The Federal Times reports that the Department of Interior is deliberately blocking computer access to blogs, among other sites deemed to be inappropriate.
The Interior Department is blocking access to blogs on government computers after its inspector general found employees were wasting time on pornography, gambling and auction sites.
Blogs — Web sites providing regular updates on a variety of topics — are among blocked sites because some include sexually explicit language, libelous or defamatory commentary, and outrageous language, said Frank Quimby, spokesman for the agency. . . .
“People shouldn’t be having access to blogs — at least on government computers on government time,” Quimby said.
As for accusations of ideological filtering, the story quotes Quimby saying it is only a matter of time before access to all blog sites is blocked. (Link via Gates of Vienna.)
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Quimby went on to say, "Why, some of them even suggest there should be NO Department of Interior!! Clearly, this cannot be tolerated in a civilized society..."
I found old files indicating that when Harold Ickes was Secretary, he designed the building with a penthouse, and lived there. He'd wander thru the building at night, spot offices where the lights had been left on, and write personal nasty letters to the occupants.
Is there some reason you (and Mr. Quimby) assume that no blog could ever contain content related to someone's job at Interior? For just one instance, the Agency doubtless has a few IT folks. There's an awful lot of good, timely information on IT issues being written on blogs these days.
The admin end of bureaucracy contains the bureaucrat's bureaucrats. That is to say, the bureaucrats look upon them as unproductive nitpickers who write up annoying and burdensome rules for everyone else, and of course exempt themselves. They see them the way everyone else sees the bureaucrats themselves.
Maybe I shouldn't mention that ... they might agree.
Actually, I think a lot of DOI was cut off from the Internet for awhile as part of the ongoing Indian trust fund litigation. I'm not sure if that order is still in place though; the DC Circuit finally removed the District Court judge from the case over the summer.
As Dean Swift observed:John wrote:
I'm not so sure about that. Not too many years ago some pundit suggested that paying regulatory bureaucrats full salary just to stay at home and not "work" would save productive citizens countless money and time. Web surfing might be a poor second to that, but half a loaf is better than none.
But DOI computers are DOI computers. If the department wants to ban blogs, so what? If access to blogs on work computers is a big concern of DOI employees, they are very lucky workers. As an employee, I would pick other battles to fight.
As an aside, remember when people went berserk over computer solitaire? Ah, the good ol' days.
(For the record, I'm not posting this from the office.)
As part of the agency's "institutional memory" (i.e., old-timer), I considered it part of my job to educate the young punks, er, supervisors, in what they could and couldn't do.
For instance, one supervisor thought he could shut down one of two private driveways on a conventional highway widening, and I spent two hours tracking down the state legal definition of conventional highway, and the status of pre-existing driveways on former county roads later adopted as state highways. Both driveways had to remain. Later, a higher-up told me Websense had detected "excessive internet use", and I was told to restrict my web surfing to my lunch period, even after I explained what I was doing on the net.
That's when I decided to take early retirement.