Friday, March 25, 2011

Who wants to know?

As a military wife I often have found myself in a tricky situation with family and friends. You see, not everything in our life is free for me to share with even those who are closest to me. This is really hard sometimes! There are times when Sarge has information that he is unable to discuss with even me, which is even harder to accept because we really hate having any kind of secret between us!

However, when it comes to keeping my husband and family safe there is nothing that I would not do.  So, Sarge and I talked and came up with some OPSEC guidelines that work for us. These apply to blogging, email, phone/text conversations and to friends, family and anyone who might ask. There really are no exceptions!

OPSEC stands for Operations Security. "The fancy definition is that OPSEC is about preventing the “accumulation of one or more elements of sensitive/unclassified information or data that could damage national security by revealing classified information.” Practically speaking, it’s like giving someone pieces of an “intelligence” puzzle that are not themselves classified – and may even seem harmless – but that when assembled, could lead someone to discover a classified or sensitive unclassified program, activity, or project." OPSEC definition source



Our OPSEC guidelines:

We don't talk about the specific time frame.

We don't talk about the mission.

We don't talk about specific military locations.

We don't share pictures with unit insignia.


If you know us in *real life* please refrain from using our full names on this blog.

Phone, email, text, chat rooms, message boards, blogs.
Always assume someone is listening.

No deployed mailing address will be shared with anyone.
If you'd like to send something to Sarge, please send it to me and I will get it to him. 
This includes immediate family and friends.

We have a PO Box for all mail associated with this blog. The address can be found on the "Contact Me" tab at the top of this blog.


While we realize not everyone is as strict about this on a personal level, we feel very strongly and appreciate your respect for these OPSEC guidelines.


*This post will also be linked under the military resources tab at the top of this blog.
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