DoD Will Listen to Internet Companies at Roundtable Discussion Thursday

Defense Information Systems Agency Vice Director Rear Admiral Elizabeth Hight will conduct a roundtable Thursday at the Pentagon.

Soldier at a base computer Photo courtesy: bliss.army.mil

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - It looks like the Defense Department is taking a number of Internet organizations seriously in their complaint of a ban that would keep troops here and overseas from visiting sites like YouTube and MySpace. They will be sitting down to talk about it tomorrow.

The government says the ban stems from soldiers using too much bandwidth watching videos and listening to Internet music, they also say it is a security compromise.

But the view of many soldiers currently overseas in the combat theaters is that it is nothing more than an attempt to restrict information.

Defense Information Systems Agency Vice Director Rear Admiral Elizabeth Hight will conduct a roundtable Thursday at 2:30 PM EDT, in the DoD briefing room of the Pentagon.

They plan to discuss the Department's efforts to ensure DoD computer networks are available for operations, and the recent decision to block access to certain recreational web sites from DoD computers.