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NASSAU BANS LIpolitics
Using an employer's Internet access means having to
play by their rules. When you abuse it, you lose it, which may be why
LIpolitics.com was blocked from the Nassau County government's server
recently. However, some critics are speculating that it was the
website's extensive and scandalous Message Board Forum, splashed with
Long Island political gossip and hearsay, that prompted the county to
prevent employees from visiting the site.
The county's information technology commissioner,
Craig Love (see story on page 9), has been frequently criticized on the
site's rumor board. But he says blocking the site wasn't his idea. The
website came up in a management meeting and one of the supervisors asked
to have it filtered from the county system (only supervisors have the
authority to block a site county-wide). Apparently, it was consuming too
much of too many workers' time.
This is certainly not a first. The county has a
filtering device on its server which blocks thousands of sites, probably
mostly pornography, and has long since blocked ESPN.com as a time-theft
haven. But for politicians to block access to political sites smacks of
censorship. "LIpolitics.com prides itself as being an unbiased
source for political news information," says Anthony Manetta, who
runs the site.
Yet the message board is anything but unbiased. Sly
political insiders place postings under anonymous user names, and the
content can be scathing, often times poking into the private lives of
those in the public eye. "I can understand if they don't want
[employees] to post anything, but to not be able to read it?" says
Manetta. "If that is true, it's not only hurting the voters of
Nassau County but the employees that are being silenced."
County workers could appeal to have access restored,
but they must have a legitimate reason, and "to tell the world who
my boss is sleeping with" isn't acceptable. In any event, no one
has yet made such a request.
—Lauren E. Hill
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