Military Bans Flash Drives, CDs, etc.

The United States Military is no longer allowing any current member of the military to use any form of removable media (such as flash drives, removable hard drives, cds, etc). After being told this information by a member of the Marine Corps who wished to remain anonymous it was easy to find credible news sources which validated the claims made.

Editorial Cartoon. 2010 Universal Press Syndicate Copyright

CBS News reports that on December 3, 2010 a "Cyber Control Order" was issued by Major General Richard Webber, commander of Air Force Network Operations.

Wired Magazine reports that the Cyber Control Order:

Directs airmen to “immediately cease use of removable media on all systems, servers, and stand alone machines residing on SIPRNET,” the Defense Department’s secret network. Similar directives have gone out to the military’s other branches.

“Unauthorized data transfers routinely occur on classified networks using removable media and are a method the insider threat uses to exploit classified information. To mitigate the activity, all Air Force organizations must immediately suspend all SIPRNET data transfer activities on removable media,” the order adds.


The reasoning behind this is because of WikiLeaks. As CBS News confirms:



The move is probably in direct response to an earlier investigation that implicated former Army PFC Bradley Manning as the source of WikiLeaks' Iraq and Afghanistan war documents, leaked earlier this year. Manning later claimed he downloaded a trove of documents off SIPRNET onto a CD marked "Lady Gaga." Manning also claimed to have downloaded the hundreds of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables recently leaked by WikiLeaks, as well as other unknown materials.

Manning worked in the intelligence operations of the 2nd Brigade in Baghdad. He was supposed to be examining intelligence relevant to Iraq, but defense officials said he was using his "Top Secret/SCI" clearance to download classified documents, CBS News reports.




So, this is how it begins. This just makes it seem like there is more that needs to be hidden; obviously to an extent to protect the country and the national security and troops there needs to be secrecy, but isn't there some information that after a period of time SHOULD be released? And by serving this country as a part of the military does that mean serving the GOVERNMENT or serving on behalf of THE PEOPLE?