GOOGLE Blocks Sibel Edmonds Web Site as She Prepares to Testify on Intel Abuses

[leveymg]

I just got an e-mail from Sibel and believe that it's important to share this information as widely as possible (please rec and repost at other sites):

My Blog Site http://123realchange.blogspot.com is now blocked by Google’s Blogger. They will not let me post during this most sensitive period, when I am about to provide deposition on Foreign US government illegal operations in the United States!

A few weeks ago I started receiving ‘Google & Blogger warnings’ from my technologically savvy friends and well-wishers, who encouraged me to have a mirror site as a back up and or cease using Google’s Blogger all together. I did take these warnings seriously and started looking at alternatives and other options. Well, this is what I got from Blogger yesterday:


From: Blogger <[e-mail]>
Date: Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 8:19 AM
Subject: http://123realchange.blogspot.com/ - ACTION REQUIRED
To: [e-mail]


Hello,

Your blog at: http://123realchange.blogspot.com/ has been identified as a potential spam blog. To correct this, please request a review by filling out the form at http://www.blogger.com/unlock-blog.g?lockedBlogID=6542765284440328864

Your blog will be deleted in 20 days if it isn't reviewed, and your readers will see a warning page during this time. After we receive your request, we'll review your blog and unlock it within two business days. Once we have reviewed and determined your blog is not spam, the blog will be unlocked and the message in your Blogger dashboard will no longer be displayed. If this blog doesn't belong to you, you don't have to do anything, and any other blogs you may have won't be affected.

We find spam by using an automated classifier. Automatic spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and occasionally a blog like yours is flagged incorrectly. We sincerely apologize for this error. By using this kind of system, however, we can dedicate more storage, bandwidth, and engineering resources to bloggers like you instead of to spammers. For more information, please see Blogger Help: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42577

Thank you for your understanding and for your help with our spam-fighting efforts.

Sincerely,

The Blogger Team

P.S. Just one more reminder: Unless you request a review, your blog will be deleted in 20 days. Click this link to request the review: http://www.blogger.com/unlock-blog.g?lockedBlogID=6542765284440328864

I am still looking into it and will be corresponding with them to find out what the heck is going on, but I must say the timing of this is extremely troubling:

Is it coincidence that this comes up when I am subpoenaed to provide sworn deposition on matters that have sent our government scrambling and certain high-level criminal entities sweating big time?

Is this due to my latest interviews for my Boiling Frogs Show on explosive issues such as AIPAC, Iran, Central Asia, and Pakistan? We know big brother NSA has been listening, and my guests have really been talking. We just wrapped up our phone interviews with Phil Giraldi (on AIPAC & Israel and more), Richard Barlow (on Pakistan and what our government didn’t want its people to know), Joe Trento (on Iran, Brzezinski, and more), Sandalio Gonzalez (on our phony War on Drugs, House of Death, Kent Memo, and more)…You see what I am getting at here?

Or is it the fact that this blog is becoming more popular, the visitors’ number has been going up rapidly, and its content getting picked up by many, nationally and internationally? And I am talking about content and topics that are blacklisted by the US Mainstream Media.

I don’t know the answer. I may never know. However, what I know is this: I better find a different or multiple different, blog sites and keep this forum alive. I also want to warn others who may become subject to this kind of notice, or maybe get terminated without any notice!

Please help me, thus all of us, resolve this blockage immediately, since in the next few days this blog may prove to be extremely crucial to report developing news and cases which will not be covered by MSM.

Thank you,

Sibel Edmonds

This alert is also posted here: http://www.justacitizen.com/Press_Releases/URGENTGoogle's%20Blogger-Aug6.htm

Thank you,
Sibel Edmonds

For the context of this, you should check out the Front-page article on Sibel's upcoming testimony on Bush-Cheney era intelligence abuses. See, "FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Subpoenaed, Set to 'Break' Gag Order Unless DoJ Intercedes"

[pleah]

1. K&R

[redqueen]

2. K&R

[PDJane]

3. SOP, it seems...........

Astroturf discussion blockers on health care, disinformation on "clean coal," fake emails on everything.......jesus people.

