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Feds Now Allowed To Use Internet
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed May 21, 2008 06:35 PM
from the welcome-to-the-web dept.
from the welcome-to-the-web dept.
fast66 writes "Nextgov reports that a new court order allows the Department of the Interior to connect to the Internet, six years after the federal agency was ordered to disconnect. District Judge James Robertson wrote in his ruling, 'I find that the consent order is of no further use and must be vacated.' 'The ... disconnected offices and bureaus may be connected.' He added that his ruling was based not on evidence but 'on a legal conclusion that it is not my role to weigh IT security risks.'"
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IT: TVA Security Lapses Could Endanger US Health, Economy 46 comments
coondoggie links to a Network World story about myriad security flaws (described in a report from the Governmental Accountability Office) at all levels of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the country's largest public power utility, excerpting: "The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federal corporation that generates power using 52 fossil, hydro and nuclear facilities in an area of about 80,000 square miles and has not fully implemented appropriate security practices to protect the control systems used to operate its critical infrastructures, the GAO concluded. TVA's corporate network infrastructure and its control systems networks and devices at individual facilities and plants reviewed were vulnerable to disruptions that could endanger a good portion of the country's economic security and public health and safety, the GAO said."
The TVA is hardly alone, though, when it comes to governmental computer security. Reader bc90021 points out the Federal Government's newly released Computer Security Report Card (prepared for Congressman Tom Davis), which "breaks down the agencies and assigns them all a grade. There are plenty of Fs, not the least of which is for the newly reconnected Department of the Interior."
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The decision title (Score:5, Funny)
Tomorrow's news: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Tomorrow's news: (Score:5, Interesting)
Watch out for new torrents of sensible data from the same evening on. But of course, that's just my little hysterical hyperbole, they wouldn't have taken that order by the word, now, would they? They cannot, no, can they?
Parent
Re:Tomorrow's news: (Score:5, Interesting)
Good, because that's what I did when we first got kicked off. I haven't worked there for a few years so I don't know if they kept it up, but it's not hard to do - and certainly not hard to do in preparation of re-connection.
I guarantee you, the Trust Bureau's probably have networks secure then most military networks. The scrutiny on them from the courts and plantiff's is huge and they know it.
Funny how the person who started the lawsuit also happens to own a bank and wants the trust fund moved to her bank for administration. Funny how that never comes up - it's always just the "evil government". No, there could never be any other ulterior motives here.
Puhleeze....
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Tomorrow's news: (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Tomorrow's news: (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Well he's right (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Real people and damages occurred as a result of the way the morons ran their business and the original ruling recognized that. This judges response of "it's not my job" is typical bullshit. If it wasn't his job then he sho
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with the substance of your comments. But, I don't understand the "right-wing pukes" dig. What exactly is "right-wing" about comments applauding this decision? It doesn't seem like an issue that cuts neatly into a left/right conflict. Judicial overreach in the initial decision maybe? But, the defendant is a government bureaucracy gettin
You've got to be kidding me! (Score:5, Funny)
Think of all the [Redacted] i could have [Redacted]!
Or all the [Redacted] i could have sold!
Now they tell us this.
I hope they [Redacted]
Edit: FBI_Smith(Admin), reason: "Nothing to see here, move along"
Re: (Score:2)
Also, some brave freedom fighterchucked eggs at Ballmer [google.com].
Yes, I got it (Score:5, Funny)
(at least from the Department of the Interior)
No internet connectivity since 2001? (Score:5, Interesting)
In all seriousness, I hope that they take some precautionary steps before plugging in the LAN cables...
Re:No internet connectivity since 2001? (Score:4, Insightful)
1) If their cables where unplugged in the first place, their IT department is made of fail. There is no reason to NOT have a LAN regardless of your internet need.
2) If their IT was worth the scratch they are getting paid, they pulled the updates needed and applied them without the use of autoupdate.
Granted I fear I just missed the joke, but hey its /. that wouldnt be anything new here.
