Feds Now Allowed To Use Internet

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.'"

Re:No internet connectivity since 2001?

[Anonymous Coward]

It took me 15 seconds back in 2005 to get an IRC bot and a worm.

The switch has not yet been flipped

[Anonymous Coward]

While the judge removed the barriers last week, most of the disconnected agencies have not been brought live as of yet.

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:That was silly..

[belmolis]

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.

Re:No internet connectivity since 2001?

[sfjoe]

I don't know about this particular instance but it's not uncommon for a government agency to outsource their IT work to consultants like Accenture and IBM. While it's fun to mock government incompetence, the fail might well come from the private sector.

Re:That was silly..

[belmolis]

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].

Re:That was silly..

[Creepy Crawler]

Its easy to screw around with any network...

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..

[icebike]

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:The switch has not yet been flipped

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a significant court case in which questions have been raised about billions of dollars.

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.

Re:That was silly..

[eggnoglatte]

Congress (legislative) != Government (executive)

Re:Well he's right

[NemoinSpace]

Not even close. His duty was to interpet and adminster the law. The law being at least in part what was already ruled on. I applaud him for recognizing that he had no idea on the subject matter. But there was nothing stopping him from entertaining Amicus curiae from the slashdot crowd.

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 should have kept his mouth shut or recused himself. I doub't he set any legal precedants today.