Bush website blocked outside US

Found on BBC News on Tuesday, 26 October 2004
Browse Politics

Surfers outside the US have been unable to visit the official re-election site of President George W Bush.

The blocking of browsers sited outside the US began in the early hours of Monday morning.

The blocking does not appear to be due to an attack by vandals or malicious hackers, but as a result of a policy decision by the Bush camp.

The international exclusion zone around georgewbush.com was spotted by net monitoring firm Netcraft which keeps an eye on traffic patterns across many different sites.

The site can still be seen using anonymous proxy services that are based in the US. Some web users in Canada also report that they can browse the site.

Mike Prettejohn, president of Netcraft, speculated that the blocking decision might have been taken to cut costs, and traffic, in the run-up to the election on 2 November.

All the oil barons can't pay a little more traffic? What a shame. However, they made a grave mistake (and I'm not talking about the proxy- or IP-access): they should have blocked the website in the US too. Neat decision to isolate the US, Dubya. This reminds me somehow of China: that government doesn't let their people out, now the US doesn't let people in; they would make great friends.