Interior Net still offline
p2pnet.net News:- The US Interior Department website is still offline after US District Judge Royce Lamberth found it hadn’t fixed computer security problems.
And the shut down is depriving American Indian children of educational opportunities and preventing public input on land management decisions, says senate minority leader Tom Daschle, quoted in an Associated Press here.
"Nearly 50,000 students in more than 180 schools on 63 reservations in 23 states were affected by the shutdown," the report has Interior spokesman Dan DuBray saying. About 70 percent were in Arizona, New Mexico and the Dakotas.
DuBray said the department shares the concerns raised by Daschle and environmental groups, and it is upset by the court-ordered shutdown.
"We are dismayed and also very concerned about the impact it is having not just on Indian Country, but on Bureau of Reclamation facilities and on those that are served by the Fish and Wildlife Service," he says iin the AP story, which goes on:
"Lamberth ordered the shutdown – the third in three years – after the Interior Department refused to sign sworn certifications that it had fixed security lapses identified in 2001 by the court’s special master, Alan Balaran. To test the security, Balaran repeatedly hacked into the Interior Department’s system and created bogus accounts in his name.
"The accounting system processes hundreds of millions of dollars annually that is paid to American Indians for oil, gas, timber, and grazing activities on their land. The department is assigned to collect and disburse the funds."
A class-action lawsuit before Lamberth, filed on behalf of more than 300,000 Indians, alleges the department stole, lost or never collected tens of billions of dollars of the Indian royalties, adds AP.
