For most of us, Facebook is an enjoyable way to interact with friends and family. That is why it is so surprising that an agency like the U.K. Ministry of Defense would face a serious breach of security coming from their own employee’s use of Facebook. Imagine the looks of embarrassment and fear for their jobs when the Ministry of Defense leadership had to confess that their own staff had leaked sensitive information through social networking sites 16 times in the last 18 months.

It took some keen work by a couple security firms, F-Secure and Lewis PR to use information that came to light from the Freedom of Information Act to find out that even the Ministry of Defense are suckers for Facebook. The employees of the Ministry of Defense who were identified as using Facebook were probably not doing anything crooked or evil. Like most of us, they forget that Facebook can be a wide open book to the world and just let down their guards and spilled a little too much when enjoying the site.

Naturally, Ministry of Defense officials were tight lipped about what these security organizations has flushed out into the open about them. It isn’t as if the MOD doesn’t have a few rules to put a stop to this kind of thing. Employees of the MOD must get clearance from their higher ups to disclose anything relating to how the operation is run. And when it comes to opening up to the public about dicey subjects like political issues or controversial or sensitive topics, there is no question that the law of the land is, NO TALKING.

What complicates the issue is that the computers employees of the Ministry of Defense use are locked down so they cannot even get to social network sites like Facebook or Twitter. But there are some computers like the ones at internet café’s in Afghanistan and Iraq that do allow employees to access these sites to get in contact with friends and family. But even under these conditions, Ministry of Defense people are expected to keep a tight zip on anything sensitive or internal to how the Ministry operates.

Naturally, when this little bit of dirty laundry about the Ministry of Defense hit the fan, the official statements were defensive and cautious. But you can bet there are going to be some high level meetings where some fists are going to be pounded on some tables so this kind of thing is nipped in the bud to protect the security of this important part of the UK security infrastructure in the future.