Thursday, March 01, 2007

WHO WOULD DO SUCH A THING?

it appears that for as long as eighteen months, a contractor has been filtering out some publications from our military.

"Readers of WorldNetDaily have confirmed that the filters for all U.S. Marine and U.S. Navy computers started blocking the leading independent news site at least 18 months ago, and they believe it's unlikely that it is a simple technical glitch, because the addresses www.WND.com and www.WorldNetDaily.com, which lead to the same site, were blocked at different times."

is there a good reason for this? why no mention of leftwing publications targeted for this censorship?

"Another reader, whose name also was withheld by WND, told the news site he has spent time working for Electronic Data Systems, the principal contractor running NMCI for the Navy and Marine bases.

He wrote that he realized some time ago he was unable to reach WND.

"There are many times in our network when outside issues prevent us from reaching sites. Therefore I was not overly concerned initially; but after a week or so of attempting to reach the website I determined that it must have been purposefully blocked," he said.

He noted that an admiral gave orders for Yahoo news to be unblocked about that time. "I thought it was terribly odd that Yahoo could be unblocked but not WorldNetDaily."

if this be so, there are simple ways to turn off blockers - jeeeesh. something just doesn't wash here - perhaps the experts could weigh in?

35 comments:

The Merry Widow said...

And people think we are overreacting? DER!?!
But we are rightwing nuts and we don't count, because we aren't "cool"! Or tolerant, or progressive, or socially conscious, or...we are believers of "asp", THE BIBLE! How horrid!
Marginalized, vilified, demonized, persecuted?

tmw

nanc said...

i am to cool!

::stomping my foot::

nanc said...

why, i may even be cooler than the other side of the pillow if given good reason...

The Merry Widow said...

We know that, but the leftistas can't see past their prejudices!

tmw

Anonymous said...

I`m waiting for the experts..

"BEAMISH !"

Anonymous said...

I so happen to know that the contractor was Lockheed-Martin, who run part of the Navy's NIPRNET system which is a sub-component of the military Defense Messaging System.

General Internet traffic hits NIPRNET. SIPRNET is the classified end of the DMS system. I used to work on this; as a matter of fact, I worked on the prototype system at the Navy Yard in DC.

Fleet admirals, Generals, etc, just have to tell the operators of these systems to block certain media websites. Of course, that would include anything pornographic, but I am surprised it was a news site.

Brooke said...

WND blocked an no one fessing up? Could it be a conspiracy reaching all the way to the top of the Navy, or a lefista secret IT agent?

Either way, I'm pisst and getting my tinfoil hat out!

Unknown said...

It's not unusual for web sites to be blocked on *.mil or *.gov domains. There are filters in place to prevent pornographic, profanity, or other offensive materials from being viewed from a government computer.

The site may have been blocked by a generic filter designed to stop javascript and *.mp3 type files from being introduced on the network. The SYSADMIN may have been told to block a specific IP range as well. The site could have fallen within the blocked range.

The Merry Widow said...

Especially the "political" hacks that inhabit the Pentagon! The real military serves at the Pentagon IF ORDERED TO, the politicians fight to get there and fight even harder to stay!
It's the dicotomy between "doers" and "political whores"! And yes I said that word! My Dad in his 22 in the AF managed to stay away from the Pentagon, needless to say, he never got his colonels eagles! No matter, he wasn't a "whore"!
Good morning, G*D bless and Maranatha!

tmw

Anonymous said...

This is interesting, because it was just a little over a year ago, that Left wing websites complained about the same thing about the Military banning their websites.

This as stated before is nothing new, just now right wingers are complaining about their sites being blocked, when it was just left wing sites, they didn't care.

Anonymous said...

i never heard about that, rob - can you cite the instances? it's wrong whoever is doing it.

nanc

Anonymous said...

It was a little over a year ago, I don't remember the exact websites that were blocked, but I remember reading about it.

Gayle said...

I believe Lawman has the answer. I know I've accidently blocked some readers because I banned an entire IP range, which blocked other readers as well. It doesn't seem to do any good to just ban one IP number as the trolls just move on to another computer, so I've quit banning and simply delete their comments. That's why I leave comment moderation on all the time.

