Columnist Susan Snyder: Government at center of shutdown

Tuesday, March 30, 2004 | 7:53 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

Cyber-cruising Nevadans seeking trail maps for Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area or wanting to comment on public lands issues couldn't do it the past couple of weeks.

That's because a federal court-ordered computer shutdown prevented access to most websites operated by the Department of Interior.

The department's computers were back up Monday, but could be shut off again pending a hearing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

"It shut everything down," Jo Simpson, Nevada Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman, said of the March 15 computer cutoff. "We were shut down for everything. We couldn't even do things internally."

So, what led to the federal Internet blackout? A long-running court battle over security glitches in the computerized accounting system that keeps track of royalties the government pays to American Indian tribes for the gas, oil, timber harvesting and other activities done on their lands.

It was the third shutdown since 2001. The first happened as a result of Interior Department officials refusing to sign sworn statements that the computer system's security breaches had been fixed. A court official had tested the system by hacking into it and creating fake accounts for himself, according to a March 22 Associated Press report.

Department lawyers filed an appeal and won a stay that allowed the computers system to go back online Thursday, Simpson said. But a hearing Monday would likely decide how long they would stay up this time.

"It affected 75 percent of 110,000 computers," Simpson said. "It had serious implications for the public and organizations we serve."

The U.S. Geological Survey, National Park Service, Interior Department's policy, management and budget offices were not affected, nor were the connections for fire or police work, Simpson said.

But the outage still affected a lot of services that regular citizens use. For example, visitors and volunteers at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area couldn't access or print interpretive information from the park's website.

Residents couldn't check on what types of permits existed for BLM land. The Southern Nevada Public Lands Management website also was shut off for the 10-day period.

"The comment period is open for round five of expenditures for that, and people are used to going to the website to look for this information," Simpson said.

The land management act's home page received 3,222 hits in February, 1,259 of them for the current sale, according to figures Simpson provided. And there were another 6,800 Web page inquiries in February for wild horse and burro training, adoptions and information.

In addition to the computer security case, the U.S. District court is considering a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of more than 300,000 Indians who claim the Interior Department lost track of, pilfered or never collected billions of the royalties owed to the tribes.

But for now, federal workers across the country are preparing for whatever comes next. Many in Nevada have been downloading important internal files since last week -- just in case.

"There's no guarantee it won't happen again," Simpson said.