UNCONSCIONABLE CENSORSHIP BY THE GOVERNMENT

Yesterday, we published one of our brief articles on Unconscionability in Contracting.  Today, we received a comment from a dear reader who pointed out that the Air Force has blocked access to our blog site with its Bluecoat AFNet firewall.  Apparently, this firewall controls all Air Force Internet links and it denies access to our blog site.  The category that Bluecoat blocks is called Government/Legal; Blogs/Personal Pages.

Perhaps this censorship was an unintended mistake.  Perhaps we were just caught up in an understandable attempt to keep employees from spending time reading personal emails.  Or, perhaps the Air Force purposefully seeks to limit access to what we say.  We'd like the Air Force to come forward and tell us this is not censorship.  And, we'd like the Air Force to recognize our purpose is to educate the public.

Our editorial policy is to protect and preserve the integrity of the procurement system and enlighten its practitioners, both in industry and government, on critical policy and legal issues of current interest.  We do not take sides.  Federal procurement is the most highly regulated marketplace in the world.  Everyone needs to know the rules.  We talk about rules.  They are meant to be followed by government and contractor employees alike.  Let the chips fall where they may. 

We do not take censorship lying down.  To the extent any of you, dear readers, have any influence in making sure our words get out, please help.

Finally, we are humbly grateful for your really astonishingly positive reaction to our blog.  We now have over 40,000 page views in less than one year in publication.  We hope we have made a small difference in improving knowledge of the federal procurement system.  Please let us know what we can do to improve both the content and dissemination of our communications.  Thank you.

bill@spriggsconsultingservices.com     www.spriggslawgroup.blogspot.com