First, check out www.nps.gov, then read www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10955-2001Dec7.html

Now obviously I don't know all the particulars of the case, but my initial impression is that this is a rather sad example of somebody without any technical competency making another boneheaded IT decision.

(Yeah, I work in IT.)

 

how funny.

 

this is pretty f'd up! or at least the results of this order are.

 

I think the part about not knowing all the facts has a lot of validity in this case. I don't know the particulars around the IT portion of the case but I've read about the Indian Trust Fund mismanagement and let me tell you our Gov't has majorly F'ed up on this one. They've lost BILLIONS of dollars due to mismanagement that even they admit belong to Native Americans. They've been found to be in contempt on numerous occassions. I'm sure the Judge has zero tolerance for the Gov't at this point in the case. In any event, if I were you I wouldn't just look at the specifics of why they may have ordered the shutting down of the website. If you really want to know what's going on do some research into the Indian Trust issue to understand why the judge may have such a short fuse with the Gov't.

 

interesting...well that sheds some light...

 

Seems pretty f'ked up to me

 

I too have followed this case a little. The government claimed there was no way they could properly ascertain how much they owed the trust members because the paper records were lost. Some were found moldy and rat-infested in a warehouse. They've used improper custody as their excuse all along. Now, the only place some records exist is in electronic form. The plaintiff's lawyers don't want any additional records to be lost (as has been the admitted pattern.)

I think the judge (perhaps naively) thought the Department would take a less idiotic approach to protecting the last existing form of these records.

 

Daft

 

You said it man

 

I guess they could always revert to using smoke signals or flashing mirrors.