Work-related Blogs and News

According to the BBC News website:

A blog about the life of an RAF airman currently on tour in Afghanistan has notched up 80,000 hits, thanks to its blend of humour and gritty realism.

The article goes onto look at the attraction in describing war.

Click here for the article in question (by Andy McFarlane).

Click here to view the RAF Airman Blog.

It says something when the USA military email you directly with a press release!

The press release concerns a new venture by the USA army in relation to army staff and how they use Web 2.0 communication technology.

From my viewpoint this looks like a way to contain the problems the military has with employees communicating from "behind the lines."

Here is the press release and supporting video (make of it what you wish to!):

The U.S. Army has launched milTube, a secure, behind-the-firewall website providing a safe military alternative to commercial video-sharing sites like YouTube.

MilTube allows the military workforce to watch and share videos across installations worldwide.

The site follows Web 2.0 tools milBook, milWiki and milBlog, which already have more than 88,500 users across the Department of Defense.

Attached is a press release and high-resolution images for your publication.

You can watch a short video about milTube here:

A press release from Wikileaks:

US ARMY TO SPY ON SOLDIER AND FAMILY BLOGS

The US Army has formed an "Army Web Risk Assessment Cell" to spy on the personal blogs and forum posts of soldiers and their families, according to a confidential military document released today by the transparency group Wikileaks.

The cell is to "Conduct routine checks of web sites on the World Wide Web for disclosure of critical and/or sensitive information that is deemed a potential OPSEC compromise."

Web sites include, but are not limited to, "Family Readiness Group (FRG) pages, unofficial Army web sites, Soldier's web logs (blogs), and personal published or unpublished works related to the Army."

The passage comes from a March update to the US Army's 2007 "Operations Security" regulation 530-1, which is the Army's high-level document on how the service should keep secrets.

In an unusual circularity, the disclosure of the document on the internet today is something the document was designed to prevent.

You can access the full classified document by following the web-link above.

According to today's Guardian: "Sweeping new guidelines barring military personnel from speaking about their service publicly have been quietly introduced by the Ministry of Defence".

Further details to emerge in the article also suggest:

"Soldiers, sailors and airforce personnel will not be able to blog, take part in surveys, speak in public, post on bulletin boards, play in multi-player computer games or send text messages or photographs without the permission of a superior if the information they use concerns matters of defence.

They also cannot release video, still images or audio - material which has previously led to investigations into the abuse of Iraqis. Instead, the guidelines state that "all such communication must help to maintain and, where possible, enhance the reputation of defence"."

The decision appears to have caused a degree of discontent within the ranks of the armed forces - more details of which can be found in the article itself: MoD issues gag order on armed forces by Audrey Gillan.