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Loose Tweets Sink Fleets

"Great kegger on the USSKH! 22.295, 114.17 #usn #loc"

"Great kegger on the USSKH! 22.295, 114.17 #usn #loc"

The Pentagon just opened the floodgates to social networking in the military. (Wired writeup; DOD policy memo.)

Given the ubiquity of Facebook today and the average age of active-duty military, this is inevitable.

The increase of such technologies goes a long way to make home feel closer. A friend on a Fulbright in Bulgaria has commented on feeling connected to her close friends at home thanks to social networking and instant messenger. That would be a huge boon for troop morale.

Scaaary opportunity for open-source intel, though. A cute (if alarming) example: Please Rob Me, a web site listing all the folks who recently tweeted that they are not at home.

No hacking needed: you have people volunteering gobs and gobs of useful information. All the interested parties have to do is watch.

     
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    Comments (3)

    1. Joel Davis
      Joel Davis Thursday - 04 / 03 / 2010 Reply
      Good point, it's hard to see how the military will avoid having compromising information posted to social networks. It's already happening in other countries. Check out this newswire report about Israel: The Associated Press -Israeli raid called off after Facebook slip http://tinyurl.com/yhuu2zr
    2. Kevin Bondelli Thursday - 04 / 03 / 2010 Reply
      Another interesting caveat of this is exemplified by the story today about the Israeli soldier who sent an update about what town his unit was going to be raiding the next day. There certainly needs to be a balance between the personal communication and morale benefits of social networking and operational security.

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