By Anugrah Kumar
The website for the Southern Baptist Convention was unblocked after a piece of malware briefly shut down access to www.SBC.net on some military installations this week. Some Christian activists had accused the Defense Department of blocking the site intentionally.
“In this case, security systems performed as expected in detecting a threat to DoD [Department of Defense] networks,” Fox News quoted Lt. Col. Damien Pickart, a spokesperson, as saying.
“We determined that our web filters recently detected malware at the SBC website, which resulted in the block for some service members,” Pickart said Friday, and clarified that the block was not die to “hostile” or religious content. “The department has verified that the Southern Baptist Convention website no longer contains malware that may pose a threat to our networks and will be unblocked today.”
A DoD spokesperson had earlier said in an email to The Christian Post that the block was not intentional, and the department was working to solve the issue “as quickly as possible.”
“The Department of Defense strongly supports the religious rights of service members, to include their ability to access religious websites like that of the SBC,” the statement read. “With Internet technology constantly evolving, the Department is working to ensure that service members have access to an open Internet while preserving information and operational security.”
