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Judge Disconnects Interior Dept., Again
jeremycec writes "Evidently, nothing's been resolved since 2001, when this
happened the first
time. In these Memorandum
Opinion and Preliminary
Injunction documents from Judge Royce
C. Lamberth of the U.S.
District Court for Washington, D.C., we see how the court
stepped in to pull the plug on a system, which, through its
abject lack of due care,
left someone's important financial information wide open to
attackers. According to the former CIO of the Bureau of
Indian Affairs: 'For all practical purposes, we have no
security, we have no infrastructure, ... Our entire network
has no firewalls on it. I don't like running a network that
can be breached by a high school kid.' So, when the BIA
could get no relief through Interior's IT Dept.,
it went to the courts. Source: Government Computer News "
It's often a good idea to make it plain which link is the main focus, rather than the background information. It would make sense for the main story to be linked to "the court stepped in to pull the plug on a system", but I suppose we'll have to be left wondering.
On the bright side, at least this one wasn't archived.
So fine, the BIA is allowed to sue the DOI. But who the hell is the DOI, who funds them. Well you and I. If the IT manager of the DOI is an idiot who couldn't care less about Native Americans and their "bureau", the absolute worse thing that can happen is that that person will lose their job (and good luck with that if this person happens to be female or a minority). So what is happening here. WE get to pay for someone dropping the ball. WE get to pay the court costs for BOTH agencies. WE get to pay whatever damages are awarded. In this case lawsuits are worthless (actually worse than worthless as they have negative worth). No messages are sent and in the end the taxpayers lose, and the clients of the BIA lose.
This has nothing to do with security. Sadly its merely a ploy/device to slow/stop payment of funds.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
in this day and age, when government spending along with jobless rates are at an all time high, there are government agencies that either don't have or have a badly staffed IT department. Judging from slashdot readership alone, there are many out-of-work geeks that could shore up gov't IT security for next to nothing. Even if it's an all Windows network, it can still be secured for relatively cheap....just hire a kiddie, pay him 30K/year to maintain Microsoft's Software Update Services to automatically download and install critical updates. You certainly don't need MCSE for that!
This comment was randomly generated by a school of piranhas chewing on the PCB of a Microsoft Natural Keyboard.
My take on the articles and multitude of links that the real issue is why is the BIA being habitually screwed when it comes to IT funding? I guess the department isn't "politically sexy enough".
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
A similarly incompetent information regime already exists today - the credit reporting agencies. Considering how much private information they store, and how pervasively it's used, I'm amazed at how poor the data quality is. Basically they pushed the data integrity issue off to the consumer, who usually discovers the problem only after getting turned down for a loan....
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
The BIA has been hopelesly corrupt for years, squandering monies that were meant for Native Americans and padding their own pockets. They don't want this system fixed, as fixing it would also uncover their embezlement. They also want a convenient scapegoat: "Hackers took the money!"
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
..but they seem to leave it up to individual entities.
Which, I think makes sense. The Department of Oddly Shaped Buttons does not need the same security procedures as, say, the Department of Defense. Implementing the craziness of the DoD in the DoOSB would only waste time and money. Our money - we're taxpayers, after all, and we're the ones footing the bill.
At any rate, I expect the government entities will become much more 'l33t3r' in the months to come.
Back in the day, a government job in computers was for weenies. Why make $35-60k a year, when you could ride the bubble for $100k+ and stock options?
Now that the bubble is burst and the tech industry is befukt, knowledgable technies are flocking to gub'ment jobs.
whoa. that's a big leap. just because the gov't does a lousy job funding the bia does not mean it is not capable and willing of building surveillence state!
here's the real message: the government does a good job on stuff it cares about. they care about homeland security... so it gets funded out the wazoo and real talent is brought in to work on it. the bia gets the sort end of the stick because the gov't doesn't care about native americans. they're not "sexy" like homeland security. besides, we already got all their land.
2 1337 4 u!
Plus, because of the hostility between the BIA and the rest of Interior, there's proabbly at least as much political game-playing here as bona-fide IT problem.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
This has the unfortunate effect of turning the competent people away from the civil service and thus having the State seemingly make more mistakes than the private sector.
I say "seemingly" because the private sector makes as much if not more mistakes than the public sector, but by it's own virtue of privateness, is much better apt at hiding those mistakes than the public sector which, by definition, does things publicly and thus is under the constant spotlight.
The managers of those people, OTOH are another story.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Get the facts and the whole sad story online at www.indiantrust.com
You will discover that the real issue is the US Gov. stonewalling and resisting the lawsuit giving rise to this judical order.
At stake is the US Gov losing it's trusteeship over all the money it collects from such things as rental/timber/mining/mineral/other rights earned and payable to individual indians. Seems there may be TRILLIONS of dollars "unaccounted for" over the decades the US Gov has been "taking care of" the indians.
The IT systems supposedly set up to track everythng are a mess. They can't say how much they have, should have, or to whom they should be making payments.
Sounds to me like a nice slush fund for the US Gov. With the judge on this case -- who is wise to all the government's ploys (read about his background for why), it's likely the game is finally up. While I'm doubtful the entire truth of the entire amount stolen from the indians will come to light, the amounts that do come out are lilkey to astonish many, IMO.
Anyone can read up on the lawsuit and press coverage of this lawsuit at www.indiantrust.com
To most of the 4 and 5 level moderated comments I've read, I'll say that most of you are reading this assuming the judicial order is due to the system being messed up (and this coming to light recently) as the central issue. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The real story is how the US Gov has been pilfering indian money for decades, resisting by every means they can of making a full accounting of the state of the trust accounts, and resisting losing their control over all the money flowing through their hands -- much less than 100% of which makes it to the trust beneficiaries (i.e. poor indians) it's supposed to be paid to.
FWIW, IMO...and I'm not a lawyer or an indian, nor connected to this suit; I've just been reading about it over time,
Signed,
A proud American, but one ashamed at how badly his government behaves in cases like this.
just because the gov't does a lousy job funding the bia does not mean it is not capable and willing of building surveillence state!
Not only that, but imagine how wonderful a surveillence state run by our current government would be! There will be bookkeeping errors, data-entry errors, politicially-motivated errors, and data forged by organized crime. I can't wait for the TIA database to be admittable in court! I really hope Fox or TNN picks up the live coverage! It'll be a blast!
Vote in November. You won't regret it.