Monday, 05.19.08
Back Online, Some Day
Photo by Flickr User Seth W. under a Creative Commons license
As part of a class-action suit filed against the Interior Department 12 years ago, American Indian plaintiffs convinced a judge that their Indian Trust accounts, which are managed by the agency, were not safe from hackers. In December 2001, Interior hustled to disconnect, and then hustled to find ways for the thousand-plus affected employees to get their jobs done in the Internet age, without the Internet.
For six years, these employees (for two years, I was among them) have sat in front of lonely computers, sending e-mails only to coworkers on an internal system, and limiting themselves to work-related content. (All e-mails were captured digitally for the courts. Who wants the courts seeing their bad jokes, dinner plans, divorce drama?) Many offices had "stand-alone Internet computers," completely disconnected from any Interior network. In the far reaches of Indian Country, many Bureau of Indian Affairs offices have no funding for extra computers.
To manage, various workarounds were developed. The Office of Personnel Management had to establish a separate system to deliver paycheck stubs and human-resources news to those who had been cut off. No wireless devices were allowed in affected offices. The BIA's law-enforcement offices had no access to cross-bureau security and safety information. The Interior solicitors could not connect to LexisNexis at their terminals. The main Interior office in Washington, D.C., established an Internet lab of sorts, with a dozen or so computers that people could use throughout the day. It is almost always full of solicitors doing case research.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit had the right to question the management of the Indian Trust, which was established in 1887, and then later expanded to oversee royalties from land held in trust for Indian tribes. But did the Internet disconnection make a difference? Theoretically, the trust funds were more secure. But the only proven breach of the system was by hackers hired by Interior themselves. Banks, the Treasury Department, the Department of Defense, and hundreds of other organizations manage billions more dollars than the Indian Trust. In more than a hundred years, only an estimated $13 billion has passed through the individual Indian trust funds. Of the 300,000 individual Indian Trust accounts, a number have high dollar values, but the vast majority contain less than $10. In fact, today, 18,263 accounts have less than $1 -- often the result of "land fractionation," which is what happens when a trust asset is passed down and divided equally to all heirs, from family to family, time and again -- and haven't been touched for 18 months or more. These accounts will never earn any more funds, as there are no fund-earning assets in the account, or on the land.
Ultimately, being cut off from the Internet served only to divert both employees and program funds from the complicated business of sorting out Indian affairs, and from the paramount problems facing all those charged with governing Indian Country -- crime, health care, and education, all of which remain, as they have for many years, in dire straits.
Department officials were elated with the ruling, but also tempered. This case has cast a shadow over Interior for a long time. Employees won't be sitting down at their desks to Internet-accessible computers tomorrow, or anytime soon. Unraveling the intricate work-arounds established, and getting all those people back online, is likely to be another endeavor of bureaucratic proportions.
Into the breachHow did the Department of Interior get hacked? John Markoff explains. |
Why it existsThis government Web page explains the history and mission of the American Indian trust. |
Intelligence problemsThe Department of the Interior isn't the only federal agency to have Internet security problems -- for example, the CIA got hacked back in 1996. |
What's in a name?Is it Indian or Native American? Brendan I. Koerner explains. |
