Last week the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign barred people outside the United States from accessing its website. The restriction was apparently in response to an electronic attack that shut down the both campaign and Republican National Committee (RNC) websites the week before. The new restrictions prevent anyone trying to access the website except for users in the United States and Canada. All other users only see a message "Access denied: You don't have permission to access www.georgewbush.com on this server." The campaign and RNC websites were unavailable for six hours after a "distributed denial-of-service attack" flooded the sites with digital data from tens of thousands of computers. Computer security experts report that while blocking individual users or specific countries known for unreliable Internet practices is not unusual, a blanket restriction on all but two countries is unprecedented. The restriction does not just prevent foreigners, possibly interested in the democratic process, but also blocks American citizens living and traveling abroad from important information during a critical campaign.