[Echo In Light]

4. So, Google then works on behalf of who in marginalizing whistelblowers?

[Orsino]

12. Well, the Chinese government, for one.

There is a bit of precedent, though I'm not seeing anything necessarily sinister here.

[drm604]

5. Probably someone did something that triggered Google's spam algorithms.

Someone who wanted to block her postings may have filed a bogus complaint with Google or intentionally did something to trigger Google's spam algorithms.

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

6. I have no problem bringing it up.... n/t

[drm604]

7. The problem isn't that people can't bring it up.

The problem is that she can't log in to it and update it.

[leveymg]

9. Exactly. Thank you. The problem prevents Sibel from updating her own blog.

:hi:

[formercia]

8. K&R

[Greyskye]

10. Follow her on twitter

I did decide to resurrect my long neglected and seldom used twitter account to follow her for the short term.

[crikkett]

32. what's her twitter username?

[mmonk]

36. Here you go (sibeledmonds)

http://twitter.com/sibeledmonds

[omega minimo]

11. .

:wow:

[Newsjock]

13. It's a widespread Google problem, not targeted at Sibel Edmonds

I got the exact same email earlier this week, and if you do a Google blog search on "google spam blog," you see several instances of blog owners getting this notification.

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&q=google+spam+blog

[leveymg]

14. Fact remains, Edmond's site remains blocked and she can't update.

I'll let you know when I hear to the contrary from Sibel.

[anigbrowl]

17. And after she requests a review, it will be un-blocked.

This is just internet vandalism triggering an automatic system. Spam is sufficiently annoying that there's a mechanism for alerting service providers to it, and and 9 times out of 10 it's justified; when it isn't, the problem is usually rectified quickly.

[Better Today]

43. I am a little confused, couldn't she just post her blog on another site?

I mean it isn't optimal, but for this week she could just announce her blog is on DU for example or any of a number of political sites or surely she knows someone with a website that could donate pages to her, right?

[cascadiance]

16. I don't think anyone at high levels at google necessarily is doing this...

And if it is it is probably someone tweaking the system to trigger this spam thing so that it can appear to be unintentional, when whether its from inside or someone else doing something to trigger the spam identifier might be willfully doing so to censor her. As I noted before, I've seen other curious behavior on Google's part in the past related to Sibel, but there again, it's hard to say that there's at least any sizable number of people working within Google on this. At most probably one or two warped individuals that have their hands on the proper buttons/code.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=39220

Hard to know if either of these incidents had willful wrongful behavior inside Google or not, but the timing of each makes things suspicious. I think Google would be wise to come up with ways to publicly address these concerns to assure customers that it is monitoring any internal attempts to do things, or at least investigate them fully and explain how either they were nothing to be concerned about, or that they'd been dealt with appropriately and how their systems have been cleaned up to fix any cases of aberrant behavior or controlling of such from within or outside surreptiously for the future.

[leveymg]

18. Intentional or not, DU is a great work-around.

If this was an intentional DOS, it definitely backfired. ;)

[unc70]

15. I suspect this is related to proxy/cache poisoning issues

The main Google cache is subject to various types of manipulation, usually to drive traffic to malware sites that have hijacked someone elses content as their own and then greatly spiked the hit counts using bots or other methods. It will happen with almost any topic that suddenly gets a lot of search activity.

There are lots of ways this activity gets played out, but a simplified example goes something like this:

1. Have thousands of domains registered whose IPs might be hosted by relatively few machines.

2. Generate traffic to those sites using links in blogs, etc.

3. Have those sites return pages to the web crawlers with keyword lists which include all of the recent "hot" search terms plus a sampling of other recent search terms (to make it seem unique). The content of the pages may or may not contain the keywords.

4. Have the sites return different page content when accessed with a browser.

Depending on how one plays this "game", one can make a page appear on the first result page from a search or make a site disappear completely because it contains "duplicate content" found on thousands of "spam" sites -- even when it originated the content. It is also used to drive traffic following some exciting bit of web news (e.g. nude video of reporter), often to an infected malware site. BTW DNS hijacks are a common prelude to setting up this type network.

