# Foreigners blocked from Bush's website **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 27, 2004, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560 "2004-10-27T23:10:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560/1 "2004-10-27T23:10:36Z")
Try to go to [georgewbush.com](http://georgewbush.com), and if your browser says you’re not American, then: > [@](#): > > You don’t have permission to access “[http://www.georgewbush.com/](http://www.georgewbush.com/)” on this server. Great multilateralist stance, there. :rolleyes: [http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,65508,00.html?tw=wn\_tophead\_4](http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,65508,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_4) ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2004, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560/2 "2004-10-28T00:47:15Z")
Indeed, I can’t access the site. By the way, what’s the point of blocking access from foreign countries? For all they know I could be an american expatriate. And even if there weren’t any american expatriate, still, what would be the point? Sparing bandwidth? ---
**Author:** ![colour\_wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/edb3f5/32.png) [@colour\_wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colour_wolf)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2004, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560/3 "2004-10-28T00:50:42Z")
I wondered what was going on. I wanted to see that ‘Wolves’ commercial, but was unable to get to the site. I had to make due with the parody instead. ---
**Author:** ![Brutus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Brutus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brutus)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2004, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560/4 "2004-10-28T01:05:03Z")
Security. Don’t need those Chinese hacker-hordes having at the site, you know. ---
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2004, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560/5 "2004-10-28T01:44:32Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > And even if there weren’t any american expatriate, still, what would be the point? Sparing bandwidth? If the Bush campaign team is worried about sucking up IT resources, then they should really stop sending me spam. No matter how many times I try to block the damn domain, the stuff gets through. ---
**Author:** ![Rashak\_Mani](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ea666f/32.png) [@Rashak\_Mani](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rashak_Mani)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2004, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560/6 "2004-10-28T02:08:42Z")
Can people in the US acess it ? I couldn’t. Well I hope this costs him some expatriate votes !! 🙂 (doubt it…) ---
**Author:** ![Rashak\_Mani](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ea666f/32.png) [@Rashak\_Mani](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rashak_Mani)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2004, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560/7 "2004-10-28T02:10:17Z")
hhmm… on second thought… if they don’t block foreign acess… the server would be crashed either by the amount of people trying to acess from abroad… or more likely a huge number of hackers more than willing to crash the Bush site. Bush ain’t to popular out of the US afterall. ---
**Author:** ![Hi\_Neighbor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hi_neighbor/32/494_2.png) [@Hi\_Neighbor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hi_Neighbor)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2004, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560/8 "2004-10-28T02:28:14Z")
> [@colour wolf](#): > > I wondered what was going on. I wanted to see that ‘Wolves’ commercial, but was unable to get to the site. We were all sitting around when this commercial came on. I had never seen it up until that point. One of my buddies quickley told everyone to shhhh and watch. I didn’t see what was so special about it. What’s with the hype? ---
**Author:** ![Hi\_Neighbor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hi_neighbor/32/494_2.png) [@Hi\_Neighbor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hi_Neighbor)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2004, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560/9 "2004-10-28T02:29:32Z")
quickly\* An ‘edit post’ option would be grand! ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2004, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560/10 "2004-10-28T02:36:23Z")
I can get there, and I’m not in the US. ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2004, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560/11 "2004-10-28T07:58:55Z")
I get the error message from the OP too (accessing from the IP space of Germany’s largest ISP). Looks strange to me - if they really wanted to block crackers they would do so at the firewall level (not letting packets from certain IP address ranges through), not at the web server level (accepting packets from all comers but serving an error page to locations they don’t like). The last-mentioned method does _not_ prevent security vulnerabilities (if any) of the web server software being exploited. Can’t they even _employ_ clueful people? ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2004, 9:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560/12 "2004-10-28T09:07:02Z")
…I’ve never been able to get onto [www.georgewbush.com](http://www.georgewbush.com) … I even posted in General Questions about it a while ago… [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=271072&highlight=georgewbush.com](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=271072&highlight=georgewbush.com) …but I never got an Access Denied message before today…thats acutally further than I’ve ever gotten before! ---
**Author:** ![Brutus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Brutus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brutus)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2004, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560/13 "2004-10-28T09:11:51Z")
[L337 H4x0rz abound](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2668-2004Oct27.html), it seems. > [@](#): > > The move happened one week after the Bush-Cheney and Republican National Committee sites were unavailable for almost six hours. Security experts said the outage probably was the result of a “distributed denial-of-service attack,” in which hackers use tens of thousands of hijacked computers to overwhelm Web sites by flooding them with bursts of digital data. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2004, 9:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560/14 "2004-10-28T09:29:14Z")
I’m sure a dedicated hacker could spoof their IP, or use a US-based proxy. So, in response to a foreign threat, the Bush website responds in a blundering, unintelligent, ham-fisted fashion that gets everybody’s back up. Isn’t it _beautifully_ analogous? ---
**Author:** ![Brutus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Brutus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brutus)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2004, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560/15 "2004-10-28T10:12:04Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > So, in response to a foreign threat, the Bush website responds in a blundering, unintelligent, ham-fisted fashion that gets everybody’s back up. Ya. _That_ is what gets your ‘back up’. There you were, all even-minded about the man, but _bam!_, he switches webhosts, increases security, and that was the last straw. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2004, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560/16 "2004-10-28T10:18:15Z")
> [@Brutus](#): > > …_bam!_, he switches webhosts, **increases security** , and that was the last straw. It’s certainly increased security. It’s like making air travel safer, by not allowing anybody to board the planes. ---
**Author:** ![Brutus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Brutus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brutus)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2004, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560/17 "2004-10-28T10:24:22Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > It’s certainly increased security. It’s like making air travel safer, by not allowing anybody to board the planes. More like not allowing international flights to a domestic airport. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2004, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560/18 "2004-10-28T10:36:39Z")
> [@Brutus](#): > > Ya. _That_ is what gets your ‘back up’. There you were, all even-minded about the man, but _bam!_, he switches webhosts, increases security, and that was the last straw. I suspect you might have omitted to read the final paragraph of my light-hearted post. However, in case you did read it, but failed to understand it, here’s a dictionary definition for the word [analogous](http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=analogous). ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2004, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560/19 "2004-10-28T10:48:24Z")
> [@Brutus](#): > > Ya. _That_ is what gets your ‘back up’. There you were, all even-minded about the man, but _bam!_, he switches webhosts, increases security, and that was the last straw. Analogy or not, this does not increase security in any significant way. They’re just stopping us foreigners from viewing the content, not from communicating with the web server. Also, even if they were, it’s a relatively simple matter to disguise where you’re from. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2004, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560/20 "2004-10-28T11:22:57Z")
American expat and I can not access from china [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreigners-blocked-from-bushs-website/271560.md?page=2)