I’ve worked in government IT. I know very well what Section 508 sites require. I’ve used the PCs at Camp LeJeune and Aberdeen Proving Grounds, and, I must reiterate, I am near the top of the field in the most widely known programming language on Earth. The person McArdle talked to didn’t now what the bleep he was talking about, and McArdle, no IT expert herself, didn’t bother to check around.

You are completely missing the larger point, which is the technology choice has little to nothing to do with what sites to block. It’s the difference between debating the type of lawnmower (what technology) and who mows what lawns when.

You are also saying I am positing malfeasance. The military has a job. That job does _not_ include availing every soldier of every web-published opinion on Earth. It never has, nor will it ever. It doesn’t take a genius to see that, in fact, to accomplish the military mission in the most expeditious fashion, there is a utility in PREVENTING soldiers from seeing enemy propaganda. Morale matters.

I don’t come here telling you about Central Asia. I ask questions. I asked you for a book that had about one chapter each on each ex-Soviet central Asian republic, you didn’t bother to answer. That, combined with the above bit of NONSENSE, makes me think I really don’t like you, in the human being sense, even if I greatly appreciate any bumble-bleep American taking in an interest in something other than their own navel.

Ciao!

Sure, someone could want to keep people ignorant. But a handy rule of thumb that’s done me well is to never posit malfeasance when incompetence suffices.

In fact, the McArdle article has much, much more to do with Gov IT _development_ (i.e. writing software the gov’t can use) than choices of “what website to block.” For most purposes, these issues (McArdle’s example and blocking websites) are orthogonal. One has to do with “what technology do we deploy to block websites” and the other is “what websites do we block?”

Those decisions are based on a variety of factors. Do you remember Marvin Olasky, author of Compassionate Conservatism (2000, forward by George Walker Bush), publisher of World Magazine? One blog he hosted, Caffeine & Irony, was blocked by the White House… too much traffic! Personally, I never saw what was so neat about the site, but, hey, I’m godless.

You would, I hope, at least grant that _some_ people, powerful people, do want to keep people ignorant? Ignorant, for example, of images of the dead servicemembers returning to America? One could hardly argue that the conditions inside U.S. run prisons in the Middle East are transparent. Remember those fake “enhanced” interrogations that the military showed Members of Congress? Faking out members of Congress is another way to keep them ignorant.

Maybe the PX cost of $35/64KB is the DOD’s estimated cost for reading emails

But not letting web traffic IN to Afghanistan, that is another matter altogether. Naturally for me, the only idea about *that* is they are doing their damnedest to keep enlisted folks ignorant. This sounds “evil” or something, but really, public ignorance has always, always, always been in the interest of certain ruling parties.

My favorite example is a Colonial Governor of Virginia. Francis Parkman “Sir William Berkeley once thanked God that there were no free schools, and no prospect of any for a century.” [Parkman's Montcalm & Wolfe]. Another philosophy which lends itself to public ignorance is free market capitalism. If the people _know_ that the product is cheap because of child or slave-like labor, you might not be able to buy from the best price producer anymore.