NorthIowaToday.com

Founded in 2010

News & Entertainment for Mason City, Clear Lake & the Entire North Iowa Region

Latest attack on NIT: Blocked at courthouse and city hall

Cerro Gordo county courthouse

by Matt Marquardt –

The latest update on the attacks on NorthIowaToday.com is as follows:

I received a very hushed phone call from a person late last week telling me that “we can’t pull up NorthIowaToday.com here at the (Cerro Gordo) courthouse.”

I had about a 30 minute conversation with the person, who will remain anonymous.  This person told me, among a number of things, that Jay Urdahl was behind having NIT blocked on computers at the courthouse (I’m not saying this is true or not, this is what I was told).  I wasn’t surprised to hear this, because I can’t count the number of conversations I have had with folks over the previous months where Supervisor Urdahl’s name was uttered to me.  Typically, I am told Urdahl hates NorthIowatoday.com, doesn’t think too highly of me, and peppers his remarks to them with colorful profanity.  Many times they do a Jay Urdahl impression while they are telling me these stories.

Perhaps the best story I was told was how Urdahl lambasted Supervisor Phil Dougherty at the courthouse for buying an advertisement on NorthIowaToday.com.  This incident was witnessed by several people.  Maybe another great story I was told was how Urdahl was rounding up allies to go after Amanda Ragan for including NIT on her press release list.  I got a lot more.

Why does Jay Urdahl hate NIT?

The person on the phone went on to say Urdahl is thought of as a “bully” at the courthouse and they “wouldn’t be surprised” if he was somehow involved with getting NIT blocked.

Then, both Friday and Monday, I was alerted by officials at city hall that NorthIowaToday.com was blocked there as well.

I was told by the parties that contacted me that the other “media” sites were not blocked at either location.  I’ve been told by people that NIT has at times been blocked at the Principal building, too.

Now, I am sure this is all part of the recent denial of service attack that was launched against NIT over the last several weeks and the overall attack machine coordinated by people that hate NIT.  I am not a technical forensic expert so finding out exactly who is behind this might be like trying to solve the Kennedy assassination.  I wrote about these attacks on November 28th and again on December 3rd.  My only defense, really, is telling the public and waiting for information to come my way.

I have theorized (theorized only; I am stopping short at this time of outright accusations) that the attack machine involved few locals- only people with the motivation and means to harm NorthIowaToday.com.  The enemies of NIT instead went to my web host (located out of state) and systematically had not only the networks at the courthouse and city hall and other locations blocked, but my own computers in my office as well.  I can produce countless emails where I complained to my web hosting provider, over the course of the last several months, where sometimes on a daily basis I could not view NorthIowaToday.com here in my office.  I could not view it nor open the site nor log-in to work on it.  I have learned that they can, by IP address, easily “ban” or “not serve” a web site to any computer they choose just by adding an IP address to a list.  I also have admissions that they disabled story commenting and altered vital web site files that belong to me on their web server.  Needless to say, these are huge problems when you are trying to produce and post breaking news.

Interestingly, after a terse conversation a few Sundays ago with my web hosting provider, I have not once had an issue here in my office with viewing or working on NorthIowaToday.com.  I have not been locked out in my office since then.

Yesterday, I contacted my web host and gave them the IP addresses of the courthouse (I just got the IP for city hall today).  My web host apologized, saying they are “sorry to hear this is still being an issue for you.  The IP address you have provided has now been unblocked.”

Again, I ask the public to continue with the phone calls, emails and conversations you have brought me.  This information, along with your subscriptions, are vital to keeping NIT on-line.

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