Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Guardian brought to its knees by US Air Force ban...or not

I was about to write a post saying what a moral outrage it is that the US Air Force has banned its personnel from accessing not only the WikiLeaks site, but also the 25 mainstream media websites that have published the leaked cables. I was also going to ponder the question of what the decision tells us about the true nature of America's "open society" and the supposedly sacred principle of free speech. But in truth the decision is just very, very silly, given that anyone wanting to access the information will still be able to do so if they just wait a while (or phone their Mum).

Does the Air Force imagine they're "punishing" the websites in some way? If so, I'm sure the Guardian will just about be able to survive the blow - somehow I don't think US military personnel are that newspaper's natural demographic...

4 comments:

  1. did you catch this story?

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1338645/Florida-school-board-shooting-Moment-gunman-Clay-Duke-opens-fire.html

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  2. No I didn't - thanks, Jimbo. I can't really say much better than a comment beneath that article -

    Nothing to see here; the United States has 80 deaths PER DAY due to guns. Their solution? to encourage more people to carry firearms everywhere. Complete insanity.

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  3. The US Government routinely blocks websites that are a security risk through virus/trojan/worm etc. That a lot of the wikileaks mirror sights are on servers known for that sort of thing it really has more to do with protecting a .gov network than "punishing" anyone for hosting data.

    It is the same reason that the .gov blocks filesharing sites and services.

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  4. I hardly imagine that most American Air Force personnel would have heard of the Guardian never mind ever accessed it.

    They've heard of it now though, and at the first opportunity they will be right into it...

    Really stupid and petulant move. No-one in the US Air Force done a course in Elementary Psychology?

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