The IDF had to cancel a planned operation in the West Bank after finding that a soldier had posted the details on his Facebook page. Here are the details from the Wall Street Journal:
“On Wednesday we clean up Qatanah, and on Thursday, god willing, we come home,” he wrote, according to the Israeli paper. He also posted details such as the time and place of the planned operation. The soldier was reported by his friends, court-martialed and sentenced to 10 days in prison, the Associated Press writes, adding that the Israeli military is “cracking down on soldiers’ use of social networking Web sites.”
Reports of the snafu in Israel coincidentally come just a few days after the U.S. military changed its policyon social-media use by ordinary troops, allowing certain military computers to access previously blocked sites like Facebook and Twitter. As the New York Times’ At War blog points out, the new policy is intended to help troops stay in touch with friends and family, and commanders have leeway to block the sites at certain times. And, obviously, posts such as the one that scuttled the Israeli raid would not be allowed in any case.
I figured not posting classified military operations on Facebook and Twitter was a given. Apparently not.
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