Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Uncle Sam Blocks Gates of Vienna (Among Others)

This email just came in from a reader:

Howdy,

Department of the InteriorI’m a long-time reader, without ever actually commenting on anything. Yesterday the U.S. Department of the Interior installed blocking software on their entire network. Gates of Vienna is now blocked, as are all sites with a .blogspot URL. Also blocked are other conservative blogs, such as Wizbang. More than half the sites I check on a daily basis are now completely blocked. As of today, Little Green Footballs is not blocked, but that’s about the only one I’ve seen that isn’t. There’s not much that can be done, but I just thought I’d let you know. I’ll check later today when I get in to see if the liberal blogs are blocked.

As of now, Little Green Footballs is also being blocked, but DailyKos is not. I don’t have a contact for Charles. Can we try to get the word out? Blocking conservative blogs and not liberal ones is BS.

Take care, and thanks for the good stuff you folks post.

He sent a follow-up a couple of minutes later:
- - - - - - - - - -
Here’s a quick runthrough of what I’ve found so far at work. You’ll see that its pretty one-sided.

Blocked Blogs:
Captain’s Quarters
Cox and Forkum
Gates of Vienna
Little Green Footballs
Michael J. Totten
Michelle Malkin
Power Line
Protein Wisdom
Rantings of a Sandmonkey
Roger L. Simon
The Adventures of Chester
The American Thinker
The Belmont Club
The Doctor is In
Wizbang

Blogs not blocked
DailyKos
Democrat Underground
America blog
Atrios.blogspot.com
JuanCole.com
The Huffington Post
Talkingpointsmemo.com

In fact, every blog linked to off of DailyKos seems to work.

Please, please get the word out about this. It not only royally sucks that I can’t read stuff during downtimes at work, but they are being so blatantly biased as to what is being blocked. Thanks.

37 comments:

Fred Fry said...

Talk about a Government Department that should be either eliminated or at given to the American Indians to administer.

Da Bear said...

It begins....on a beautiful fall day in October.

I'm calling every news media outlet I can think of in tthe Bay Area....

"We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight!" We're going to live on! We're going to survive!"

Da Bear

AtlasShrugs.com said...

And we are on their side.......summabitches

Sean Gleeson said...

Wow. If you get a chance, can you find out, is sean.gleeson.us blocked? I would like to put up a prestigious "Banned by the Dept. of the Interior" banner, if so.

Carl in Jerusalem said...

Who is running the Department of the Interior these days anyway?

Petey said...

The US Navy is still gtg on all those sites!
Although, yahoo, google and the better portion of those sorts are steadily being blocked.

Vasarahammer said...

It's very sad to see that PC multiculturalist censorship is very much alive in the US the same way as it has been in Europe for some time.

I suggest that you complain about this kind of censorship and make it public if necessary. It makes no sense to block Daily Kos as well because the Conservative and anti-Jihad websites are blocked.

The habit of the left to silence the dissenting opinions is dangerous and threat to free speech everywhere. It seems that the islamists are not alone in their Jihad against Western values.

Baron Bodissey said...

Econ-Scott --

Glad you changed your nickname! Now you're easy to identify.

Notice that OPEC is talking about raising prices, but hasn't done it yet. I think the Saudis might just hold off until after the beginning of November, to give their ol' buddy in Texas a li'l boost for the midterms.

But then, I tend to paranoia...

tellurianna said...

nothin' more than political elitism. Multiculturism... great idea... but still needs the umbrella of a flag in order to work.

Greg said...

My school istrict has blocked blogspot blogs and most others for years. That includes, interestingly enough, my own blog, which was at one point listed as being banned for "adult content" before they added the "forum/blog" category.

Zonka said...

This incident not only shows that the people in DOI is biased in what they block, but also the vulnerability it is to have your blog living on blogspot.com, as it often turns out that those that seeks to block certain types of blogs will do it lazily by blocking all of blogspot.com in one go... happened in Pakistan and elsewhere and now at DOI. IMHO bloggers need to diversify and get their own domain to make it harder to block all (or a good portion of blogs) in one fell swoop.

This I believe is only the beginning more places will start to block bloggers and sites... and if we as bloggers and web-designers and web-developers do something about it we will be under constant attack as well as making as big a stink about such censorship particularly where it is biased as possible, and by moving away from blogspot and onto diverse domains and ISPs it will also be easier to prove bias, whereas it can be hard to prove bias if somebody blocks off blogspot.com as it hits both left, right and center blogs in one go!

Dan Kauffman said...

Your Search History
Click a domain to see its search results:
gatesofvienna.com
gatesofvienna.us
gatesofvienna.info
gatesofvienna.org
gatesofvienna.net

You can get the domain name for about $10 a year through Yahoo

I have an old angelfire blog site and it sometimes gets caught by spam blockers.

So I got the rights to

CommittesofCorresponce.com

I did get it for $5 a year ;-)

I just found out recently the fee also covers using the above URL as a referal, click or paste it in and they go to my angelfire site.

OMMAG said...

Send an email to DOI....

Vicktorya said...

How can we tell if a site has been blocked in different countries?

Also, folks, the 910 Group (see Gates' sidebar for icon) is helping on this one; for off public radar discussions and planning on this, send me a note.
Vsk at vicktorya . com

Lance said...

They haven't blocked us. We get mega hits from many government offices every day, including the senate and house, USDA, IRS, DOJ and many more. We're a blogspot blog as well.

