U.S. blocked California state Web sites to stop porn

By Jim Finkle

BOSTON (Reuters) - In what one California official characterized as a case of overkill, U.S. officials disrupted access to all state government Web sites this week after a county Web page was hacked.

The federal government stepped in after learning that a Marin County, California, Web page redirected users to a pornographic Web site.

"They used a shotgun to kill a flea," state spokesman Jim Hanacek said on Friday.

Federal authorities, who have ultimate authority over most local and state Web sites, attempted to block all domains ending in ca.gov on Tuesday, Hanacek said.

State agencies across California experienced rolling e-mail and Web site outages for about seven hours, and Internet users had trouble pulling up some state Web sites, he said.

The General Services Administration, which shut down the sites, apologized for the inconvenience on Thursday and said it would try to find a more targeted solution for similar problems in the future.

"GSA is responsible for the integrity of all the .gov Web sites it manages," the agency said in a statement. "The potential exposure of pornographic material to the citizens and tens of thousands of children in California was a primary motivator for GSA to request immediate corrective action."