President Bush's website now blocks non-US visitors

UPDATED.

BoingBoing reader Stef was among many to alert us to news that as of Monday morning, "George W. Bush's website now blocks all non-US traffic. Wonder how the US citizens living/working overseas feel about this?" Link to BBC report (which references BoingBoing as a source). The server reply is "Access Denied. You don't have permission to access 'http://www.georgewbush.com/' on this server."

Reader Daen de Leon points to the Netcraft report here: Link

Reader Supi in Finland says, "Guess Bush really hates us foreigners. Finnish news article here. In brief: GWB's publicist turned media to ask questions from Bush's internet campaign manager Michael Turk, who never bothered to reply. You can of course access the site via a proxy, but that's little bit too complicated for most of the people. Well, at least we are left with this "mirror" of Bushs site — georgewbush.org (brought to you by whitehouse.org -staff). And johnkerry.com works just fine from Europe."

Reader Marco Montemagno in Italy says, "On this page I uploaded a screenshot [of what happens when I try to access the Bush website."] Link

Reader Michael Maas asks, "Can US soldiers in Iraq access GeorgeWBush.com?" [Ed note: I'd assume so, if they use military networks rather than regionally-managed ones — but I'd welcome an authoritative answer.] See update below.


Canadian reader Anne Galloway says, "Just to let you know there is no problem accessing Bush's site from Canada." And Tarik in Barbados says, "You know can access Bush's site from Barbados no problem, including that awful Kerry flash game." Reader Tom Biro adds, "I work for a company based in Germany, but I am working (and have lived – forever) in New Jersey – since our whole network proxies out of Germany, I'm unable to visit this website. I imagine I'm not the only person actually here in the States having this problem. The number of expats this affects is probably pretty huge. "

Swiss reader Guido says, "The ISP behind georgewbush.com seems utterly incompetent. The following two links work just fine from Switzerland: https://georgewbush.com/, and http://65.172.163.222/. The 'normal' homepage, however, doesn't work." Thanks, Guido. It must be hard work, keeping up with all those internets!

Dave Cross says, "To counter the barring of georgewbush.com someone has set up a http://georgewbush.co.uk — which is just a redirect to michaelmoore.com."

UPDATE: Can US servicemen and women, reporters, and contractors in Iraq access georgewbush.com? Blogger and NBC combat correspondent Kevin Sites is in Iraq, and he tells BoingBoing: "I just tried. Access denied." Some US readers with enlisted friends and relatives stationed overseas echo that. Reader John J. says, "My sister's stationed in Germany; she tried it and got that 'access denied' response." But an enlisted reader requesting anonymity says, "I am a Lt Col serving in Northern Iraq – all of us serving here are on .mil domains – we have no problem getting to the site."

Reader Jim in Germany says, "It is probably done by this tool: Akamai EdgeScape. This is how it works — Link. And this link shows you the way how visit it anyway ;) — Link. My article in my blog (in German, sorry) Link." And Jason in the UK says, "This is the link to the origin server that Akamai uses to pull in content to the network. This link is still accessible to me in the UK."

Joi Ito has more: Link. No official word on why from the Bush camp, but internet monitoring firm Netcraft said "the pattern of traffic to the website suggests that the block was not due to an attack by vandals or hackers."