Feds Now Allowed To Use Internet 113
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:and this is important... WHY? (Score:5, Funny)
Would you be willing to deny that experience to any government employee?
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http://timesunion.com/AspStories/storyprint.asp?StoryID=668451&normal [timesunion.com]
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?
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....
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Anyways, I just hope they are smart enough to use OEMS with the service pack discs to do reinstalls before going on the net but then again this is the US gov we are talking about
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so yes I know what a firewall is...however maybe you never heard that windows home is less secure then windows xp because it comes with certain configurations that you cant undo unless you play in the registry and these same settings allow for certain activex to have admin privs even if they are disabled, can be reenabled and then you get p0wned....something to do with IE
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Re:Tomorrow's news: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Tomorrow's news: (Score:4, Funny)
Well he's right (Score:5, Insightful)
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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
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Transparency. (Score:2, Funny)
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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
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No, it's not the job of a judge to determine if an agency is secure enough. Any more than it is the job of a judge to determine if a bank is secure enough.
The job of a judge is to preside over, and sometimes find guilt or non-guilt, if criminal, or responsibility or lack thereof if civil, a case according to the law. I doubt there is any law that says a bank needs to be so secure. Instead, the law states responsibility after the fact. So, if nothing has gone missing, there is no case, dismissed.
In thi
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"
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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)
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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...
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No internet connectivity since 2001? (Score:4, Informative)
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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.
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Possibly because I never said X is free from blame. it will always be difficult to understand that which doe snot exist. What I said was that Y shares in Z's blame. When you learn to read, things will be easier.
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Well, either that or IT wanted to make sure their Battlestar isn't compromised when the Cylons return.
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Re:No internet connectivity since 2001? (Score:5, Funny)
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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.
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I wonder if they'll update the machines beforehand. Anyone remember how long it takes for a Pre-SP2 copy of Windows without a good AV and firewall takes to get a worm? Minutes?
The key isn't having AV and FW software but just to be patched. Yes defense in depth helps but if you fix the exploits (with service packs) and don't do stupid things like download p2p software, software found on usenet, or run insecure programs like IE and Outlook then you won't have any problems. Given I have a router and it blocks incoming connections so essentially I have a firewall, I don't run any security software on my PC, I don't use IE except for banking, I don't use Outlook and I don't have any
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.
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> 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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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Our government includes both an executive branch and a legislative branch, and a judicial branch to boot. They are all part of the government, not just the executive.
Long story short, you're completely wrong. Like, not even a little bit right, just wrong.
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Even more to the point on regarding the GGP: while I can buy the argument that you want a slow, deliberate, and thorough legislature, a primary purpose of the executive is to quickly react to emergency situations and other external factors. So the executive needs
Re:That was silly.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well, I disagree with you only to the extent that you think those secondary effects are "unforeseen". Yes, there's a certain level of ignorance/incompetence involved, but in many (if not most) cases they know exactly what they're doing, and use the "save the children" / "evul terrorist"
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.
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Government isn't a magical entity that exists in and of itself - there are actually people who make up government agencies. In the case of the BIA, Native American's get higher preferences for hiring then even Veterans - so guess, historically, who 95%+ of the employee's of the BIA have been?
So who screwed who here?
Frankly I think the government should just concede and turn it all over to the tribes, and then wash their hands of it. The trust f
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.
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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].
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].
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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.
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How many? (Score:2, Interesting)
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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
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The real reason why. (Score:4, Funny)
NOTE: I kid, I kid! (Because someone will think this is flamebait).
New punctiation mark for sarcasm is needed .... (Score:2)
There is a new form of punctuation that we are trying to get people to adopt for this situation. Basically, all you do is add a tilde ("~") to the end of any sentence that is sarcastic. Like this:
No baby, those pants don't make your ass look big at all.~
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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
Pretty Vacant (Score:2, Troll)
The Interior Department was exposing Indian Affairs to huge risks, because Indian Affairs is an extremely low priority for the US government, as it always has been.
And now this judge has admitted
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50% Troll
50% Informative
Point out that Republicans based their government monopoly on Jack Abramoff's corruption ring, and their TrollMods try to shut you down like an Indian Affairs server.
Whoo-hoo!! (Score:4, Funny)
We're back on the 'net!
Hey! Where did all the gopher servers go?
Don't worry... (Score:1)
I'm from the Internet.
Not the whole DOI (Score:1)
That explains a lot. (Score:2)
WGA (Score:1)