The Pentagon has gotten its act together, sort of, in finally accepting that thumb drives are part of the 21^st century drive toward modern technology. The Department of Defense has partially lifted its ban on thumb drives, allowing the nifty tech tools to be used by authorized people for mission-critical functions.

"In the future we expect that a government-owned and procured USB flash media, that is uniquely and electronically identifiable for use in support of mission-essential functions on DoD networks, will be permitted for use by authorized individuals," Navy CIO Robert Carey wrote on his blog recently.

It was an about-face for the Navy which banned thumb drives, CDs and other removable storage devices a year ago after military computers became infected with a worm that was partially spread by thumb drives. You can believe that the ban was inconvenient, to say the least, for military personnel who used the drives for carrying tech manuals, medical records of wounded troops and other kinds of important information.

For more on DoD resurrecting thumb drives:
- see this cnet.com article

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