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 "

Comments

No, not good.

[binaryDigit]

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.

Re:No, not good.

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Painful, true, and life in America.

Why is it that we seem to be in a world now run by pending litigation? What ever happened to people just doing what they are paid to do!

I find it simply amazing that...

[dook43]

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!

Re:This is why..

[TopShelf]

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....

BIA Corruption coverup

[spun]

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!"