Iraq update on Bush website blocking non-US vistors

BoingBoing readers from Austria to China to Zimbabwe wrote in to follow up on our post (Link) about President George W. Bush's website blocking non-US visitors with an "access denied" response. One American reader said, "Yeah, well come November 2 I'm planning to give HIM an 'access denied' response with my vote." One BoingBoing reader who requests anonymity updates us the Iraq factor:

I'm the Chief Technical Officer for a satellite internet and network services provider with offices in Baghdad and Arbil, Iraq. We have over 500 installed sites in Iraq, all of them since the end of the war - I came over 15 months ago. Many of those sites are military, and I may be able to provide some new information for you. Yes, my customers are also blocked from accessing Dubya's site. I can't say I really care - I'm a flaming liberal and he lost my vote when his father was still president. But the act itself is particularly odious.

We resell satellite bandwidth on several different satellite providers, among them Hughes Network Systems, Europe, and Tachyon Networks, Europe. All of those customers are shut out. Most military users here have these choices for internet:

1. NIPRNET, the non-classified network the military uses for communications, including AKO (the military mail system).
2. Filtered, proxied systems provided by Segovia or KBR. Locked down by Websence and filtered against most "offensive" content.
3. No internet.
4. Paying personal money for a private connection.

In general, support units such as the US Army Corps of Engineers have access to military internet options. The USACE builds NIPRNET, after all. But the common infantry units have little or no access except what they can scrounge up from personal funds. We sell a lot of cheap end-user satellite systems to these units. These systems aren't cheap by US / terrestrial standards - a 512x128 kbit shared-bandwidth satellite connection is $275 per month, and it goes up - way up - from there.

Those with access to #1 or #2 probably have access to Dubya's site and anything else that attempts to segregate network access by geography. The rest of us will not.

Link to previous BB post on "Bush website blocks non-US visitors"