Parent
Re:No internet connectivity since 2001? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
2. Z is completed badly
3. X reviews Y's performance
4. Go to 1
I can't seem to understand why you think X is free from blame.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No internet connectivity since 2001? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:No internet connectivity since 2001? (Score:5, Interesting)
Generally speaking, there's a reason that windows machines come with AV and firewalls these days. I'm sure the most conservative estimates of time-to-pwn would be less than the time it would take to download updates.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
That was silly.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it smart that the US governmental departments can now get online? Not in my opinion. These networks should be segregated from the unwashed internet as there is no data security or guarantees of anything except being hacked. Even the most "uber secure" area can be hacked with varying degrees of effort, either externally or internally. This just opens a vector that was once unopened.
Not smart.
Re: (Score:2)
> unwashed internet as there is no data security or
> guarantees of anything except being hacked.
Of course the Judge probably has internet access. Somehow it seems ok for a Judges court documents to be compromised, but
All of this could have been solved with a few $59 dollar routers between these offices and the wide woolly world of the web.
Nothing is totally unhackable.
But in this case some judge "deemed that Indian trust accounts were vulnerable to com
Re: (Score:2)
What is it with these arm chair security experts? Some of us could butt heads with Bruce Schneir and Marcus Ranum and then we see people who are like "ooh WEP sux see I know security, get a router!" with no understanding of network architecture whatsoever.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
haha, hack the ICBM com network, I dare you.
Yes, lets not let people have access to their government, lets keep everything paper based and in some dusty book and the bottom of some building where the public can 'access' it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Wow, it uses sat uplinks. Lets find out where and what frequency...
Ok, lets aim our 10KW tight beam parabola at it and screw over communication. Simple and efective, but it does let them know where you are. In fact, many commercial comsats didnt, prior to 2000, use encryption.
IIRC, NBC's master feed was hacked in this precise way.
The only way to create uber-secure networks is to not have one.
Re:That was silly.. (Score:5, Insightful)
> with varying degrees of effort, either externally
> or internally. This just opens a vector that was
> once unopened.
Excuse me, Did you RTFA?
How is the Bureau of Indian Affairs in need of security in excess of the Defense Department, Congress, the IRS, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission?
I bet you were around here dumping on the Federal Government response to Katrina too! You can't have it both ways.
You can not have efficient and responsive government agencies when you relegate them to 1960s era technology.
Parent
Re:That was silly.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I want a slow-as-molasses-in-antartica government that will make as few laws as possible. If Congress knows they will only pass 100 bills per year, you'd hope they would check them better.
Now, we have a somewhat eficent government that can and will make laws based on "save the children", "kill pedophiles" or "teh evul terrorists" without any thoughts on how those laws can be used in other, unforeseen ways.
Parent
Re:That was silly.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:That was silly.. (Score:5, Interesting)
The BIA is all those things for Native American tribes, each one being Sovereign.
What the BIA used to have was the online equivalent of a safe, with the combination 12345, holding Native Americans' money.
Parent
Re:That was silly.. (Score:5, Informative)
This is not a case of a judge gratuitously injecting himself into computer security. This situation arose when Indians sued for royalties held in the Indian Land Trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is part of the Interior Department. During the suit, it turned out that the problem was not just that they weren't getting paid, but that BIA's record-keeping was woefully inadequate. Just figuring out what the plaintiffs were owed proved to be a huge problem. Judge Lamberth ordered the BIA disconnected because court-appointed experts had hacked into the BIA and found the Indian trust fund records to be insecure.
Of course, it isn't only external threats that are a concern. BIA is so incompetent or malicious that they are reported to have deleted their backup tapes [motherjones.com]. Judge Lamberth was so appalled that he threatened to jail the Secretary of the Interior for contempt of court. The government eventually got him removed on the dubious grounds that he was biased against the government, the only evidence of which was his well justified criticism BIA.
Parent
Re:That was silly.. (Score:4, Informative)
Before somebody claims that Judge Lamberth is some kind of left wing judicial activist, let me point out that he served in the JAG corps, including one year in Vietnam and then as a prosecutor until he was appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan in 1987. There he endeared himself to the Republicans [worldnetdaily.com] by his rulings against the Clintons.
Here is his official biography [uscourts.gov] and here is the wikipedia article about him [wikipedia.org].
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This is not a case of a judge gratuitously injecting himself into computer security.
