Cyberisolationism

The Bush campaign site has become unavailble outside the US, which has prompted many comments (here, here, here, here, and here), and could have the funny side effect of a lot of people going to www.georgewbush.org*... However, until a couple of days ago of days ago you still access it through alternate URLs: https://georgewbush.com and http://65.172.163.222.

This suggests that whoever blocked the access was not very technically savvy... more like the kind of guy who is pointy-haired or talks about 'the internets'...

Officially (to the extent that campaign officials have bothered to reply), the reason was "security". In that case it was a pre-emptive (what did you expext from Bush-Cheney?) measure; according to the BBC, 'Data gathered by Netcraft on the pattern of traffic to the site shows that the blocking is not the result of another denial of service attack.'.

So, "security" seems to be a lame excuse; a friend of mine who's taking a degree in computer systems security at Stockholm University calls it "total ottershit".

Wether american citizens or not, people outside the US are massively anti-bush; giving the 403 is a server's way of showing this.

*You can still view the real site from outside the US via this site.