DoD To Evaluate Social Networking Sites

In the wake of the Marine Corps’ recent decision to bar its members from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other Web-based social-networking sites, the Defense Department will conduct a study to evaluate their use by all service members and formulate an appropriate policy regarding their impact. In a memo issued late July, Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III ordered the department’s information office to weigh security risks the sites offer with potential benefits. Like commercial entities who balance Web security with the seemingly limitless opportunity to communicate corporate messages, the Defense Department must find a way to adapt and use such sites to its advantage, said Price Floyd, the principal deputy assistant defense secretary for public affairs, in an article published by Wired, the online magazine. “Companies in the private sector that have policies like us don’t dare shut down their Web sites,” Floyd said. “They have to sell their products and ideas.”