A Labour MSP has attacked what she calls political censorship after a local authority set up an internet filter that prevents staff from viewing an online news site.
Dumfries and Galloway council have set up the filter in order to prevent staff from downloading and viewing pages from the News of the World’s online site.
A Labour MSP has attacked what she calls political censorship after a local authority set up an internet filter that prevents staff from viewing an online news site.
Dumfries and Galloway council have set up the filter in order to prevent staff from downloading and viewing pages from the News of the World’s online site.
Labour’s Elaine Murray attacked the move and accused council chiefs of “outrageous” censorship. The Holyrood MSP accused coucillors of using the internet in order to smear opponents and called for the block to be lifted immediately.
Ms Murray said:
“Dumfries councillors and aides used the internet to smear opponents with vile lies – council bosses clearly don’t want staff reading the paper that broke the story.
“The News of the World’s investigative journalism is famous and exposed the smear operation. That is no reason to censor the website.”
A spokesman from the council has said the filter has been put in place in order to address bandwidth issues caused by too many people logging on at the same time.
The News of the World have claimed that a message appears saying their site has been blocked because it comes under the online security firm’s ‘tasteless’ category.
Newsnet Scotland has also fallen victim to online political censorship. The BBC’s publicly funded online blogs have introduced a similar filter that prevents members of the public from mentioning this news site and also prevents any links to site articles. The BBC have closed the accounts of people who have attempted to circumvent these attacks on free expression.
If you found this article interesting why not make a small contribution in order to help keep the site going – see the paypal button on the right.