ALEC's website is inaccessible -- embarrassment, or too much traffic?

[highplainsdem]

The main pages on the website for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)

http://alec.org

http://www.alec.org

are inaccessible this morning, as I discovered thanks to midnight's reply in L. Coyote's topic on Professor Cronon's blog post about ALEC:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x744492

I'm not sure if the site was taken down or made inaccessible deliberately, or whether there's been too much traffic and that's why people are getting this message:

Server Error
The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete your request.

JRun closed connection.

Some PDF files are still on the site, like this one for ALEC's "State Budget Reform Toolkit":

http://www.alec.org/am/pdf/tax/Budget_toolkit.pdf

(Btw, I've posted about this elsewhere. This is basically the blueprint rightwing governors and state legislators are following in this legislative blitz.)

Is it possible for a site to be down because of too much traffic, while still having PDF files on the site available?

Or does this mean that all the recent publicity about ALEC, and the negative reactions from most people hearing about the organization, have them trying to hide their site, at least temporarily?

Many of the PDF files on the ALEC site, especially the ones with the complete text of their model legislation, have never been accessible to the public, only to ALEC members who have to sign in. But some of these reports have been accessible, and at the moment they're still online.

[drm604]

1. Since the PDF loads quickly, I don't think it's a matter of traffic.

I think they may have some sort of configuration issue. JRun is a Java based application server.

[drm604]

2. Do you have the links to those previously inaccessible PDFs?

[highplainsdem]

8. Just realized the files with the full text of their model legislation aren't PDF files. I'd seen

PDF copies of legislation on other sites, and must have had that file type confused with the ALEC bills that were never accessible to non-members on their site.

This is the link to their Voter ID Act model legislaton:

http://www.alec.org/AM/TemplateRedirect.cfm?template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=11050

All the links look like that. They just get you that error message now, the one quoted in the OP, but previously got you a page saying that was accessible only to members and asking you to log in.

[davidinalameda]

3. I was trying to get on there last night and couldn't

thought it was just me

interesting

[highplainsdem]

9. Yes, it is interesting. And this really confirms what the WI GOP's targeting of Cronon suggested

earlier -- that they're terrified of how voters will react when they know more about ALEC.

[drm604]

4. They have lots of PDFs

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&hs=wVX&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&as_qdr=all&q=site%3Aalec.org+filetype%3Apdf&btnG=Search

[highplainsdem]

5. How to get to the Google caches of those pages:

This is info I just posted on Professor Cronon's blog, too, since people were posting there about ALEC's site being down.


The simplest way to use Google to search for cached versions of ALEC.org pages at the moment is to search for this string of words:

site:alec.org

The “Cached” link for Google’s cache of the page follows the URL at the bottom of the search result.


I posted the shorter search string there in a reply to my first post about getting to the cached pages, since Google had first shown me results for a longer search string that included ALEC's full name, and that had picked up only about 500 results, compared to 1400 when I searched for only the site name.

[mzteris]

6. Anonymous?? hmmm....

wonder what they could find . . .

[highplainsdem]

7. Don't think so. It's more likely that they're redoing the site to make most of it accessible only

to members who are logged in.

Some of it was that way already, but I'd guess they want to hide more of it now.

And they'll probably come up with new public pages trying to convince people that ALEC really is wonderful, despite the negative publicity.

[mzteris]

20. not saying they're responsible for the problem right now -

just suggesting that they might want to take a little look-see, ya know?

[toddaa]

10. JRun? Did they buy this from a garage sale?

It's an old servlet engine Adobe acquired years ago from the Macromedia buyout that's pretty much abandonware at this point. ALEC clearly doesn't give a crap about their web presence. The error is probably a result of heavy load. I doubt it's a DDOS. This looks more like a site that was set up to handle no more than a couple hundred concurrent users at most.

[highplainsdem]

11. Wouldn't that affect the PDF files on the site, too, if it can handly only a couple hundred

concurrent users?

[toddaa]

15. PDFs are being served from a separate servlet engine

Their web server isn't down, only the servlet app for the home page.

[highplainsdem]

12. Btw, the links that are inaccessible all seem to have this as part of the URL:

"Template.cfm?"

Even their home page, since when you click on

http://alec.org

it takes you to

http://www.alec.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home

[toddaa]

16. CFM is ColdFusion

I'll stop making fun of them now. We've still got shitloads of CFM we can't get rid of at work. Without a "business need" that crap will never go away.

[drm604]

17. I know.

They probably haven't bothered to update in years. Hey, conservatives don't like change right?

[sabrina 1]

13. Interesting, they clearly have a lot to hide, or it would never

have been hidden. The Prof should sue them for harassment and then demand they hand over complete access to their website as part of discovery.

But even better would be if Anonymous took a peek at what they are so desperately trying to hide.

Looks like they went a bit too far this time. Frankly this was a story I was not aware of, now I am and will make sure others are also.

When they begin to feel untouchable, they start making major mistakes and it looks like this is what is happening.

[Lifelong Protester]

14. probably both, it's all over FB now to 'visit' the page, so my guess

is we are crashing the site...one way or the other, no one seems to be able to get in.

[suffragette]

18. Scrub-a-dub-dub time?

[toddaa]

19. Site Analytics from Compete

Traffic going way up

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/alec.org/

It's like turning on the lights and watching the cockroaches scurry for cover.

[MonkeyWhacked]

21. TPM may have had something to do with ALEC's website

Check this post from talkingpointsmemo...it seems that you could enter a known email of a Teabagger pol, and find out if they were a member under the guise of resetting their password. The website would actually give you confirmation that an email was sent to the requested email account.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/wi-gop-foias-emails-of-state-university-prof-critical-of-gov-walker.php?ref=fpb


Turnabout is fair play. ALEC does not make its members known to the public. However, if his emails need to be released for the public good, I think their membership rosters would be very informative to the public as well.

Luckily, lazy technology makes this possible to an extent. On the ALEC website, they have a “Forgot Password” page, like most sites do. However, the process for resetting a password only requires an email address with no other information, and it gives immediate confirmation as to whether or not that email is registered in the system, more or less making it a free membership verification tool:

http://www.alec.org//AM/Templa...

Using this page, I was able to verify Rep. Jeff Fitzgerald’s membership in a few seconds using the email address on his state web page ([e-mail]).

Open up the shades and let the sunshine in, before they figure out this loophole and close it.