Old Soldier, who works on an Army base, is unable to access HaloScan because it has been blocked. He only has that problem while using a government pc on base. I don't think there would be any reason for the military to block HaloScan, so I feel pretty certain that this is accidental.

nanc said...

rob - i pay pretty close attention to the news and do not remember what you're speaking of - please see if you can find a link to it.

gayle - i guess that would be plausible if the ip's were all located in one area - not being an expert, but i suppose it would depend on where people tried to access wnd. is it possible a military person in say japan was able to, but not someone in germany?

warren would be the one to ask as i'm p.c. illiterate by most standards and know just enough to get by.

Anonymous said...

Any google search will bring back results on it.

All I'm saying is it is nothing new.

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

Getting around the filter / firewall depends on where it is.

If it's WND blocking military traffic, visitors can still visit with any number of anonymous proxy servers.

If it's the military blocking WND, it'll take some administrative access to fix if anonymous proxy servers are also blocked.

With a high traffic site like WND, military types could just Google the site are read the cached page versions. Same with archive.org.

There's more that 64,000 ways to skin a cat.

nanc said...

ok, rob, nevermind...

Always On Watch said...

From the WND article:

One Marine from Camp Pendleton who had contacted WND recently had reported watching the circumstances for some time before alerting the news site. And he was the first to suggest an unwelcome implication.

"[I] have observed a blatant censorship of the conservative right over government Internet," the Marine, who requested anonymity, said. "Initially, my tendency was to think that this was not really the case, but it has recently become clear that it is."

He said a wide range of other news sites were available, but not WND. "I … found this odd, since it is still possible, although illegal, to view pornography over the Internet. I know this to be the case, because there are Marines who occasionally are caught doing just that. All these things are fine, but not WorldNetDaily!"


Could the blocking be accidental? Yes. But I doubt it.

Not that I'm all that computer savvy, of course.

Anonymous said...

Here's the whole deal, people.

If you have a conservative running your network, he'll screw around eventually and block things like the NYT website. I know. I did that before. So happens that a big liberal at our company got upset because her home page on the browser was NYT. She called her son at home to see if the site was down; it wasn't, and she pitched a major bitch once she found out I had done it.

So, it's probably just a libtard net admin that is blocking wnd.

Warren said...

There are ways around it and now that the word is out, it won't stay blocked long.

FLORIAN said...

Such a shame! I love WND. Lots of good info. TMW who said we weren't cool?

Anonymous said...

I`m surprised to learn that it`s the leading indie news site.

Anonymous said...

thx Beamish,oh and thank your other personalities :)

Anonymous said...

warren,

You haven't seen nanc around lately, have you? I wanted to show her my Willy.

Anonymous said...

Never mind. She says she's already seen it.

Warren said...

FJ, I really don't think she's impressed with a FLASHER!

nanc said...

i sure wish someone would come in and clean this town up...

MEN IN KILTS!!!

woooooooooo-ooooooooooooooooh!

Anonymous said...

Eye-yi-yi. I don't even think my dog would go for that bone.

Anonymous said...

Okay, on elast flash. And no, not all men are in to free-stylin'. Some men shop at McBoarya's Secret.

Anonymous said...

Why men don't wear kilts. It's just NOT that funny!

nanc said...

ALL MEN SHOULD WEAR KILTS!

nanc said...

...that way we don't need to argue about just who wears the pants in the family...

Anonymous said...

I work on NMCI and they filtered the IP range on the hosting servers. Not the content. The servers have been considered 'unsafe'. NMCI (run by EDS not Lockheed) is blocking TONS of commericial sites: Ebay, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, etc etc etc. NMCI is built to run Navy applications, not to read the news.

nanc said...

anon - then they should block ALL news sites!

why would the military want to keep apprised of current events - anyway?

nanc said...

i wonder if the same people who've tried without success to access "wnd" have any problems getting to such sites as "huffington's post" or "d.u." or "daily kos", etc.?