Careless tweets cost lives, warns MoD The Ministry of Defence has knocked together a couple of videos warning just how a careless tweet or unguarded Facebook comment could end up with someone on the wrong end of an AK-47. The MoD accepts social networking sites are "great for keeping in touch with family and friends, and letting the world know what you’re up to", …
If you're in the forces/MoD, you'd be right to be naturally a little more cautious.
The take home message I got was 'don't assume that all your acquaintances know what is and is not for general consumption and tailor your internet use accordingly'.
Note that this is aimed at MoD personnel, not Joe Public, who have access to certain materials and could, without intent, let something slip that is useful for certain n'er do-wells.
That said, there are a few people who should think twice about what they post in t'internets. Obvious icon is obvious.
I worked at MoD sites, and the kind of chatter you can pick up by having breakfast in the nearby hotels is scandalous. All the external consultants talk about their work like the Official Secrets Act doesn't exist - which shows they aren't worth their clearance.
If you work with any kind of protected information, health records, personal information bank records, government information, whatever, you MUST be aware of the appropriate discretion or you should not be doing the work. Even if your personal life is itemised by the minute on twitter, the information you are handling at work isn't yours, and you should pay that information the trust it requires and deserves.
On the flip side, this also means you can DEMAND that care with your information when you hand it off. The moment you accept lower standards, those will become the new standards..
Like it or not, there ARE people out to get uniformed personnel. In addition, while the little bit of information you hand out may be insignificant, when taken in context with all the insignificant bits of information everyone else is letting slip, the bad guys can get a surprisingly complete picture they shouldn't have....
And that doesn't even get into the issue of systems getting infected by dodgy social networking games...
Silence is golden.
When I arrived at the article I had the preconceived notion that this was going to be another god-awful PR campaign.
Actually it is pretty good. Having been part of the Royal Navy it is incredible what useful information you can pick up by simply listening these days, either electronically or in real life. Complete force deployments and readiness states, etc. etc.
Consider that the lessons of fighting in Northern Ireland are so quickly thrown aside (NB I am not judging who was in the right - just if you want to fight smart guerrillas, beware!)
M
Before you bunch of cynics start writing this off as some big-brother-make-work BS cast your minds back only a few months when the Taliban were launching mortar attacks on allied bases as a result of forces personel posting geo-tagged data to Facebook.
It's already happeneing so yes, this is necessary and maybe the naysayers should enage brain before mouth once in a while.
It might become public that a badly equpped and badly led army regularly ignores national and international laws without anybody getting punished, unless the press gets wind. Even then, nobody ever gets done for war crimes, but somebody might have to take the blame and move to a private security firm. Can't have that!
...because I could hardly understand what the two young women are saying! Don't they have elocution lessons in British schools, or are the teachers now literally mind-readers?
As for "It may not just be friends and family reading your status updates", please to remember that that definitely includes members of several government intelligence agencies. Makes you wonder who the real terrorists are.
One of the highlights of summer camp as an Air Cadet was watching security videos on day one of camp. Back then they seemed so poorly acted that they were amusing to a 13 year old. My favourite was the exploding Heinz Ketchup bottles, delivered straight to the mess by Paddy and his brother, Paddy.
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