Bush Campaign Shuts Off Foreign Access To Website

Dubya takes Australia offline

By staff writers and wires

October 28, 2004

GEORGE W. Bush doesn't trust the outside world to view his US election campaign website, and that includes close ally Australia.

The US President's re-election aides said today it had cut off access to its website from certain foreign countries "for security reasons", but declined to elaborate.

"The measure was taken for security reasons," campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said.

The President's campaign office said earlier it had received telephone calls about access failures.

Mr Bush's campaign aides would not offer any more details, but last week the site went down for about five hours after a "denial of service" attack.

When the web address "www.georgewbush.com" was typed from NEWS.com.au's office, the following message appeared:

"You are not authorized to view this page. You might not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials you supplied.

"If you believe you should be able to view this directory or page, please try to contact the website by using any e-mail address or phone number that may be listed on the www.georgebush.com home page."

Obviously, without access to the homepage, finding e-mail addresses or phone numbers is impossible, leaving millions of interested users around the world without access.

British website "www.netcraft.com", which analyses Internet traffic to detect fraud and count the most visited sites, said the Bush campaign website had been inaccessible from London, Sydney and Amsterdam since Monday, although Canada was apparently not affected.

The website was down and inaccessible for several hours on Tuesday in what campaign officials said could be the work of hackers.

NEWS.com.au with Agence France-Presse.