Mission Creep
You can’t make stuff like this up . . . Here’s a link to a story about Homeland Security agents combatting copyright terrorism in a St. Helens, Oregon toy store. Thanks to Boing Boing for keeping me in touch with Ashcroft World.
Overseas Voter Website Censored by Military
My, what will they block next? Go here to find out how to get around the Pentagon’s block on the website that helps overseas US military voters cast absentee ballots. Thanks to Boing Boing for the tip!
Military Bans Blogs (Part III)
Doing my wee bit to expose military censorship – specifically the military’s efforts to prevent its personnel from viewing certain internet sites – is becoming a hobbyhorse of mine. I’ve blogged about such censorship before, here, here, and here. And now, thanks to Eric Umansky, I learn of another category of web sites being blocked or filtered […]
Banned in Riyadh
My friend Baldrick, an English expat working in Saudi Arabia, informs me that my other sites, the Half-Mind Weblog and Half-Mind Catalog, are officially blocked by the Ministry of Information. He and I wondered why. Then, tonight, he told me about another blocked link, this one to the CD cover you see above. Now that […]
How Terrorism Alerts Really Work
The answer: you’ll never be told . . . Read this: Despite 2 Terror Tapes, No Alert Issued on Vegas, Memos Show. Remember the mayor in Jaws? The one who didn’t want tourists to hear about nasty old sharks? The unfortunate thing about stereotypes is that they’re so often true. The United States is just […]
Military Bans Blogs (Part II)
We support freedom of speech . . . as long as you don’t listen! On the job I access the internet through a military network (I’m a civilian contractor on a U.S. Air Force base). The military has always used filters to deny access to web sites containing pornography, hate speech, or games, but lately […]
See No Evil . . .
Earlier, I blogged about a US military ban on camera cell phones and a rumor that the defense department was trying to stop our troops in Iraq from contacting the outside world. According to Boing Boing, it looks like I’m on to something. Take away their e-mail and internet access. Take away their digital cameras […]
Shut the Door, the Horse is Gone!
So yesterday – like what, a week and a half after Major General Taguba’s report on prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq became widely available over the Internet? – the Office of the Secretary of Defense puts out a DoD-wide urgent bulletin telling military and DoD personnel they can’t access or read it because it’s […]