Selective blog blocking?

The New York Times reports an allegation that the State of Kentucky is selectively blocking liberal blogs:

Jill Midkiff, spokeswoman for the agency that oversees Internet technology decisions for state government, denied any intention to limit free speech or to single out Mr. Nickolas or other bloggers of similar political leanings.

"But using state computers to view some of these sites on state time is not an efficient use of state tax dollars or state resources," Ms. Midkiff told local reporters Wednesday in Frankfort, Kentucky's capital.

Yet in addition to allowing state employees to read Web sites of newspapers and television stations, the administration has continued to allow access to at least some Republican sites. Ms. Midkiff did not return phone calls seeking an explanation yesterday.

"My site and a number of other Democratic sites are blocked while conservative blogs belonging to Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge, not to mention the Republican National Committee's own blog, are still accessible," said Mr. Nickolas, who was the campaign manager for Mr. Fletcher's opponent in the 2003 race for governor. "It's a problem to try to separate blogs from mainstream news Web sites in the first place, but at least if you're going to do that you would think such a ban should be applied consistently across the board."

NOTE: Clicking the links to Rush Limbaugh and the RNC does not take you to blogs; only to Times stories. What immediately drew my interest was was the phrase "conservative blogs belonging to Rush Limbaugh." I knew he had a web site where he publishes various opinions, didn't I know he owned any blogs. As a matter of fact, Limbaugh has been highly critical of blogs. (I suspect that what Mr. Nickolas meant was conservative blogs in general, and the thought was inartfully expressed.)

I've complained many times about content filters, which block this blog and many others, and I think they may be one of the larger longterm threats to the blogosphere. However, while private individuals and entities can block whatever they want, once the government bureaucrats get into it, they have a responsibility to be fair. And if the allegations by Mark Nickolas are true, Kentucky bureaucrats have not been fair. According to Nickolas, despite the government's claim that political blogs are uniformly blocked, the conservative blogs still work, but only liberal blogs critical of the governor are inaccessible.

UPDATE #7: From a source within state government:

The only Kentucky-related blogs other than yours that appear to be blocked are at blogspot.com. I think it's safe to say you have been singled out.

ACCESSIBLE

NKY Politics (Pat Crowley)
http://frontier.cincinnati.com/blogs/gov2/

BLUEgrass
http://www.bluegrass.typepad.com/

The Bluegrass Policy Blog (Bluegrass Institute)
http://www.bipps.org/blog/

The Bridge (Dr. Ted)
http://thebridge.typepad.com/thebridge/

Conservative Edge (Brian Goettl)
http://www.conservativeedge.com/

KYKurmudgeon (Larry Dale Keeling)
http://blogs.kentucky.com/kykurmudgeon/

The Rural Blog (Al Cross)
http://www.uky.edu/CommInfoStudies/IRJCI/blog.htm

BLOCKED

BlueGrassRoots
http://www.bluegrassroots.org/

The Compassionate eCommunity (Jonathan Miller)
http://compassionatecommunity.blogspot.com/

Kentucky Progress (David Adams)
http://kyprogress.blogspot.com/

Kentucky Republican Voice
http://kyrepublicanvoice.blogspot.com/

The Kentucky Democrat (Daniel Solzman)
http://kydem.blogspot.com/

As further evidence of selectivity, Nickolas lists the following sites (without links) as not blocked:
So far this morning, the following conservative/Republican websites are still available for state employee viewing:

* Drudge Report
* The Republican National Committee's blog
* Rush Limbaugh
* Hugh Hewitt
* Hot Air
* Captains Quarters
* Outside the Beltway

What I don't know is whether the larger leftish blogs (and news sites such as Raw Story) are blocked. If they aren't, then this may be a case of selective retaliation against liberal Kentucky blogs which are critical of the governor. Either way, it's appalling.

Unfortunately, I think there will be a lot more of this sort of thing. Among the ominous statements Nickolas attributes to the government was this mouthful by a man I've never heard of (described as the governor's "IT hack"):

UPDATE #19: Fletcher IT hack, Mark Rutledge, is now scrambling to say this action was not directing at BGR, but to all "blogs". He offers the most absurd, unprincipled argument for limiting the ban to blogs but not mainstream news organizations:

From TPMmuckraker:

But, but... why blogs?

He [Rutledge] didn't have a pat answer for that. State computers were for business use only, he said.

But I pointed out that the state wasn't blocking news sites.

Yes, he said, but the papers are more likely to have "some value, some relevance to somebody's job." Blogs are generally aligned with certain "interest groups."

Before I could respond, he said "I don't want to get into a philosophical discussion about whether blogs are news or not." His office was trying to prevent "sharing information of things that are not relevant to work." And besides, he said, if an employee felt that a certain blocked blog would be relevant to work, he or she could just go to his orher supervisor to grant access.

Look, I don't know much about the Kentucky governor, as Kentucky politics isn't my shtick. But unless Mark Nickolas is making all this up (which I doubt) the governor has not made a fan out of me, as it certainly appears that under his administration, there's the following:

  • 1. Deliberate government bias against bloggers in general (with censorship freely admitted); and
  • 2. A pattern of censoring political criticism of the Governor in particular.
  • Either of these should be resolutely condemned. The problem is that while the latter is indefensible by any standard, the meme that blogs should be treated as "inferior" to news sites -- and even to syndicated (read "official") opinion writers -- is spreading. Like a cancer.

    Even bloggers who disagree with each other philosophically ought to stick together on this one.

    (Whether Kentucky government employees will now have access to Classical Values remains to be seen.)

    posted by Eric on 06.23.06 at 07:27 AM





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    Comments

    No employee on government owned equipment (or private business owned equipment, unless the employer has specifically authorized it) has authorization to use the Internet to anything other than visit work related sites, for work related reasons. You're on the clock.

    The fact that a few slip through their filters doesn't change the policy. Relying on technology to police your employees is always a mistake, as a few will always slip through.

    The policy is, you can't use office (in this case, state) resources for personal use. If an employee went to Drudge, it is still a violation of policy if it is done so for personal reasons.

    You can't even buy coffee for employees with state money.

    Grand Stand   ·  June 23, 2006 09:40 AM

    I agree that there's no right to visit web sites on the job, but once they allow it (whether on breaks or otherwise) that's another matter. If the government allows Internet use but then blocks only certain web sites based on whether the political content meets with government standards (Drudge and some blogs are OK but not others) I think that violates the First Amendment. . .

    If employees can access the Internet, the remedy against employees who use it on the clock is to fire them, not police the political content of what they're reading.

    Eric Scheie   ·  June 23, 2006 10:15 AM


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