Other coverage (the Washington Post was thorough but late):
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/12/07/0223216.shtml
http://www.indiantrust.org/clips.cfm?news_id=158
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,40340,00.html
-Declan
********
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10955-2001Dec7.html
By Edward Walsh
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 8, 2001; Page A04
Responding to a court order, the Interior Department has cut itself
off from the Internet, crippling the ability of Interior employees to
communicate by e-mail and blocking access to information gathered by
the department that is routinely used by other agencies and the
public.
The shutdown occurred Thursday afternoon on the order of U.S. District
Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who is presiding over a long-running lawsuit
alleging decades of mismanagement by the federal government in the
handling of trust funds for American Indians.
Lamberth earlier commissioned a computer security test that concluded
trust fund accounts were vulnerable to manipulation by outside
hackers. He then ordered the Interior Department to "immediately
disconnect from the Internet all information technology systems that
house or provide access to individual Indian trust data."
The judge also ordered the disconnection of "all computers within the
custody and control of the Department of the Interior, its employees
and contractors that have access to individual Indian trust data."
The Internet cutoff threw the Interior Department back to a time of
communicating by telephone and paper documents. It left department
employees without access to e-mail, an increasingly common form of
communication within the government and between the government and the
public. For example, Megan Durham, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, said her agency now distributes almost all of its
news releases electronically.
The cutoff also shut down department Web sites, such as the National
Park Service site, which are widely used by a public accustomed to
easily accessing government information for research on a variety of
topics.
[...]
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Received on Dec 08 2001
Intro
