Letter: Determining official business use of Internet will create more red tape

Regarding the article, DOD considers prohibiting personal use of networks, a reader writes: In my opinion this hits the nail on the spot. In practical terms, the rules are intended to eliminate traffic that's entering DOD networks as employees surf Web sites that aren't expressly banned or blocked but that would be difficult to justify as necessary purely for official business.

Who will determine what is official business? Think of the red tape of getting sites approved for access. This will stop research, training, support and impact business processes.

One of my concerns is: I'm able to obtain information from the Internet that's relevant to the support I provide today and the support I will likely be providing in the future. Web sites like this one keep us all informed of today's and tomorrow's needs. Is there an abolute need to be able to reach this site from a DOD facility. I say 'why not,' but the DOD may not agree!

It seems to me that [because of] the money that the government already spends on IT and network services, there's no reason that they can't discover and block undesireable Web sites and/or use content filtering to block threats. For the DOD to block government and contract employees from virtually all Internet access would be foolish and counter productive. Let's hope this is well-debated in the Pentagon and in Washington and that cooler heads prevail on the side of not blocking Internet access.

Anonymous

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