BLM sites down?

Dave Frank · 03-23-2004

Is thee aproblem with the BLM websites or is there a new address? I went to look at the WEstwater calendar and the "site could not be found"

Anyone have some insight?

Who's got a permit in the next several weeks? I am guessing they are booked at least for the weekends, but the calendar seems to be offline.

matobs · 03-23-2004

Hey Dave

The Department of Interior was forced by the federal courts to shut down their websites b/c of their complete incompetence in handling the Indian Trust Funds. The Cobella litigation is a long twisted tale, but basically the court has no faith in Interior (e.g. two Secretaries of Interior, including Norton have been held in contempt of court for blatant disregard of court orders) and has ordered them to shut down their websites b/c they felt hackers had a chance to embezzle/screw up the trust fund even more.

Hope you had a good winter. Let's do some boating this spring

Matt Hobbs

merry prankster · 03-23-2004

Here's the number if you want to call. When I last looked, they're full this weekend.

435-259-7012 8:00AM-12:00PM

cosurfgod · 03-23-2004

Is this going to affect the permit system? I had 5 Westwater permits last summer and was loving the system. Is Westwater on native soil? I thought it was just BLM land.

merry prankster · 03-23-2004

My understanding of the case:
A federal judge was told of security flaws in some Interior websites. He hired an individual to exploit these flaws. He then issued an injuction to remove interior data from the internet. (This was three years ago.) It happened again, and the flaws weren't fixed. This time the data was removed, but immediately important things like stream flow and geologic data were uneffected.

To answer your question, it shouldn't effect the permit system. However, the calander may not be available for call by dates or or full days. Perhaps some one with the BLM westwater office could post that data here (especially the call dates)...

rivermanryan · 03-23-2004

All of Department of Interior is down from DC to Westwater. It doesn't matter if it has anything to do with BIA or native issues or not. This includes BLM, USGS, BOR, etc. I have been asking for the latest, but nobody seems to know when it will be back up. Probably up to the judge.

klamb · 03-23-2004

All,
The court order for this shut down wasn't the blanket shut down we had in 2001. This time, all of USGS and the Park Service remained on line.

As for Reclamation, we are currently working on getting the more crucial data and employees on line. All of our websites, to the best of my knowledge, came on-line yesterday. Only those websites deemed "essential" will remain on line after today. The same goes for employee e-mail access. I imagine BLM and the other Interior agencies are going through a similar process as Reclamation.

The previous posts about why this shut down has occurred are pretty accurate. The latest I heard is that the Chief Information Officer for all of the Department of the Interior was asked to swear that all of the bureaus etc. under Interior had secure systems that could not be hacked into; and, of course, he couldn't swear to that.

I'm hoping I'll be deemed "essential" (who doesn't hope that?

). If so, I'll be able to keep sending out local stream flows and reservoir releases as we get into run-off here in eastern CO.

Best,
Kara

ebaker · 03-23-2004

Kara - You are still the best! Thanks for all your help.

Andy H. · 03-24-2004

Kara,

Thanks for getting the info out there when we need it. Its great that the BOR is devoting resources to public outreach - it makes me feel better about funding the services our government provides.

Keep those posts coming,

--Andy