Social networking available to military

How important is it to be active in a social network? Apparently, the Pentagon decided it’s important enough to issue a new policy that allows anyone on the military’s non-classified computer network to access Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites.

The U.S. Department of Defense researched this decision for months before deciding that it’s important to “maximizing the capabilities” of the Internet, said Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn III in a DoD press release. Still, access to other sites is still denied, such as pornography and hate crime-related.

Photo credit C. Todd Lopez, image from the United States Army Web site.

So what does this mean? Military personnel can now stay in better communication with family and friends. This new access will be better for the military in terms of recruiting. Think about how a soldier can now connect with others through Facebook or Twitter. Through these connections, people who were interested in enlisting might feel spurred to actually do it.

Another site that can now be accessed? YouTube.

These are all nice concessions for our soldiers (as well as everyone else affected by the change). Social networking is good for people, especially for those troops who are overseas and haven’t been home in a long time. I don’t know the full details of the policy, but I wonder what the policy is for troops in high conflict areas such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Is the DoD concerned about accidental information leaks? After all, people can inadvertently reveal information they didn’t mean to, post something they regret later or tweet something their employer doesn’t agree with.

Unless I’m misunderstanding the way the network works (which is likely since I have no military connections).