A few weeks back, word was leaked that the military is now severely restricting access to blogging by military personnel overseas. “Operational security concerns” were cited as the reason for shutting down the milbloggers.

Some of the more graphic images of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have come via YouTube videos, and access to information from back home regarding the true nature of the public sentiment also comes via YouTube video captures. So, it’s been a two way street.

The military can’t having the troops accessing information that might run counter to the mission propaganda, so they’re now shutting down access to YouTube and other social networking sites, ostensibly for the same reasons (operational security concerns).

One of two scenarios come to mind. a) The military has a bunch of dummies running their networks, and they just now discovered (or understood) the security concerns, or b) The reasoning for blog and YouTube limitations is specious in the extreme, and it’s simply an exercise in information management:

…The US defence department said videos, recordings and messages uploaded by troops in the field on to YouTube, MySpace and 11 other websites posed a “significant operational security challenge”, and a drag on the military’s computer network.

Critics of the policy said it was designed to prevent troops either delivering bad news or receiving it from videos posted by Iraqi insurgents on the internet…

I’ll pick door b).

Update: I neglected to earlier add this little tidbit:

The US army, meanwhile, will continue to post videos on YouTube showing soldiers defeating insurgents and befriending Iraqis.

But wait - the soldiers won’t be able to see videos of themselves defeating insurgents and befriending Iraqis - so what’s the point?

Oh, yeah, that…