I am not saying that forces might not be at work behind the scenes to affect what happens, only that it need not involve Google action. There was a huge amount of this stuff during the primaries to make stories highly visible or to make them almost totally disappear. After all, if Google doesn't find it, it didn't happen.

[G_j]

page not found

http://www.justacitizen.com/Press_Releases/URGENTGoogle/'s%20Blogger-Aug6.htm

[cascadiance]

21. This is the way your URL is, or the way the DU site is parsing it and not handling apostrophes well.

Here's where I think the above link is supposed to point to. I find using a "link" tag instead of the raw URL itself at times corrects the problem... Might help to note to Sibel to avoid using spaces, apostrophes or other weird characters in her site's urls so that sites like DU don't get confused...

link

[G_j]

23. good

thanks!

:hi:

[cascadiance]

24. Other URLs on her site like this might be THE problem and why her site was flagged too.

Typically spam sites will have a lot of weird urls they have where they use the extended character set or spell out things with spaces between characters, url encodings, etc. (which helps from the spammer's point of view to avoid being "caught" by Google through keyword searches of spam terms, etc.) If Google was going through and looking for characters like this and feeling it suspicious because it follows patterns that spammers use, that might be why it got flagged the way it is now...

For the future, if this is the case an ounce of prevention might be worth a pound of cure, as the saying goes...

[G_j]

25. that's a good guess

that is probably the case

[unc70]

19. Let me add that Google admits to censoring in many ways

While this could well be as I described in my previous post, I am quite aware that Google routinely censors search results based upon the location of the searcher and a lot of other things. Google is becoming increasingly attuned to "personalizing" the search experience to the user and their previous search history.

Translated: Two people doing the exact same search at the same time could get wildly different results, different news, different realities.

[bananas]

20. k&r nt

[H2O Man]

22. Recommended.

Thanks for this!

[StateSecrets]

27. Update

My site is still suspended/blocked; so I cannot post anything. They say 2 business days before they review, and decide whether they're going to lift the ban or not...That means: During this deposition period I won't be able to post. (people can see old posts, and can post comments, but I can't access and post anything)....

So does this mean all it takes is a nut case or a savvy agent with an agenda flags your blog site, and you are suspended? For 2 business days? NO matter what, I will move the site soon. I won't tolerate this. I still believe the timing is very/highly suspicious.

[leveymg]

30. I think I can safely speak for DU on this - you're always welcome to post here.

You'll get more hits at DU, and there's a friendly studio audience. And, GOOGLE picks up content.

Thanks for what you do.

[annabanana]

34. Start a "Journal" page here. . .n/t

[H2O Man]

40. Very good idea.

I think that is perfect.

[mimitabby]

26. this happened to my husband's blog too

he filled out the form, blabla and all was well.

[AntiFascist]

28. GOOGLE, in bed with US intelligence?

http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2006/02/22/google-in-bed-with-us-intelligence/

Last November, the CIA – through In-Q-Tel – issued notices to sell $2.2 million worth of Google stock.

Robert David Steele, intelligence veteran and CEO of OSS.Net, Inc. which sponsored last week’s event, told HSToday.us Tuesday evening that “Google is being actively hypocritical and deceptive in playing up its refusal to help the Department of Justice when all along it has been taking money and direction for elements of the US Intelligence Community, including the Office of Research and Development at the Central Intelligence Agency, In-Q-Tel, and in all probability, both the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command.”

Steele added, “I have no doubt that Google, in its arrogance, decided it could make a deal with the devil and not get caught.” — HSToday.us

[crikkett]

33. I thought everybody knew that NSA has invested in google from the start n/t

[AntiFascist]

39. I prefer search engines that have all the ads....

at least you know where their revenue is coming from.

[rosesaylavee]

29. thank you!

Very much looking forward to her press conference on Saturday.

K & R

[ThoughtCriminal]

31. One problem is, anybody can "Flag" a Blog

If I understand the process (haven't researched this much), if enough people "Flag" it, the account can be suspended until reviewed.

The process can be easily abused by a small number of people with a motive.

[L. Coyote]

35. Works just fine for me right now!

http://123realchange.blogspot.com/

[AzDar]

37. K & R

[TexasObserver]

38. Recommend

[graywarrior]

41. Kick

[zeos3]

42. K&R