The day after the union representing workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs St. Petersburg Regional Office used its website to announce plans for a protest against management, the VA’s internet system blocked access to the site.

Union officials wonder if they are being targeted and their efforts to organize hampered. But regional office officials say they have no control over website access and that the VA’s national internet system routinely scours websites looking for certain keywords that can place a website on a “non-trusted” status. National VA officials say they are aware of the problem and as of late Thursday afternoon appeared to have fixed it.

“We have begun receiving notices from employees that access to our website has been blocked by VA filters,” Valorie Reilly, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1594 wrote this morning in an email to employees. “How strange that this occurs one day before an AFGE rally with news of the rally on the website? Coincidence?”

In her email, Reilly asked if the blocking was “related to the first article on the first page of the website addressing the continued ‘No Confidence’ vote in Director (Kerrie) Witty?”

The website was blocked as a result of the VA’s internal filters, and not by action from the regional office, according to spokesman Bruce Clisby.

“Neither the regional office director nor management played a role in the restriction of the local AFGE website,” he said, “and they fully support AFGE having a website to inform their members.”

Complaints about the union website being blocked were referred to the VA’s Network Support Center for investigation, said Clisby.

“The local facility (to include the RO Director) does not have access to block or unblock any websites; this can only be done at the national level. Internal users cannot currently access this site due to constraints put in place that filter certain words or sites that have not been approved by VA WEB Operations.”

This security is put in place “to prevent users from accessing anything that could be potentially harmful to the VA network,” according to Clisby. “This filter system/firewall looks for certain words or content 24 hours a day,” according to an email from the office director’s office to employees, obtained by the Tribune. It was sent out after questions from the Tribune about the blockage.

“If certain content is detected by the filters, the site then gets placed in a “Non-Trusted” list and is locked down from further access. This explains why individuals may initially access a site but then as more content is added, it is placed in a ‘non-trusted’ status and the website can no longer be accessed.

For internet security purposes at an agency with millions of personally identifying records stored, the VA blocks sites “based on categorization that is done by a third party,” said Mark Farrell, a spokesman for the VA’s chief information officer.

The network security team reviewed the union’s website, said Farrell, “and determined it was either new or recently changed servers, so it was inadvertently blocked as an uncategorized site. The network security team has determined that the site poses no security risk and is now working to unblock the site across the VA network.”

The email from the director’s office tells employees that if they are blocked from accessing a website, “please follow the instructions on the denial of access page in order to submit a web access request form. If approved by the ISO, the website will be unblocked.”

Shortly before 5 p.m., Farrell sent another email to the Tribune.

“The site already appears unblocked on my end,” he said.

The union is planning to protest the firing of its vice president, Javier Soto, on Friday, between noon and 1 p.m. outside the regional office headquarters, 9500 Bay Pines Blvd., St. Petersburg. Soto was fired last summer days after issuing a scathing report on office operations.

Article plucked from: http://tbo.com/list/military-news/union-website-blocked-by-vas-internet-system-20150226/