Macworld published an article Feds pull the domain name plug on State of California which I found very interesting.
All quotes below are from that story, all emphasis has been added by me. Only selected parts of the article have been reproduced, for the full story click on the link above.
The story behind the shutdown, and how the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) came within hours of shutting down the State of California’s Internet presence, is a complex one, but as with so many stories on the Internet, it begins with pornography. In early September the Transportation Authority of Marin, a ten-person agency charged with managing transportation funding in Marin County, California, discovered that the servers that handled the agency’s Web and domain name service had been hacked and were being used to create links to pornographic Web sites. Only the GSA knows for sure why this was done, but Hanacek said that the problems that had been experienced by the Transportation Authority of Marin were behind the move. “Our understanding… is they were seeing signs of some redirects over to pornographic sites and that is what caused them to shut down that domain.” Security experts expressed amazement Wednesday that the federal government would undertake such a drastic move without first trying to resolve the problem with the state. “That’s hard core, given how much stuff there is under ca.gov,” said Cricket Liu, vice president of architecture with DNS appliance vendor Infoblox. “Maybe they thought there was some sort of imminent threat.”
First of all, a tip of the hat to Cricket Liu, not only for having a name that sounds like some sort of cross between an Asian kickboxing champion and a Disney character, but for giving a quote using the phrase “hard core” when discussing a story about California’s domain name being shut off for pornography concerns.
(Lest it sound like I’m making fun, let me make it clear I think Cricket Liu is the coolest name I’ve heard in a long time.)
Tip of the hat to Robert McMillan of IDG News Service, author of the piece, for using it, no doubt with a nudge nudge wink wink. One wonders if he asked Liu “So would you call the decision to cut off the 5th largest economy based on pornography fears was soft core or hard core?” or if Liu offered it on his own.
Finally, I would be very curious to know what sort of “imminent threat” the government would fear? Some sort of all-out boobies attack on the world?
Classic American puritanism, yes, we’re the land of the free and home of the brave, but we would rather take down an entire state government’s domain name than risk someone accidentally seeing “naughty bits” on display.
sigh