Warning! Use of this site is restricted!

This computer system is for the use of the United States Government. Unauthorized access, or access which exceeds authorized access is punishable under 18 USC 1030.

So one just has to trust -- without verifying.

But who, or what, are we to trust? The government? I dunno... officials say the darndest things. VeriSign? But they're the ones who issued sawho14.eop.gov's certificate, which didn't pass muster to begin with. Our browsers? That doesn't sound like a prudent policy outcome.

The point, of course, points at the paradox of whois: the need, on the one hand, to maintain it as an openly accessible resource for legitimate use, while restricting it, on the other hand, to prevent illegitimate uses. I won't pretend to know the answer; nor would I suppose that one policy fits all TLDs. But I do know that closing off whois for government sites is shortsighted. The ability to verify that a purportedly governmental site really is what it appears to be (and to be able to contact its maintainers, if necessary) is a Good Thing. For example, what if rather than haxx0ring the front page of a government site, someone were merely to change a single contact link buried nine pages down -- say, so that it pointed at a non-existent military site or a bogus government site (problems that erupted, respectively, four and five months after the battening-down of whois for .gov)? With a functional whois, a diligent citizen might be able to help our officials in a few minutes; but with whois hidden by the veil of "national security," good luck.