Jay Currie said...

The right left thing ties into the wasting time at the office notion....I mean seriously how long could you spend reading Kos?

Nate said...

I suspect, and since I do most of my blog reading through an AF.mil domain, that the blocking is not due to a right/left bias as much as it is by blocking those addresses being frequented by folks on that system that obviously are unrelated to government official business. I've been expecting to see all .blogspot.com addresses blocked by our network admin for some time now. Where I come from, you can't access any gun related sites, knife websites or shopping like Ebay or Amazon.

Dang government expecting you to get work done during the day instead of keeping up with the blog world!

Brian said...

The moral of the story is...don't be a lazy government worker, and get a real job.

Elizabeth said...

After the Iraq invasion, there was a similar situation with DoD access. It turned out that they had also installed new filtering software, with default settings. The official answer (and it seemed to work) was that the office in charge would look at all requests to unblock and if the site did not fit the criteria for blocking, they would remove the block. Many conservative sites were originally blocked and quickly got unblocked.

Bos'un said...

Funny how a misplaced liberal can arbitrarily pull the plug. If this post is accurate, I suppose, Interior believes that visiting conservative blogs on government computers is fraud, waste, and abuse, but, left wing whackoism is “politically correct.”

Liberals are going to apologize and appease the United States right into a third world country.

They will not be happy until our great country (and only world power remaining ) is gone.

The liberalism that Interior has displayed is typical of the apologist mindset.

Democrat hold overs from the Clinton ear suffer from three mental illness disorders: Hypocrititis, “Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS), and liberalism. Hypocrititis cause the Dem to flip flop in the wind and say one thing but do another. BDS causes the Dems to exhibit intense paranoia, blame others, and practice extreme externalization. They also suffer from Delusional Tolerance liberalism (DTL)which causes them to be tolerant if one supports their causes and ideas. The combination of the three according to Dr. Howard Dean causes the average Democrat to scream and loose all sense of morality, common sense, and human dignity.

If they perceive that you have crossed them, you better what out.

The good little censor happy computer geek at Interior who appears to have pulled the conservative plug should be sent to treatment. Unless, the geek pulls the rest of the access including games, porn sites, shopping, movies schedules, and all access to public sites. But I doubt that will happen.

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, some net admins are choosy about what sites to block and what to keep. One time, I blocked the NYT site and one liberal here at the office went frantic. She called her son to check the site and it came up and then she got suspicious so I had to unblock it. However, I keep nearly all the liberal sites blocked so I am certain there are a few liberal admin types out there too.

Anonymous said...

Fantastic(sarcastically)! This is a violation of the First Amendment, plain and simple. Not only are you guys blocked, so am I (if the .blogspot blocking bit has veracity to it).

Anonymous said...

For what it's worth, the agency I'm at seems to have full access to everything except porn. There is no government-wide blacklist, liberal or conservative.

High Desert Wanderer said...

Have you tried RSS feeds to read your favorite sites?

James Higham said...

What do you mean blocked? I have no trouble getting in.

Anonymous said...

Could someone check if my blog is blocked, if they have time, thanks: http://freeworldforever.blogspot.com

If it is, it's probably the most prestigious thing that ever happened to me.

Salt said...

Just one more reason to not fund them with taxes.

Salt said...

james higham said...

What do you mean blocked? I have no trouble getting in.
10/12/2006 3:20 PM

James, the block is at their end.

Baron Bodissey said...

James,

Yes, you'd have to be in the Interior Department's network to be affected. Not only that, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which also is in DOI, is on a separate network and is not affected.

Lone Ranger said...

No matter who is in the White House, the government is run by liberal bureaucrats. Whether they are leaking secrets, sitting with their feet up on the desk, or goofing off on the computer, these liberals are trying to ignore, slow down, or sabotage Bush administration policies. They are conducting a low-level insurgency. I'm just astounded that the White House seems to be doing nothing to catch these people and either fire them or jail them.

I'm not saying there is a vast, left-wing conspiracy. But I work across the street from the Capitol Building and is see the knowing looks and hear the jokes and comments. It's a mindset.

Sean Gleeson said...

Come get your "BANNED BY THE US DOI" badge, a variety of sizes.

Phillybits said...

Jesus. Blame the liberals! Blame the liberals!

Go blame your IT administrator who manages your firewall.

Beth said...

Hey, am I banned too? (I'm banned in India already!)

http://bamapachyderm.com/

Captain Ramen said...

There is no conspiracy here. I'll bet a dollar that the netadmin simply blocked the most visited blogs accordng to the server logs. And since most moonbat leftists don't actually have real jobs...

There are ways around it. Try a) an anonymous proxy b) using remote desktop or vnc to log into your home computer (may require services from dyndns.org if you have a dynamic ip) or c) creating a vpn tunnel to your home network (and leaving 'use default gateway on remote network' checked).

John McAdams said...

Our source insists that all blogs are blocked, and a lot of other sites too.

http://mu-warrior.blogspot.com/2006/10/department-of-interior-censoring.html

Captain USpace said...

This is really disgusting, to think that these wackos haven't been outed more.

The Secretary of the Interior
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirk_Kempthorne

A former GOP Senator, I would guess it's some internal IT moonbats who did this on their own. I wonder.


absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
silence conservatives
.

Jack Steiner said...

I doubt that there is anything sinister about it.