DoD Blocking Access To Techdirt Because It's About 'Computers And Internet'?

from the say-what-now dept

Wed, Jan 19th 2011 3:57pm — Mike Masnick

Sent in by an anonymous person in the Defense Department is the notice that they were unable to read our recent story about customs and border patrol harassing Wikileaks volunteer Jacob Appelbaum as he flew into Seattle from a vacation in Iceland. What struck me, however, was the hilarious wording explaining the block:

This Page Cannot Be Displayed

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Based on DOD access policies, access to this web site ( https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110112/16054412641/customs-hamfisted-attempts-to-intimidate-wikileaks-volunteers.shtml ) has been blocked because the web category "Computers and Internet" is not allowed, your IP address and username have been recorded and forwarded to your IA staff for review.

As the reader notes: "Who'd have thought that "Computers and Internet" would be banned when they give me one, and an Internet connection, to work with?" Nice to see that the DoD is so concerned that DoD workers see what their own government is up to.

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Filed Under: blocks, defense department, denial

58 Comments

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Dan (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 4:10pm

Famous or Infamous?
Mike Masnick...Famous or Infamous? Enter your vote now!
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Hephaestus (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 4:11pm

The defense department is huge ...
Which part of the DOD?
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2011 @ 4:16pm

"your IP address and username have been recorded and forwarded to your IA staff for review. " That goes without saying, since pretty much every company and government has this capability. The only reason to make such a claim is to put a little extra fear in the worker bee?
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monkyyy, 19 Jan 2011 @ 4:18pm

curse those computer and internet addicts doing it at work
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Shadojak (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 4:22pm

Hmmmm
Lol, I have an idea.....

2012 is an election year, is it not?

Since Obama has definitely not done well...let us all spreadthe word, and do a write in campaign.

"Mike Masnick --- President"

I am sorry, but there is NO way that Mike could be a Worse President than some we've had, and he seems to be interested in the issues that I AM worried about.

God only knows what would happen to him under the pressure cooker of Presidential office.

But we can always hope :D
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someone (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 4:23pm

My theory is that
"Computers and Internet" are used to upload stuff to wikileaks so to prevent future leaks some genius DoD official decided to block "Computers and Internet".
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Chris (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 4:29pm

Very interesting
I will have to try this when I get back to work to see if it's DoD wide.
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JP, 19 Jan 2011 @ 4:32pm

The probably blocked you because of the reference to "wikileaks" and they categorized that particular keyword in the"Computers and Internet" category.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2011 @ 4:35pm

Re: Hmmmm
I don't think any single person can directly go in and change what needs to be changed. Too much pressure can be brought to bear against one person. The changes needs to happen starting from the electorate, for the only way to prevail on these issues is to have support from multiple people in the executive and the legislature.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2011 @ 4:48pm

Re: Re: Hmmmm
But that would require an electorate capable of focusing their attention on something other than bread and circuses.

I'm not holding my breath.
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Raptor85, 19 Jan 2011 @ 4:52pm

not quite...
The error message is misleading a little...and not uncommon, our filters seemingly randomly block sites all the time, and unblock later. (some keyword on the site throws it and it gets blocked until the next scan or something...who knows). It's not currently blocked on AFMC systems or else I wouldn't be posting this :)

On a related hilarious note..Oracle's site (which we use quite a bit) gets blocked from time to time as being "freeware"
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vivaelamor (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 5:09pm

Re: not quite...
"The error message is misleading a little...and not uncommon, our filters seemingly randomly block sites all the time, and unblock later. (some keyword on the site throws it and it gets blocked until the next scan or something...who knows). It's not currently blocked on AFMC systems or else I wouldn't be posting this :)"

To me it just shows how little such software actually takes the needs of the end user into account. If I was writing software to block websites then 'informing the user why' would be pretty damn high up the list of things to get right.
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cc (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 5:10pm

*nix users, or xkcd readers?

http://xkcd.com/838/

Perhaps just a case of old-fashioned thought-policing.
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The Mighty Buzzard (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 5:14pm

Didn't the DoD fund the creation of the Internet? That is some truly bizarre reasoning.
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ltlw0lf (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 5:14pm

Re:
The only reason to make such a claim is to put a little extra fear in the worker bee?

