Social Media Still a No-No at White House, Walter Reed
BY Nancy Scola | Friday, June 12 2009
If you had to picked two places in Washington DC where a vetted and thoughtful justification should be expected before cutting off people from the free flow of information and engagement of the Internet, an easy first pick might be the White House. But another solid choice might be Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Soldiers recuperating at Walter Reed should, many of us likely believe, be able to make use of Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and the like unless doing so posed a serious risk. But what we're seeing that those who spend their days at both Walter Reed and the White House are limited from what they can see and do on the Internet.
Wired.com's Noah Shachtman broke the news on Wednesday that the Army's 93rd Signal Brigade had issued an order in May, previously undisclosed, that ordered the Army's information managers to make available all the social media tools the Army itself is attempting to make use of. For example, One military campaign we've profiled on techPresident, the "Real Warriors" outreach to active duty soldiers and veterans dealing with traumatic brain injuries and mental trauma, makes heavy use of Twitter, Facebook, and Delicious. The 93rd Signal Brigade's order director all Directors of Information Management on Army bases in the U.S. to open up access to those popular services, along with Flickr and the video site Vimeo. Still official blocked, even under the military order, some bigger name sites and services along with some, um, rather niche ones: 1.FM, Pandora, Photobucket, MySpace, Live365, hi5, Metacafe, MTV, BlackPlanet, StupidVideos, and something called Filecabi.
But Shachtman is now reporting that despite the Army directive, access to even those white-listed social sites is hit or miss on domestic bases. One tipster to Shachtman reports that none of the services are available at Walter Reed. Not even a pronouncement on Army letter head is a magic wand; Shachtman captures a great quote from one soldier: "Nothing like DOIM [domain information managers] for ignoring an order."
Those cut-off soldiers recuperating at Walter Reed aren't alone, though. White House staffers working on the White House network (which includes those not in the White House building proper) can't access many web-based email services or social networking sites, leaving them in something of bubble and dependent on personal cell phone connections to the Internet until they leave work for the day -- whenever that might be.
Of course, both the Army and White House have unique security challenges when it comes to going online. But the situation is muddied by the fact that the reasoning behind the restrictions is often a great unknown. When it comes to the Army, for example, why is Facebook a-okay, but the social-networking site BlackPlanet an unacceptable risk? Without more clearly articulated reasoning, the rules can seem arbitrary at best -- and boneheadedly censorial at worst.