Judge Shuts Down Interior Dept's Internet

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge on Monday once again ordered the Interior Department to pull the plug on most of its Internet connections, finding that the department still hasn't fixed computer security problems that could jeopardize millions of dollars in royalties for American Indians.

It is the third time that U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth has ordered the systems to be disconnected to protect oil, gas, timber and grazing royalties held in trust for the Indians.

"The interest of the 300,000-plus current beneficiaries of the individual Indian trust outweigh the potential inconvenience of those parties that would otherwise have access to Interior's Internet services," Lamberth wrote.

An Interior Department spokesman could not immediately comment on the decisions.

more............

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-indian-money,0,1784837.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

to do even the most basic accounting right?

Come on folks, this stuff isn't rocket science. Give me a break, with an off the shelf PC from the local computer store, I could probably keep accurate records for the whole damn department.

I am the IT manager for the company I work for, and I had to meet last week with the accounting department and our accounting software vendor last week to discuss a new software version that our vendor wanted us to convert to.

All I can say is that accountants want to do some pretty sneaky things, and these are the clean ones (not cooking the books (We are privately held), but all the crazy ass shit they have to do to deal with the way we do business). I mean, damn- I can get a copy of friggin' quickbooks that will do this crap, but for some reason ALL of the "large company" accounting software developers have their heads in their rears.

I am convinced we could probably balance the federal budget by simply finding and killing wastefull spending, if only the morons in congress would fire all of the federal accounts and sit one schmuck down in front of a PC to figure it all up.

I could proably do most of it on a 6 column ledger pad.

Not that I would ever want to go back to that, but I've balanced to the penny 100's of times without a computer.

expense columns would show up!

It's obvious that you didn't get your memo :evilgrin:

How would so many interested parties be able to get their hands in the peoples' cookie jar?

using the same software and systems. They all are using something some bone head came up with or their cousin soled to the federal government. The people doing the real accounting for all the branches of the military, FBI and other law enforcement agencies, depts and including the White House are all using different software to do the same thing. Gore tried to simplify the process, but everyone bulked at that and instead made lacks rules so that lower rung people were all getting credit cards and defrauding the government. Paying for hookers, getting boob jobs, pimping out their rides and by lunch for everybody. And that was just the Marine Corps. I mean does it really take somebody with a brain above the level of a rock to figure out if you give a 18 year old private or a GS worker just out of high school a friggin credit card with a $10,000.00 limit they are going to get in trouble with it? But that's the kind of leadership we got running things in the military and the federal government. Oh and by the way the GAO just got the Dept of Homeland stupidity's IT budget suspended because they didn't know where the hell any of their damn money went.

backdoor?

Over a hundred years' worth. Go here for more info:

Indian Trust: Cobell v. Norton

to private corporations with ne'er a penny of compensation to the indians. What I didn't know was that someone was tapping into a computer and withdrawing money through a backdoor.