Via Joi Ito:
A week after a scandal broke involving photos of American troops torturing Iraqi prisoners, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, & Root is pulling the plug on private electronic communications with the folks back home, apparently at the request of the Department of Defense.
Uh, oh, I’ve been reading ginmar for a while and was wondering what the fallout might be for her after the photographs of prisoner abuse story broke. It’s nothing to do with her unit, but the issue of boots in the field having access to “non-military” channels of communication (in order to post personal reports or opinions, or upload personal photos) was bound to come up.
On another website weeks ago I ran across a photoblog community that featured several military members who had been continuously posting photos from Iraq… including one from a member who had been killed in the last month or two. I think there’s about to be either a whole lot less of that coming out of Iraq, or a hell of a lot more. I hope ginmar manages to keep some kind of lifeline to the outside world open.
If the majority of boots on the ground lose all or most of their Internet access, there will be hell to pay. Hell. To. Pay. It’s one of the few things that works for them (when they can get access) to help them get through the daily grind of grunt work, grime, and all-too-frequent “Oh, shit” moments of terror.
