The official campaign site for Bush’s election campaign began restricting access on Oct. 25, citing unspecified security concerns. Bush defeated John Kerry in the U.S. vote Nov. 2, and the site restrictions were lifted five days after the election. The Bush campaign used Akamai’s EdgeScape service, which allows web sites to customize content – or exclude visitors – according to geography. Criteria for geography-based content are set by the customer, and implemented by Akamai’s network.

GeorgeWBush.com began using Akamai following a six hour outage on Oct. 19, which also affected RNC.org. The Oct. 19 outages have been widely assumed to be the result of some form of outside attack, such as a distributed denial of service (DDoS). The Bush campaign has never confirmed an attack, but cited security reasons for the site restrictions that followed. The expanded blocking of requests from outside the U.S. and Canada are bound to raise additional questions about the RNC’s site management policies.