Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Is Microsoft anti-Lithuanian?


In my modest efforts to organize the third event (scheduled for December 2) for the Public Diplomacy Council's "Public Diplomacy as a Global Phenomenon" series, which thus far has included the kind and elucidating participation of high-ranking representatives from the embassies of Israel, Japan, and Turkey, I have contacted embassies in the U.S. from the Baltic states -- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. They have been most polite and prompt in their responses, but an important email message from the ambassador's office of Embassy of Lithuania did not reach me in my regular hotmail account. Why?

Here is the hotmail/microsoft response, due perhaps to the "odd sounding" hyphenated name of its cultivated and professional sender, a fluent English speaker:

"Microsoft SmartScreen classified this message as junk [JB emphasis]."

Lithuania, like other Baltic states, suffered under Soviet oppression/censorship for all too many years. Must it put up with the same kind of treatment -- granted on a minor scale -- in the Land of Free?


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