The US Department of Defense has announced that it will be blocking access to popular “recreational” sites on the Internet including YouTube.com. The ban against social networking sites is all set to be effective from May 14 and will cover U.S. troops based in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Julie Ziegenhorn, spokeswoman for U.S. Strategic Command was at pains to stress the military was not taking sides as regards the content on the sites in question. “This is a bandwidth and network management issue. We’ve got to have the networks open to do our mission. They have to be reliable, timely and secure,” she claimed.
Korea commander Gen. B.B. Bell said as much when he revealed that the sites although used by soldiers to keep in touch with families were just using up too much bandwidth. “This recreational traffic impacts our official DOD network and bandwidth availability, while posting a significant operational security challenge,” he wrote.
The sites that will be blocked are youtube.com, photobucket.com, myspace.com, mtv.com, metcafe.com, live365, hi5.com, pandora.com and 1.fm..
[Via earthtimes.org]
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