The Volokh Conspiracy

Maybe they figure no one reads the liberal blogs anyway...

Or maybe it's an evil conservative plot to set a trap for the liberal employees... catch them wasting time at work by visiting blog sites, then fire 'em.

"If there are VC readers at DOI, please let us know in the comments below. (Indeed, let us know if you can still access the VC.)"

Doesn't the parenthetical pose a form of Russellian paradox?

I'll throw out a possible theory for how the list appear biased even if the person creating the block tried to act unbiased.

A computer wonk wrote a program to determine found which sites were most visited. Starting at the top of the list and moving to the bottom the wonk quickly visited individual sites to determine "appropriate", "not appropriate". Blogs discussing politics, cooking, knitting etc. were eliminated without regard to being left leaning or right leaning.

So, why wouldn't the DailyKos be elminated? Turns out practically no one at the Department of the Interior reads it! {{ vbg }}

Ok. I admit my theory probably won't test out. We'll have to wait to read confirmation of the bias and learn how the list is really made. But bias outcomes can happen for strange reasons!)

Fake libertarian Eugene Volokh will try to censor what you publish if he disagrees with what you say or how you say it. He acts like a helicopter parent, the Interior Department or China. As they say at Peacefire.org, "You'll understand when your're younger."

My access to posting here has already been blocked by Volokh. Of course his censorship doesn't work, because I can simply gain access from a public computer or from my blocked computer by use of a proxy, otherwise known as a circumventor: Right now I am posting by means of www.stupidcensorship.com, but in the past I have used www.gravitywars.com.

If you are ever censored by China or Volokh or are attempting to access gambling or porn at your workplace, check out this tutorial that covers methods for circumventing internet filters and protection/blocking services. There are several excellent methods.

1. Use peacefire.org’s circumventor software

Peacefire.org is a site that is dedicated to free speech on the internet. To help them with their goals the have created the circumventor software. The circumventor can be placed on a friend’s computer, allowing you access to restricted websites. The following URL contains detailed instructions for the installation and use of the circumventor.

Peacefire

2. Proxy Lists

A proxy is a computer which allows information to be remotely queried. For example, if I can’t get access to alcohol but my friend can, I would ask my friend to get alcohol for me. This is a simplistic explanation of how a proxy works. Getting lists of these allows you to circumvent many internet filtering products. To set up a proxy you will want to find the connection properties of your internet browser.

In Firefox

Click on Tools —> Options
Select the “General” icon
Under Connection click on connection settings
Select “Manual proxy configuration” radio button
Enter in proxy information

Several URLs of Lists
http://www.samair.ru/proxy/
http://www.stayinvisible.com/index.pl/proxy_list
http://www.proxy4free.com/page1.html
http://www.publicproxyservers.com/page1.html

For more information visit http://www.proxy4free.com/index.html

3. Sockschain

Sockschain is a program that uses strings of proxies to hide IP addresses and to prevent blocking software from working. It can be installed and will work with any internet browser. This is an extension of the above. It increases your chances of anonymity and of getting to restricted websites.

It can be found at http://www.ufasoft.com/socks/

4. JAPJAP is a program which uses a combination of encryption and mixes to bypass censorship programs. By using the mixes and encryption, it is difficult to find out where information is coming from and going allowing restricted web sites to be accessed.

It can be found at http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html

5. Lastly, there are many, many ways to circumvent filters and blocking programs. For a good resource go to:http://nocensor.citizenlab.org/#4.3.5.1

You're mislead when you state "Government agencies should not use ideological criteria for selecting which sites government employees may access."

It's not really the intent of the DOI/BIA to do that, it is simply an effect of a the existing list in a program they chose, and they probably had now knowledge of that effect of it.

The real blaim probably lies at some liberal working in the web-site reading department of the censoring company. Either that or maybe conservative bloggers curse more.

Jimbino, I don't think there's anything un-Libertarian about saying "keep off my lawn." It is, after all, his lawn.

I'm a contractor with one of the Agencies in DOI. We've always had WebWasher running within the agency, but the new blocking software from the Department just kicked in last week or so. Its seems to be gradually adding more sites to its 'off limits' list. For example, only just this morning, I can no long get to Andrewsullivan.com. But can still get to Volokh and Slate and some others. Not sure how long that will last.

I too wonder about false positives, with those ads in the sidebars.

Just some observations. Happy Friday.

The IG's report, "Excessive Indulgences" estimated that time spent on auction and gaming websites accounted for over 100,000 hours of lost productivity over the course of the year.

Leaving aside the question of what counts as "productivity" for government bureaucrats, the conclusion is ridiculous.

First, you have the false precision in the report (the report actually says "104,221 hours").

Second (minor point about your summary) it did not say that the time spent "accounted for over 100,000 hours over the course of the year," but that the time spent, extrapolated to a year, would account for that much.

And most importantly, it is based on the ludicrous assumption that people are productive every minute, except when they're using these sites. If someone hops on ebay while sitting on hold on the telephone, it doesn't cost "productivity." If someone hops on poker.com instead of reading the dead-tree newspaper, or chatting about last night's football game, or taking a cigarette break, or taking a nap, it doesn't cost "productivity."

Used to work at Interior, still have friends there. Their internet wasn't shut off for months. It was shut off for YEARS. At least three, maybe five or six. Justice Dept's litigation strategy was to force the judge to lift the internet ban by holding out and demonstrating it was causing disasters. It didn't work very well. Judges who are facing a decade of foot-dragging, despite holding several Interior Secretaries in contempt, tend to be like that.

Never had contact with anyone running department-wide computer ops, but the ones who ran it in our office (meaning about 400 people) were techie morons. I mean, morons. I could not explain the difference between RAM and hard drive memory to one of them -- I'm serious. They thought requesting a whole 50 megabytes of storage from the client would be incredible, since "that's as much memory as a hundred computers," and I couldn't explain the matter to them. In part because they didn't know what a hard drive was. Literally didn't. They just knew information went into this big metal box and somehow got stored. And this was the IT branch!

As far as partisanship -- the appointees will be GOP, of course, but are less than 1% of the workforce. Most of the supervisors will be from past Admins. During Bush I, my boss had been hired under Jimmy Carter, and promoted then, too. In theory, the GOP years would have seen some such activity for conservatives, but in practice GOP never really had a grasp of the bureaucracy, and it went on as usual.

I suspect that Lucia's theory is the best explanation for why conservative blogs are blocked more than liberal ones, that frequency of visits is being used to compile an initial log list of banned sites.

Can anything else really explain why KOS gets in? Not there. And probably not any more.