For US Eyes only

During my daily look around the Internet for news and happenings I came upon this story at the BBC.

Are you an American living abroad? If so… you are probably relying pretty heavily on the Internet to keep up with news from home.

And in the process of your research you’d probably like to be able to go to John Kerrys’ or George W. Bushs’ official websites.

The BBC found this out from Netcraft.com an independant organization that monitors traffic patterns on the Internet.

From Netcraft:

Netcraft monitors web site response times from seven locations, including four within the United States and three in other countries. Since Monday morning, requests to GeorgeWBush.com from stations in London, Amsterdam and Sydney, Australia have failed, while the four U.S. monitoring stations show no performance problems. Web users in Canada report they are able to visit the site.

This does not appear to be done in response to an attack on their site by foreigners… but rather a precautionary measure to ensure that any attacks on the website are limited in scope. Why an attackers wouldn’t simply “spoof” their internet address so that it appears to eminate from the US is my question… but I guess they feel this will limit their vulnerability to an attack.

Ironically, this probably means that some Embassies, or Republican offices outside the US will be unable to access the site as well. Certainly it means that if you are a non-military American living abroad (and there are a few million of you), you are out of luck if you want to see George W. Bushs’ website from your home away from home.

This has got to be the strangest election ever.

2 replies on “For US Eyes only”

  1. So, you’re telling us that someone is preventing access to Bush’s website in three locations today? I wouldn’t call that strange. I would call that an underhanded, sneaky, malevelent dirty trick or maybe it’s just politics as usual.

  2. jane:

    Not “someone”. Rather, the people running the site itself are blocking access to this site from anywhere other than the US. Those three locations are simply places where Netcraft has their systems that check the availability of websites around the world.

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