Interior Dept. Ordered Off the Web

Much of the Interior Department was without e-mail or Internet access Friday after a judge ordered the systems shut down to protect an Indian trust fund from potential hackers.

Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles notified employees of the shutdown in a memo.

“To the best of my knowledge, all relevant Interior agencies have disconnected their computer Internet access and the department’s external network connections have been shut down,” Griles wrote.

It is unclear how long the shutdown will last.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth issued the emergency order late Wednesday after a report showed an Interior Department system that handles $500 million annually in royalties from Indian land had little security and was an easy target for potential hackers.

“In meeting the requirements of the court, our ability to conduct a large portion of our daily business has been impacted,” Griles wrote.

He said computer experts were working to find a way to restore operations while complying with the court order. Bureau of Land Management employees in Denver had been told their Internet access would be restored Friday morning, but the networks were still not working Friday night.

BLM spokeswoman Celia Boddington said she could send e-mail to other BLM employees, but could not contact anyone outside the bureau.

The Internet shutdown had also affected e-mail at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the U.S. Geological Survey.

Interior spokesman John Wright said it was not clear how the computer problems were impairing the work done by the various departments.

A company called Emergency E-mail Network donated its services Friday to allow 11,000 USGS workers to receive urgent updates on a 6.1 magnitude earthquake that hit New Zealand.

Lamberth issued the order after a court-appointed watchdog and his computer expert were able to easily break into the system that manages the Indian trust funds and alter and manipulate the data.

Government attorneys admitted there was no way they could guarantee the Indian money was secure. So the judge ordered all Internet access disconnected and also ordered all Interior Department computers that could access the Indian trust system be shut off from the Internet.

Dennis Gingold, the attorney who asked the judge for the order, said the Interior Department didn’t need to take such a sweeping approach to comply with the judge’s order.

“This just shows you how inept they are,” he said. “They don’t even understand how these systems relate to each other, so they just pull the plug on the entire system.”