Proxies and Patriots

The U.S. Military is the heart and soul of America. These are people who would give their lives for freedom, and to protect rights of Americans they don’t even know.

Even with this larger than life persona, these soldiers are just average people. They value family, happiness, and fun just as much as everybody else. When they signed up for duty, it was with the knowledge that they might have to leave their home for a long period of time. This is just part of the duty, but it doesn’t take away from the ache going away from their home and country will cause.

While traveling or being stationed internationally, some military members get homesick. If you are in a different country for an extended period of time, loneliness can easily dominate your trip. If soldiers begin to find themselves forgetting the smell of an old fashioned barbeque, or the pleasure of hanging out with friends and family, then maybe watching some good old American television is a great way to restore their morale.

Unfortunately re-runs of “The Honeymooners” get old quickly and can lead to a strange affinity for communism. Only kidding, but it can get boring.

Along came internet TV, a godsend to the nomads of the globe. Imagine a soldier’s joy when they get a chance to connect back to their culture, and feel at one with the U.S. again. They could catch up on affairs overseas, whether it is watching the stock market, or just to see what antics Britney Spears has been up to lately.

Soon enough though, media companies wised up, and blocked these homesick people from connecting with their familiarity. Media websites, just like TV, are sponsored by advertising. And most US advertisers do not want to show American ads to people in other countries, it’s a waste of their money.  So all these media websites had to do was read your IP address, which shows that you are not located in the U.S., and once confirmed you were blocked, you got the boot, and quite possibly a “this site has been blocked” message. What is a serviceman to do?  They’re still Americans, probably still a good target for the advertising, but due to geographic location, they are out of luck, right?

Wrong, a private proxy server is the cure to any military member’s intercontinental woes. The media sites that block out-of-country visitors can be defeated by use of a private proxy server. These servers can change your IP address to an American one, and the sites will give you your rightful access to their content. American Military are still citizens of the U.S., and their ability to surf the Internet freely should not stop even though they are away from their homeland.

So a proxy is a simple solution to bypass these virtual roadblocks. Here’s how it works. All Internet connections wear a nametag, (called an IP address) that contains information such as location, server ID, etc. When your computer pulls up to the online blockade, the blockade guard (the internet site) reads your nametag, and if you are not on the approved list, you are kicked out. The proxy would enable your computer to wear a different nametag, so that if you are in Turkey for example, the guard could be made to believe you are in America, and allow you access.

Just as important to our military members abroad, an anonymous proxy does as its name says it should; it keeps you anonymous. The soldier can surf all of the sites that he or she wants without fear of a foreign government busting down their door.  This is true if the proxy offer an encryption service, which encodes and convolutes all data that is entered or output on their computer. This way even if the local government monitored their Internet connection, they would find no incriminating information. Everything is encrypted and would be completely unreadable.

Military personnel around the globe are already using this technology when on Military networks. It makes sense that they should use it for their personal surfing too. An anonymous proxy is perfect for less-than-democratic nations that they are oftentimes stationed in. Censorship has run rampant throughout the world. Countries around the globe such as Turkey have taken the liberty (or lack thereof) to block sites such as the rebellious You Tube. An Oxford Professor even had his personal site blocked due to its conflicting beliefs to a famous Turkish Creationist. It is one thing when people are up to criminal business, but stopping people from reading the New York Times online, or just catching their favorite performance on American Idol again, should not be done. George Orwell would be rolling in his grave if he saw we hadn’t heeded the warning of the dystopian 1984.

On the subject of censorship, the use of an anonymous proxy will help get by government instated blocks. As stated before, our military personnel’s’ rights don’t go out the window just because he or she is stationed in some desolate country. They can beat the foreign censorship. An anonymous proxy will change the user’s IP address, and as before stated, can change it to a U.S. one. More importantly however, this technology is vital in countries where such Internet activities as YouTube are outlawed! Our military personnel don’t want to be incarcerated in a completely different country simply for his or her Internet viewing.

Some of these American military personnel area also business-minded while abroad. For some, work is more therapeutic than play. Instead of enjoying YouTube and other leisure sites, they are surfing the money-markets, doing investments, and staying up to date in the rapidly changing capitalist economy. Everyone knows how well some of these countries uphold and value public security and I bet they would have no ethical problem snooping on a few bank transactions, or some passwords to various sites. Not only is a proxy good for relaxing and reconnecting, it is necessary for doing business while in these ethically ambiguous places.

Everyone has felt the effects of homesickness; maybe you’ve had to stay away for a weekend on a business trip, or even felt homesickness on a leisurely vacation. This is not an imaginary phenomenon, and military personnel stationed outside the U.S. feel it every day. They need something to remind them of home, of freedom; something to look forward to. The endless days away from home seem to pass more quickly if they have a vision of home in mind. The Internet is a great way for them to connect with their culture they were pulled away from. Unfortunately, censorship, ridiculous laws, and other deterrents could stop them from using this comforting device.

An anonymous proxy will combat and effectively defeat this threat on their sense of belonging. They can go where they want on the Internet without being blocked, and without fear of a foreign police force arresting them for updating their FaceBook account, watching videos on YouTube. Proxies are the way for our patriots to stay sane on the forefront of battle, and keep them connected to home in faraway foreign lands.

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