Submission + - Internet censorship in the US "Red States"
A_linux_covert writes: "I am a consultant that travels frequently. This week I am in scenic Bismarck North Dakota and have found that selective packet shaping is occurring whenever I attempt to access progressive/liberal websites. This is a first for me, but it is disconcerting. The hotel that I am staying in utilizes Basin Telecommunications, Inc for connectivity. What I have found is that if I attempt to hit sites such as crooksandliars.com,thinkprogress.org,huffingtonpost.com and rawstory.com the sites load, but any multimedia clips or youtube video links just don't work. Throughput is 1-2k. Yet if I connect up to the corporate vpn without a split tunnel, these sites are usable and have decent throughput. If I hit foxnews.com, redstate.org, powerline.com, etc. the throughput is just fine and all resources have enough bandwidth be usable. The gist is that if you are interested in what the conservatives have to say, you can listen to their point of view with ease. If you are interested in any other point of view and don't have a way to tunnel around the isp's filters, you are out of luck. This is effectively censoring what the users of the internet in North Dakota can see or get to. Has anyone else ran into this crap or is it an isolated edge case?"