Photos sent by US soldiers in Iraq beyond the control of their chiefs show how the latest technology can undermine the carefully crafted public relations of the modern military machine.

"'Hey look at what a wild time I had while I was on duty in Iraq,' the images appear to say," said Chris Hoar, who operates a Web site for posting pictures taken with mobile phone cameras.

The Napster generation's tech-savvy teens and twentysomethings forced the music industry to rethink its business.

Now they are making military officials apply their minds to the flow of information from today's front lines that has potentially disastrous consequences for military planners as images whiz home beyond the Pentagon's tight watch.

Digital cameras, camcorders and laptop computers are widely seen as basic to the modern US military, as is living on bases with Internet connections.

"It's a fact of life," said Marine Corps General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the US military's Joint Chiefs of Staff. "People are going to have these things. They're available to everybody."

Many soldiers are free to send home email dispatches or keep Web journals -- or blogs.

And as long as they do not communicate their precise location and combat plans to the outside world, today's American soldier can chronicle the daily routine of the front, documenting it for the world to see, one snapshot at a time.

"They look like vacation photos," said Hoar, whose Web site, www.textamerica.com, is popular with teens and twentysomethings.

Far from being suppressed by military brass, pictures have been copied and swapped between soldiers and civilian contractors at the front. Some snapshots made their way to US journalists, complete with digital time and date stamps.

"Suddenly, the military has to control not just journalists, they have to control the combatants too," said Steven Barnett, a media professor at Westminster University in London.

"This could have a profound impact on future military planning," he added, likening the photographs inside Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison to TV images that first beamed into US homes in the 1960s and later turned the country against the Vietnam War.

The Iraqi pictures have put otherwise anonymous soldiers on newspaper front pages around the world, documenting their treatment of detainees. And, as US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said, the worse may be yet to come.

Weapons of mass distraction
While the military rounds up those from the US-led coalition believed to be responsible for abuses in Iraq and politicians try to defuse the controversy, observers ponder the social implications of having front-line soldiers with more technological acumen than the top generals back home.

"The irony is it takes a long time for new technologies to be implemented by the military, when some powerful technologies are already in the hands of 18- and 19-year-olds," said Commodore Pat Tyrell of the Royal Navy.

The military needed to review how emerging technologies could forever alter the public relations effort, he said.

And with the advent of 3G camera-equipped phones, soldiers in the heat of battle could show war scenes to the wider world instantaneously, he added.

"At that point, how do you stop them?"

story here
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/emergingtech/0,39020357,39154681,00.htm

Change is good.

The more cameras, the better...people (including government types) are more likely to do the right thing and tell the truth if they know others will find out.

Sometimes NO News is Good NEWS!!!!

I think it is ironic that they don't like having a camera shoved in thier face, when that is exactly what they are doing to everyone in the world.

My God, this is exactly what Hideo Kojima predicted!

The government fearing the speed of the digital infomation flow.

Truth hurts the militrary-industral complex doesn't it? We're still being brainwashed by big corporate media, but the digital so-called "revolution" can mitigate its effects somewhat.

It's over for the US.. we fucked up in Iraq, we stuck up our arrgoant little middle fingers up at the world, OPEC's got our drug-like oil dependence by the nuts, all the while we export jobs and skills overseas.. all this bullshit is going cause some bad ass karma.

the RIAA bullshit is just the tip of the iceberg.. look at the police state we living in...

"I dont want no computer chip in my arm, I don't want to die by a nuclear bomb... I say we all rush the Pentagon.. grab the intercom..."
-Dead Prez, Lets Get Free: Propaganda