Email creates tension for US soldiers, families
Chicago
April 1 2003
In the 12 years between the last Iraqi conflict and this one, internet
technology has profoundly transformed the experience of Americans going to
war.
Perhaps at the top of the list is that fretful parents of soldiers now can
scan their email inboxes for proof that just moments before the message
arrived, their children were able to tap out a few words on a keyboard
halfway around the world.
That kind of comfort was a long time coming. From the trenches of World War
One to the terrors of World War Two and right up through Vietnam and the
first Gulf War, the only reliable way parents and wives and husbands had to
contact their loved ones overseas was by the agonizingly slow postal service.
Telegrams were feared because they mostly brought news of death. During
Vietnam there were some exchanges over a patched together radio/telephone
network, but most folks just licked a stamp.
In the days before the current war was launched, troops in Kuwait were
grousing that it was mid-March and they were just then getting their
Valentine's Day cards. Same old, same old, as they say at the Army War
College.
But this time around, the snail-like pace of the military mail-delivery
system mattered much less because most families were keeping in touch via
email anyway.
Sadly, the wonder of email has triggered the law of unintended circumstances.
Commanders first expressed concerns because messages to the folks back home
must travel through the ordinary internet, utilising the internet Protocol,
or IP, technology with all its well-known pitfalls and vulnerabilities.
The Pentagon uses an ultrasecure Super internet Protocol (SIP) system for
operational messaging because even very small things could give a foe
useful information. After years of stories about juvenile hackers probing
US Defence Department databases, the Pentagon finally learned that if you
hook your network to a phone line you can be left standing naked before the
enemy.
Agents of a technologically adept enemy nation or sub-national terrorist
group might employ the same "sniffer" software used by spam mongers to
monitor the flood of emails from the 250,000 or so military folks directly
involved in the war.
So it's not a big leap to worry that after members of the military spend
significant time sending email - with all those addresses attached - the
armed forces will face the same kinds of costs and confusion that spam
brings the rest of the world.
What a rich demographic that spam list would offer those hustlers who fill
civilian inboxes offering everything from health insurance to Nigerian oil
deals - not to mention those promises of, as one of my colleagues puts it,
bigger peanuts.
Spam aside, there are security issues. To paraphrase the World War Two
adage, "Loose lips sink shIPs."
There have been cases where families back home received emails from forward
military outposts that included photographs deemed out of line. In one
widely cited case, a family received such a photo and proudly posted it on
its own website. Not long afterward the same photo appeared on an
anti-American site.
There reportedly was a flap over email within the Air Force in February
because a rash of messages sent from one base included digital photos
showing geographical features that disclosed the front-line facility's
secret location.
Meanwhile, some wired families have even used IM (instant messaging) to set
up internet video chats in which soldiers in the field can see and hear
their families.
Like all new ways of doing things, an internet-enabled system of family
communication among members of the military is going to take some getting
used to.
Any parent can point to one fairly obvious drawback to the joys of being
able to exchange IMs with their children in harm's way.
When shooting starts, it's a sure bet that anxious spouses and parents will
yearn for just a simple note from the front lines. The temptation to
continually check email will be hard to resist. A whole new category of
worry will be created as the folks back home fret over why they haven't
received just a quick note.
It doesn't matter that logic tells them there is little chance of their
soldier sitting in front of a computer and hitting the Send key while in
battle. Waiting for email threatens to be much worse than in the past, when
it was far more understandable why snail mail didn't arrive.
Maybe that's why the busiest US websites lately have been the ones run by
each branch of the armed forces: www.army.mil/, www.navy.mil/, www.af.mil/
and www.usmc.mil/.
This surely is the first war with a website for each service branch. Surely
an outfit capable of such powerful sites can find a way to provide secure
email accounts for the men and women who are the Army, Navy, Air Force and
Marine Corps.
http://smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/01/1048962730385.html
