Where to draw line online in military?

Sometimes a green dot on her computer screen is all Liisa Hyvarinen Temple needs to know that her husband, Rex, is alive and OK.

He is serving with the Air Force somewhere in eastern Afghanistan. But that green dot means he's logged into his Skype Internet phone service, even if he can't talk. She tries not to worry too much if there's no green light for a couple of days.

"He's at a forward operating base and has god-awful Internet access," Hyvarinen Temple said. "But he's lucky and has his laptop with him and wireless he can pipe into. ... To be gone for a year, you need to be connected somehow."

That may become more difficult with the military cracking down on social networking. The Marines last week banned Facebook and Twitter from military-owned computers. Other branches of the U.S. military are exploring similar limits. Some officials worry about sensitive information leaking out, viruses getting in or a shortage of bandwidth on government networks.

But in a modern war, families have come to rely on social media to hear from loved ones fighting abroad - a YouTube clip from Baghdad, a Facebook update from Kabul, an instant message from a tent in an undisclosed mountain outpost.

As worried families trade news of the ban, top military officers are struggling with the issue as well.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, has a Twitter account, @TheJointStaff, to send 140-character-or-less messages about what he's reading or thinks about life in command. He has no plans to give it up.

What's allowed

In some respects, the Marine ban isn't new. For years, the Marines had standing orders banning some Internet sites from official military computers that handle communications or mission operations. In other words, no MySpace on a PC that normally orders ammunition.

What changed last week was a Marine order from Washington that banned Facebook and Twitter from Marine computers, with rare exceptions.

Marines can still use Facebook, Twitter or other sites on their personal PCs or cell phones if they have them, or in recreation centers or other non-official connections. But such a ban could have the hardest impact on Marines in the most forward positions, where military computers are often the only ones available.

Last week, the Marines went on a public relations offensive to downplay the ban's effects.

The ban is "no different than any big company in America," said Price Floyd, the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs.

Vital connections

For war fighters abroad, even the most scant connections are vital. Rex Temple, Hyvarinen Temple's husband, is at a rough outpost with limited access. There are long lines for public computers, and the online connections often break down.

"Last night it took an hour to send two pictures," he said during a call from Afghanistan. "I'm fortunate, though. When soldiers had to rely on snail mail, it would be weeks, if not months, until you'd receive a letter. Then computers came along, and you can have e-mail, social media, Web 2.0, MySpace almost instantly in some places."

A blog that Hyvarinen Temple, a former employee of WFLA, Channel 8, produces about her husband's humanitarian work (www.afghanistan mylasttour.com) has become a meaningful connection between the two and their extended family of friends. The couple pay $90 a month to a contractor so Temple can have limited Wi-Fi in his room for his personal laptop.

He feels for fighters in more forward positions.

"They're in a tent," he said. "If they want a hot meal, they cook it themselves. They wash their clothes in a barrel, and their shower is a bottle of water and a washcloth."

There should be some waivers of the rules, Temple said, to make sure those soldiers can send e-mail or messages back home, as long as mission-critical computers still have links.

Tension online

Word of the Marine ban struck a nerve among families back home, and their comments erupted on the same social media sites they use to keep tabs on family in war zones.

Asked to comment on the rule, Kimberly Grover of Detroit wrote on the Support Our Marines Facebook page that she needs Facebook and MySpace to reach her son abroad. "However if it got in the way of his safety or other's safety I would gladly give it up ... I do feel we are extremely fortunate to have the internet. What a different world than the Gulf War or Vietnam. I do not know how those mothers survived."

A ban "may be the only way to keep them safe," Wendi Jaeck answered on the same page. "But there should be some way, not only in the Marines, but in all the services to contact their families."

Randy Harrelson of Richmond, Va., said "a paper letter just doesn't cut it anymore." His son Edward is on a third deployment to the Middle East and uses Yahoo Messenger to ask about things back home. "He wants to know how his sister is doing, how his dog is doing, the weather, everything," Harrelson said.

He tried to put the order in perspective, though. "The worst thing I can think is if some family member gets the knock on the door by two Marines because someone's son or daughter there posted something to Twitter and it got in the wrong hands."

The irony

While the ban's impact ripples on, other parts of the military are ramping up their social media efforts when it meets their priorities.

Centcom, with headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base, recently set up Twitter feeds and a channel on YouTube.

"These are forums where we will have to be to communicate with the American public," Lt. Cmdr. Bill H. Speaks of Centcom said in a statement last month.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently praised social media's involvement in protests in Iran. "It's a huge win for freedom around the world," he said. "Because this monopoly of information is no longer in the hands of the government." Repressive governments "just can't draw the net tight enough to stop everything - if you can't text, then you Twitter."

The military-produced U.S. Forces Afghanistan Facebook page has 20,000 friends after just two months in operation. Its mission is to "disseminate news and imagery from its operations, and counter and pre-empt extremist propaganda."

The Army heavily uses MySpace to recruit 18- to 24-year-olds who regularly use social-networking sites.

One military office set up a clearinghouse online called Social Media @ DOD to promote the military's own feeds from Twitter, Facebook, the site-tagging service Delicious, the photo-sharing site Flickr, the career site LinkedIn, the video site YouTube and many others.

Future orders

Other branches of the military are wrestling with where and how to encourage or ban social media. Last week, Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III ordered a study of social media sites in hopes of establishing new policy by October. That stems from concerns raised by U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees some military networks.

Meanwhile, Adm. Mullen used his Twitter account last week to chat about trips he has taken and books he is reading, including "The Bookseller of Kabul," which he praised.

In one post this week, he said, "Obviously we need to find right balance between security and transparency. We are working on that. But am I still going to tweet? You bet."