DOD's Facebook Policy

Pentagon Chief Information Officer Teresa Takai on March 22 signed a memo outlining the Defense Department's policy for using Facebook.

Right now, DOD organizations may only set up Facebook "pages," according to the memo. "Official use of other FB products by DOD, such as Profiles, Groups, and third-party products integrated with FB, is not authorized," it adds.

Use of Facebook should be done in accordance with a DOD directive that outlines how the Pentagon's Non-Classified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNET) is used. According to that directive:

* The NIPRNET shall be configured to provide access to Internet-based capabilities across all DoD Components.

* Commanders at all levels and Heads of DoD Components shall continue to defend against malicious activity affecting DoD networks (e.g., distributed denial of service attacks, intrusions) and take immediate and commensurate actions, as required, to safeguard missions (e.g., temporarily limiting access to the Internet to preserve operations security or to address bandwidth constraints).

* Commanders at all levels and Heads of DoD Components shall continue to deny access to sites with prohibited content and to prohibit users from engaging in prohibited activity via social media sites (e.g., pornography, gambling, hate-crime related activities).

* All use of Internet-based capabilities shall comply with paragraph 2-301 of Chapter 2 of the Joint Ethics Regulation (Reference (b)) and the guidelines set forth in Attachment 2.