric warfare? Chances are those support personnel have just as much chance to get blown up by an IED while conducting a logistics convoy or from a mortar round lobbed at the base, and that is not even accounting for the growing number of support personnel that are doing traditionally combat roles... perimeter defense, access control points, roadblocks, etc.
A lot of my friends are infantry types that manage to tweet or get on facebook while deployed. We had decent internet access during OIF I back in 2003...
Re:Tweeting (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's what I said on the subject in a similar BoingBoing thread recently:
If you really think that Twitter is terrible and causing the downfall of civilization or whatever, that's just a sign that you're not subscribed to the right feeds.
There are tons of feeds by brilliant, creative people like Peter Serafinowicz who really use the medium to its true advantage. The feed shitmydadsays, for example.
Also, if you have a small group of family and friends who have been scattered to the four winds for the usual reasons, it's a lovely way to be connected to them daily in an asynchronous, casual way. Perhaps you're lucky enough to have everyone you care about in the same time zone, but a lot of us are not that fortunate.
Re:American "Freedom" (Score:5, Insightful)
Morale has been an issue in every major war.
Even hardened soldiers can get a boost from the occasional bit of bullshit conversation with the girlfriend/wife, the folks or the kids.
Re:American "Freedom" (Score:3, Insightful)
tedstriker: My squadron ships out tomorrow. We're bombing the storage depots at Daiquiri at 1800 hours. We're coming in from the north, below their radar.
elainedickinson: @tedstriker: When will you be back?
tedstriker: @elainedickinson: I can't tell you that. It's classified.
Re:Brother in active duty (Score:3, Insightful)
I can only imagine. I don't think most civilians understand the level of isolation that soldiers endure, even in peacetime. Add to that the stress of being shot at, and being able to talk to people back home has got to be tremendously comforting. As long as the troops are trained to safeguard operational security -- as if they didn't have a very strong incentive to do so anyway -- any risk has got to be outweighed by the boost in morale.
Anyway, best wishes to your brother. I hope he gets to see his nephew in person soon.
propaganda vs operational security (Score:3, Insightful)
he talks about the trade-offs between operational security and allowing soldiers and the public to interact,
Let me rephrase that for you: they're torn between the need for operational security, and using soldiers for good PR. Otherwise, the press wouldn't have had to fight tooth and nail to be allowed to attend or photograph the ceremonies where dead soldiers are unloaded from cargo transports.
Blogging/twittering is just the modern version of the WW2 propaganda films. Look at our romantic heros, off to fight for justice and democracy! Look at our gritty, determined fighters putting up with horrible conditions and a bitter enemy! Give a voice to front-liners and you see what narcissistic people in the war want you to see. For example, the IED that gets blown up on the side of the road harmlessly...not the one that kills half the soldier's friends. And all the people with internet access are the ones doing Club Med tours- not the ones fighting in the trenches and caves.
One only need look at that attack helicopter video to see the stark difference between reality and what soldiers and the military want us to see.
OPSEC is a fallacy (Score:3, Insightful)
Being in the military and deployed during the first and second rotation of Operation Iraqi Freedom (which was during the dawn of MySpace and Facebook just 'starting' to get popular when I was heading back to the states), I think my opinion would hold some weight as to say there are very few tradeoffs unless you make sure soliders Twitter and Facebook profiles are private and stay that way. I think with that, it would be no more insecure than having a weak password associated with your web-email account.
E-mail may not be 'cool' anymore to do, but it works and it's effective. I think the U.S. military caves on this because they share the same belief I do: it's a lost cause and too hard to corral [slashdot.org]. If you discipline or 'educate' your enlisted folk not to use it, some officer is going to break their own rules and do it and it's *always* going to be too-much-information leaked.
If you have 'that' much free time on your hands in a war zone, as a solider, to be updating your profile and status on social networks several times a day, you probably have absolutely zero business being there in the first place.
Twitter: a shitty email mailing list. (Score:1, Insightful)
Also, if you have a small group of family and friends who have been scattered to the four winds for the usual reasons, it's a lovely way to be connected to them daily in an asynchronous, casual way.
Yeah, back in about 1993 or so I set up an email mailing list for my family. It's just like twitter, except it's private, and we can type more than 140 characters if we need to.
We can actually access it from more places than we can access twitter (some of my relatives work at places where twitter is blocked, but our mailing list's web archives aren't blocked, and their email isn't blocked).
Anyone can send to it whenever they want, and the other subscribers asynchronously get the emails when it's convenient for them to do so.
Re:American "Freedom" (Score:3, Insightful)
Operation security means denying the enemy information.
Much like companies that have non-disclosure agreements and stand to lose billions if they are broken, I'm sure the military can come up with some guidelines about what you can and can't say on social media sites. It's not like soldiers can't or don't use the telephone, so there's already a way for them to spread information inappropriately.
What the hell? (Score:3, Insightful)
In Afghanistan, we are not battling an army that has the same technology we do. We're battling an indigenous people who have been at war for fifty years, either between themselves or against an invader. Unfortunately for us, the only people they hate more than another tribe is foreign invaders, i.e. Americans.
They are holed up in caves, stocking up on ammunition and resting until they have enough weapons, ammo, and food to launch another assault. Or they are building IEDs and monitoring regular troop movements to plant and detonate them. Their singular goal is to kick us out, and eventually they will. You can't occupy a nation, especially one as battle hardened as Afghanistan, when they don't want you there in the first place.
Tweet all the fuck you want. They are reloading no matter what lame psyops scheme you have cooked up.
Imagine if you were defending your homeland. What wouldn't you do?