Actually, I believe this is the standard message a particular product the DoD likes using. I've seen it many times myself, and laugh each time (for the record, part of my job description is keeping up-to-date with "Computers and Internet", and that category is kinda stupid to block anyway since you are on a computer and accessing the internet to begin with.) I wouldn't expect much from it. If someone out there is watching my watching TechDirt, then they have more free-time at work than I do...
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2011 @ 5:18pm

Smells like a websense blockpage to me :)
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Raptor85, 19 Jan 2011 @ 5:47pm

Re: Re: not quite...
Heh, indeed, DOD IT rarely does take the actual needs of it's users into account. This isn't custom software though, it's off the shelf, websense i believe. (I have no ties to the guys who do this, I'm just a contractor who regularly uses DOD systems)

Whoever submitted this must have been a new hire though, these messages are COMMON, a royal pain and quite often blocking sites that you need to use, but I don't believe I've ever gone a day without seeing that message. Even slashdot has been blocked and unblocked dozens of times over the years. (which makes my breaks quite boring)
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jimbob, 19 Jan 2011 @ 5:48pm

Wikileaks banned
It may be cause it mentions Wikileaks. My DOD agency has blocked anything that mentions Wikileaks, ANYTHING!
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2011 @ 5:59pm

Re: The defense department is huge ...
The silly one?
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Mr. Smarta**, 19 Jan 2011 @ 6:06pm

"We're Sorry..."
This Page Cannot Be Displayed
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Based on DOD access policies, access to this web site ( http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110112/16054412641/customs-hamfisted-attempts-to-intimidate-wikil eaks-volunteers.shtml ) has been blocked because the website contains the letters 'a', 'e', 'i', 'l', 'k', 's', and 'w' which when re-assembled spells the word 'wikileaks' which is filtered, your IP address and username have been recorded and forwarded to your IA staff for immediate processing and your eventual deportation to Durkastan.
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The Mighty Buzzard (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 6:07pm

Re: Re: Re: not quite...
While I like it quite a bit, I don't believe TD exactly falls under things DoD employees generally need to do their jobs.
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ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 6:08pm

Re:
The probably blocked you because of the reference to "wikileaks" and they categorized that particular keyword in the"Computers and Internet" category.

My thought too.

Mike, maybe change "wikileaks" to "defense-contractors" in the story URLs?
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krenshall, 19 Jan 2011 @ 6:17pm

The DOD has a right to do this considering that they are, basically, an employer. Considering the actions of Bradley Manning. They are just doing what they have to in order to protect any more government employees or military personnel from leaking any more classified material.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2011 @ 6:21pm

I concur, 'wikileaks' probably triggered the filter, not techdirt itself.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2011 @ 6:52pm

Re: Re: The defense department is huge ...
That's like saying "The man over there with the two eyes, the nose, mouth, two ears and the hair".
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Ccomp5950 (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 7:27pm

Re:
IA stands for Information Assurance.

Every company in the Army atleast is supposed to have an Information Assurance Security Officer.

Way it works is each computer on a DoD network has someone that is responsible for it. When I was IASO I was responsible for about 32 computers throughout the battalion.

Basically we are computer janitors, we insure that the latest windows updates are ran and we're the ones that can reset passwords.

Within the control panel where we select "Yes we did this" you can receive notices of what computers attempted to access whatever blocked entity, what user was logged in, etc.

Most IASO's just click the box to make it go away unless it's repeated bullshit (Really, he was up here at 9pm attempting to look at porn for how long?) in which case we usually just talk to the 1st Sergeant and Company Commander and let them take care of it.
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TPBer, 19 Jan 2011 @ 7:37pm

DOD=
Dumb Or Dumber :)
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Nick Coghlan (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 7:37pm

Re: Re:
Yeah, this applies to defence related companies as well: the web filters all appear to have a block for any URL containing the word "wikileaks".

A recent article on Ars Technica ran afoul of this as well.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2011 @ 8:11pm

Re: Re:
Part of your job is to keep up with that which they prevent you from keeping up with. They have essentially made you less intelligent than the average Internet user. Great job DoD, I feel so much more secure. Now the terrorists can much more easily hide their activities from you while having more intelligence than you at the same time.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2011 @ 8:17pm

Re: Re: Re:
(on the flip side, maybe this can be used to protect average citizens from overarching and invasive government. So in a sense it can make us more secure).
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2011 @ 8:23pm

Re: DOD=
TD or not to TD?
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aHungarianGuy, 19 Jan 2011 @ 9:01pm

Small detail
An important detail was forgotten: this was incident happened on the reader's home internet connection on the weekend.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2011 @ 9:02pm

Re: Small detail
of course a 'was' was left in, I hope they didn't record my ip address
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Dohn Joe, 19 Jan 2011 @ 9:09pm

Misunderstanding
In typical sloppy Government firewall speak this just means that a restricted site in the "Computers and Internet" category has been blocked.
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Chargone (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 9:44pm

Re: Re: Re: The defense department is huge ...
well, that does eliminate anyone missing an eye, nose, mouth, ear, or hair, yah?
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Jose_X, 19 Jan 2011 @ 10:12pm

Re: Re:
The impression I got was that there is a blacklist and pages have tags/categories.

The message probably should have said something like, "you were attempting to access a page that has been flagged and cannot be seen," with the "computers and internet" being an internal organization mechanism not intended to be relayed to the user.
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Chris Rhodes (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 10:44pm

Re:
I recently had a legitimate news website (that I could otherwise access) get blocked by my company's filter, and the only thing I can think is that they scrubbed it because it had the word "wikileaks" in the URL.
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Dushan, 20 Jan 2011 @ 1:23am

TOR, VPN or proxies. I you use The Internet and The Computer at the *same time*, these 3 things should help you out.
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Major, 20 Jan 2011 @ 1:57am

Re: Re: not quite...
Well where i work, the filter is quite appropriate and they tend to log user activity : NO facebook, No youtube, No fun.
Unless...you are one of the IT guy who set the rules and can do it anyway...

