From The New York Times

The Pentagon may have helped invent the Internet, but these days it is vigorously debating just how to use the Web.

In the coming month, the Defense Department, citing growing concerns about cybersecurity, plans to issue a new policy on social networking sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

People familiar with the department’s review expect it will set limits on who can access networking sites from their unsecure military computers. A public information officer, for instance, probably could; a cook on an aircraft carrier might not.

(The Defense Department also maintains a secure network for classified documents that does not use the public Internet.)

The debate is fueled by the increasing number of grunts who use blogs and social media to communicate with friends, family and the world beyond their wire. But it comes, paradoxically, at a time when the Defense Department itself is increasingly using social media for official purposes, including public relations, recruiting and policymaking.

Some examples can be found here, here, here, here and here.

The military has long had a complicated relationship with the Web, in all its freewheeling, nonhierarchical glory. Blogs since the start of the Iraq war have been censored or shut down by commanders worried about security leaks, or poor decorum.

Last year, a popular blog called Kaboom: A Soldier’s War Journal was taken offline after the author satirized a commanding officer’s attempts to pressure him into taking an unwanted promotion. And in 2007, the Army issued rules requiring troops to submit blog posts and other Web writings for review, a move that was widely viewed as an onerous clampdown on front-line bloggers.

But some bloggers, like Jean Paul Borda, a reservist who has done tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, said that scrutiny varies widely from commander to commander and that troops who avoid discussing sensitive material are usually left alone.

“I had the full support of my chain of command,” said Mr. Borda, who created a Web site called milblogging.com that includes an index to more than 2,400 military-related blogs.

In Vietnam, letters home were often censored. But in the Civil War, they typically were not, and many of those letters were printed in hometown newspapers, providing front-line correspondence for papers that could not afford to send reporters into battle.

Military blogs and other social media serve much the same purpose today, said Terry L. Beckenbaugh, who teaches history at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

Matthew Currier Burden, a former Army intelligence officer who started one of the earliest military blogs, BlackFive.net said that military blogs have expanded and diversified, with sites by and for almost every group: parents and spouses, veterans, analysts and troops with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Blogs by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to come and go, thriving and withering with each deployment. Examples can be found here, here and here.

“It’s been a long fight to convince” commanders of the usefulness of the Web, said Mr. Burden, who wrote a book on military blogs titled, “The Blog of War.” “My tenet is: If you restrict it to much, the only ones blogging will be the ones who don’t care about the rules.”