Sherry Chandler » Unintended Consequences
Unintended Consequences
Well, Governor Ernie Fletcher has made the NYTimes again, but I doubt if he’s happy about it.
Seems the Fletcher administration decided to inaugurate summer on June 21 by blocking state employees’ access to some web sites, to include porn and hate sites, computer games, shopping sites, and “certain political blogs.”
The problem is that the blocking was selective. State employees can still look at Republican-friendly sites like the Drudge Report and Rush Limbaugh. It’s only mostly sites that criticize Fletcher that are now off limits. Chief among these apparently is Bluegrass Reports. The blog owner, Mark Nikolas, was campaign manager for U.S. Representative Ben Chandler when Chandler ran against Fletcher for governor. Nikolas is a proudly partisan Democrat and his site has been scathingly critical of Fletcher.
Nikolas soon mobilized the big Democratic players in the blogosphere: Talking Points Memo and its companion TPM Muckraker, The Daily Kos, Eschaton. Then some of those sites got blocked, too. And now the national mainstream media are catching on.
And instead of losing readership (Nikolas says about 10% of his daily hit count comes from state computers), traffic at Bluegrass Reports has increased tremendously. As Nikolas reported on June 22:
Yesterday’s visits were a record. 15,904 visitors, 31,313 page views. Today is starting off quite strong as well with tons of national traffic.
This kind of political blundering has been typical of the Fletcher administration, which is why Fletcher is now the third most unpopular governor in the country.
I have no quarrel with the state government asking, even requiring, employees to stay off the web for anything that isn’t work related. But I tend to agree with Jeff at Have Coffee Will Write about nannyware:
I think that all nannyware is a bad idea because it abdicates responsibility. If you’re a parent, put the computer in a common space where anyone walking by can easily see what’s on the screen. If you’re a business, simply tell employees that theft of company time and resources will not be tolerated and that web surfing not directly related to work is theft. Fire one or two employees for stealing and the others will get the idea.
These programs are notoriously unreliable.
And this kind of selective blocking is kicking in the law of unintended consequences for Ernie Fletcher.
More here and here. And from the horse’s mouth.
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