Or you are a dev with admin right and use a data/url crypter and voila : You can spend some time lurking on TD or TED totaly unnoticed !

Oh ! can non-American vote for Masnick presidency ?
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techflaws.org (profile), 20 Jan 2011 @ 3:43am

Re:
Right. Cause if Wikileaks go away there won't ever be any new leaks, right?
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btrussell (profile), 20 Jan 2011 @ 4:40am

I wonder if they will be able to access web sites relating to his latest harassment.
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/19/wikileaks-volunteer-2.html
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2011 @ 4:49am

no. it is not.
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iamtheky (profile), 20 Jan 2011 @ 4:49am

Seriously, this is not the first post that quite obviously a WebSense word filter.

And the lack of mentioning so only gives ammo to those who argue that you are taking a fear-mongering slant. I bet if they go here:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110101/21182712478/more-mass-porn-copyright-infringement -lawsuits-get-dumped.shtml

techdirt gets blocked for 'sexual content', but you would probably have to work a little harder to make it interesting.
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Paul L, 20 Jan 2011 @ 5:16am

No blocks here.....
I'm currently on a DoD system and I use TechDirt regularly.

Additionally; I would be the one to impose any blocks such as this at my location if they were to come down from above. I can state emphatically that no such directives have been issued to our command.

Personally; I think whoever is managing the security at the location where the original report came from is either making up their own rules or their command is directing them to perform this action. They could have also just made a mistake with their filtering.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2011 @ 6:11am

Feel safe yet?
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Joe Websense, 20 Jan 2011 @ 6:18am

Impossible!

Techdirt would be blocked as "Tasteless".
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Hephaestus (profile), 20 Jan 2011 @ 6:32am

Re: Very interesting
Actually it is more than likely the word WikiLeaks in the URL much like the words P2P or Porn.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2011 @ 6:36am

Re:
I don't think he'll listen, lad.
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Phillip (profile), 20 Jan 2011 @ 6:55am

Re: Very interesting
It's not I can get to it before and i can still get to it now.
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Phillip (profile), 20 Jan 2011 @ 6:55am

Re: Very interesting
It's not I could get to it before and i can still get to it now.
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iamtheky (profile), 20 Jan 2011 @ 7:16am

Individual DOIMs get to establish filters based on local traffic, so saying "all of DoD is blocked" is most always hyperbole (lest we are discussing the common vices).
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vivaelamor (profile), 20 Jan 2011 @ 8:48am

Re: Re: Re: not quite...
"This isn't custom software though, it's off the shelf, websense i believe."

I kinda guessed that as soon as I saw the error message. It's pretty common in schools, libraries etc. over here.
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vivaelamor (profile), 20 Jan 2011 @ 9:13am

Re:
"And the lack of mentioning so only gives ammo to those who argue that you are taking a fear-mongering slant. I bet if they go here:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110101/21182712478/more-mass-porn-copyright-infringement -lawsuits-get-dumped.shtml

techdirt gets blocked for 'sexual content', but you would probably have to work a little harder to make it interesting."

So, it's OK because they use the same level of sophistication for their filters as the average primary school?
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ltlw0lf (profile), 20 Jan 2011 @ 9:39am

Re: Re: Re:
Part of your job is to keep up with that which they prevent you from keeping up with.

Certainly didn't say that, as it isn't true for me (I can access all of Techdirt with no problem what-so-ever.) However, I can only hang my head at what others within DoD/Government are doing. I believe that Sun Tsu said it best that in order to fight an enemy, you have to know the enemy. Anyone within DoD's computer security groups have to have full access to everything their enemies have, otherwise they cannot do their job effectively.
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iamtheky (profile), 20 Jan 2011 @ 10:00am

"So, it's OK because they use the same level of sophistication for their filters as the average primary school?"

No, its just not malicious, nor is it DoD wide. I was merely pointing out the hype, not defending.

-also pointing out that this is like the 3rd WebSense related post, in hopes that the glaringly obvious is at least considered before posting, as it feels really dirty trying to find some wider conspiracy or use this as a defense for any stance at all.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2011 @ 11:52am

Re: Re:
yes.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2011 @ 7:00pm

Here's what I get at work (non-DOD) for any access to Techdirt.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110113/16560912662/dod-blocking-access-to-techdirt-b ecause-its-about-computers-internet.shtml has been categorized as Anonymous Proxy & Hacking. It has been blocked per your organization's Internet Usage Policy for group Public.
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Cipher-0, 20 Jan 2011 @ 8:00pm

Re: Re: Re: not quite...
Oh ! can non-American vote for Masnick presidency ?

Sure, use a Diebold voting machine. :)
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