Marines ban social networking

  AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Sean Kilpatrick

The U.S. Marine Corps. banned social media sites from use on its networks for one year, saying they pose a security risk. That includes sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. The Marine Corps. order, as reported by CNN.com, reads: 

These internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries ... The very nature of SNS [social network sites] creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage that puts OPSEC [operational security], COMSEC [communications security], [and] personnel ... at an elevated risk of compromise.

Of course, you can still follow the Pentagon on Twitter, under the name of Price Floyd, the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs. Floyd, who took his post last month, is leading Web 2.0 efforts to engage the public at the Department of Defense—despite the need, apparently, to lockdown on some of their own.