This situation arose when Indians sued for royalties held in the Indian Land Trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is part of the Interior Department. During the suit, it turned out that the problem was not just that they weren't getting paid, but that BIA's record-keeping was woefully inadequate.
And who's problem was the in-adequate record keeping? After all, with over 86% of BIA Employees being Native American, and the agency being largely a welfare establishment it seems highly likely that there was more than a little social engineering going on, rather than simple technical inadequacy.
Source of demographics:http://www.bestplacestowork.org/BPTW/rankings/agency.php?code=IN06&q=scores_subcomponent
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is due to whoever has been deciding how to do the record keeping for the Indian Land Trust, not only recently but for decades. Although BIA employees a lot of Indians, they haven't generally been in the most powerful positions, so I don't know if any of them have been the ones making these decisions. But what if they have? It's not like they were representing their tribes or the individual Indians to whom royalties are owed. Nobody is claiming that all whites are bad and all Indians are good.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Feds Now Allowed to Use Internet??? (Score:3, Funny)
Poor computers. (Score:3, Funny)
There wasn't an adding machine to talk to? What about the phones? Were the phones to snobby to talk to them?
But, maybe it was the computers fault. IT does has a reputation of not having social skills. Maybe the computers just annoyed the others.
I'll send my business card to the BIA offering to teach their computers social skills and maybe some assertive training to say "NO" to unauthorized access.
Re: (Score:2)
Reply to This"
-Remember, this is a Government Agency you are offering services to. Chances are, they'll take you up on the offer. If you enter into talks with them, be sure to give a highball, yet believeable price, and use lots of buzzwords (paradigm shift, proactive, forward-thinking, etc. etc. etc.)
The switch has not yet been flipped (Score:5, Informative)
It is a misstatement to say that this is against the Department of the Interior. More correctly would be to say the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and a few other small agencies that deal directly with Indian matters. While the DOI had originally claimed that the exposed Indian Trust data was too ingrained within their network that it could not be isolated, a ruling by a federal judge that disconnected the entire DOI caused a change of heart and it was realized that just the BIA and a few of its siblings could be sent to the dark ages by themselves.
In the six years, these groups have had interconnected LAN's, that have been isolated from the outside world (it is fun to do business with BIA folks as they will give you yahoo, & netzero email accounts which they will check and respond to from home).
Time will tell what impact reconnecting the BIA will have when the switch is officially flipped on Friday.
Re:The switch has not yet been flipped (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the problems was, apparently, that even if you ignored the sloppy accounting, the non-existent security on their networks basically made any figures coming out of the bureau highly suspect. So the judge ordered the entire network off the Internet so that only local malfeasance would further affect the numbers.
It is further alleged that criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff had a hand in this mess...
Schwab
Parent
Re:The switch has not yet been flipped (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobell_v._Kempthorne [wikipedia.org]
The order to be disconnected from the internet was spawned from this case (several years after the case had started). With a new judge, a new mindset on how matters were to be approached, likely leading to this reconnect, and possibly to an eventual conclusion to this case.
Parent
How many? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I am also a DOI employee, and was stuck at a snowy contamination site in Minnesota when it happenned (November or December 2001). The judge cut off all email, server access, and public web pages, even though very few of the DOI agencies have anything to do with the Indians. We had to petition office by office and prove that we did not have any critical Indian data, and that obviously took a while.
I ended up setting up several free Netscape accounts on the public computer at the D
Re: (Score:2)
The real reason why. (Score:4, Funny)
NOTE: I kid, I kid! (Because someone will think this is flamebait).
Whoo-hoo!! (Score:4, Funny)
We're back on the 'net!
Hey! Where did all the gopher servers go?
Re:and this is important... WHY? (Score:5, Funny)
Would you be willing to deny that experience to any government employee?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
http://timesunion.com/AspStories/storyprint.asp?StoryID=668451&normal [timesunion.com]
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called the BIA (or OIA), and there's no reason to change the letterhead now. Other than be geographically inaccurate, there's nothing
particularly wrong or offensive about the term Indian.
As for the existence of the Bureau, they're their because technically/in theory, each tribe is a sovereign nation existing within the
border of the United States, and so obviously having some ad