Blacking Out The Eye?

Say it isn't so! The Eye has been covered at Albuquerque's Sunport! One of our indignant Eyes called to tell us that surfers at Albuquerque's Sunport are unable to visit EyeOnAlbuquerque.com when using Albuquerque's free Internet access. What's more, we're not the only website that is verboten. Seems that blogger Mario Burgos has also been banned from potential passenger consumption.

Could the Eye's blackout be an anomaly? Sure. Both sites are hosted by Google's blogger.com and perhaps blogger was blocked or unavailable. However, other Eye readers were able to access the Eye On Albuquerque at the same time, and the likelihood that any of Google's servers would be unreachable boggles (or at least Googles) the mind.

Could it be that members of the Chavez administration or the Almighty Mayor in Chief have taken offense? Maybe... we have been critical of the mayor and his minions on many different occasions; something that could also be said of Mr. Burgos.

These types of shenanigans (if shenanigans they are) point out the very real danger of "free Internet access" provided by the city. First of all government provided Internet access is anything but free - just ask officials in Rio Rancho (ABQ Journal - Subscription). The money used to provide this "free" service comes from... you guessed it, all of the rest of us.

Even more annoying is that if you have a politically motivated, ambitious, and vengeful mayor who also controls those who control your "free" access and then decides that you shouldn't be reading certain material on certain Internet sites; they have the authority to keep you from viewing the material. The communist Chinese think that kind of control over the Internet is a grand idea, we just didn't think any government official would have the gaul to try to pull that kind of stunt right here in the good ol' U.S. of A, even if the access is free.