Pentagon defends move to block YouTube, MySpace

PENTAGON DEFENDS MOVE TO BLOCK YOUTUBE, MYSPACE
[SOURCE: Reuters 5/18]
The Pentagon has defended a decision to block popular websites including YouTube and MySpace on US military computers, saying it needed to keep its network clear for operations. Military officials said they had restricted access to more than a dozen recreational sites because they had registered high levels of use on US Department of Defence computers. Rear Adm Elizabeth Hight, deputy head of the Defence Information Systems Agency, said the Pentagon needed to ensure bandwidth on its network of more than 5 million computers was not clogged by the use of those sites. In a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates earlier this week, Rep Ed Markey (D-MA) said troops overseas had used many of the blocked sites to communicate with family and friends and that those contacts were critical for morale. But the Pentagon said many of the sites had already been blocked on military computers in Iraq and Afghanistan for more than two years and troops had many other ways of keeping in touch with loved ones. The Pentagon agency responsible for morale provided commercial Internet services free of charge at bases across Iraq and Afghanistan and those would be unaffected by the decision, Rear Adm Hight said.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4064182a28.html

* Pentagon Continues to Censor Troops' Web Access
http://markey.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2842&I...