Security derails USB drives for soldiers

Sometimes even those people with the best intentions run afoul today’s maddeningly pervasive security landscape — as evidenced by a recently-launched program aimed at helping United States servicemen serving abroad stay in touch with family members back home.

When the Pentagon ordered its IT administrators to block access to social networking sites including YouTube, MySpace and iFilm on DoD networks in mid-May, it cut off some of the most commonly-used formats employed by soldiers to share photos, videos, and audio recordings with family and friends back home, critics have said, hurting morale and leaving some troops feeling cut off.

As a result, at least one company — Tacoma, Wash.-based Topia Technology — decided it would try to provide an alternative to the banned sites, which were blocked primarily because the DoD saw use of the URLs hogging up too much of its bandwidth.

A secondary concern with the 11 banned sites was that sensitive information could potentially leak out in some of the videos, blogs and recordings being posted to the public URLs — such as information on troop movements in Iraq.

Topia’s idea was to hand out USB devices, under a program dubbed TroopSkoot, that would allow servicemen to create a two-way encrypted channel with people at home, through which they could transfer documents, files and other content.

The company had even gone so far as to donate 5,000 of the devices — which claim to hold the equivalent of up to 10 feature-length films’ worth of data — to soldiers and their families based out of Fort Lewis Army Base outside Tacoma.

(This news video from KOMO-TV in Seattle demonstrates how the USB devices work.)

However, based on the fact that the TroopSkoot USBs employ Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption and decryption to allow soldiers to establish a “virtual family network” with loved ones, a communications channel that even the DoD cannot access, it appears that the devices won’t be allowed.

Janine Terrano, founder and CEO of Topia, admitted that the SSL technology used in the devices would prevent the government from monitoring the content being passed through its system — which is supported over a Web-based interface.

Terrano said that her company’s focus was base firmly in helping soldiers stay in touch with home, without consideration of possible misuse.

The idea that troops could potentially communicate with unknown outsiders in private using the devices likely would have raised questions when servicemen began attempting to use the gizmos, but existing military policies will keep the USB gadgets from being used with DoD equipment, according to Pentagon spokesmen.

“Longstanding DoD policy prohibits individuals from introducing unauthorized software, firmware or hardware on the DoD information system,” said Major Patrick Ryder, a U.S. Air Force officer serving as a spokesman with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense. “Because this particular hardware and software are currently unapproved, this policy prohibits their use on DoD computers.”

Further, while Topia’s press release describing the TroopSkoot program includes ringing endorsements of the technology from representatives of the USO and a former deputy commander of the U.S. troops during Desert Storm, spokesmen at Ft. Lewis said that the base has given no official approval for the USBs’ usage.

Some of the servicemen given the devices have already been deployed overseas.

“There has been no official Army or Ft. Lewis endorsement of these devices, we only just heard about it and found out that they have been made available to some soldiers as well as their families,” said Joseph Piek, a spokesman for Ft. Lewis. “We’re trying to find out if there was unit-level participation in some form prior to deployment.”

Piek said that obviously, if the technology allows soldiers and their families to stay in communication while not violating DoD policies, then it would be “a great product for morale,” but it would appear that the gig is already up for TroopSkoot, based n the Pentagon’s take.

Some members of Congress are already leaning on the DoD to loosen up its social networking restrictions.

Meanwhile, servicemen will apparently have to wait a bit longer to find a new way to keep in touch with their loved ones.