Thursday, January 10, 2002
Park service back
in the dark agesDon't look now, because you won't see it. The nps.gov Web site has been in limbo since early December.
None of the Department of the Interior's Internet utilities are operating, including e-mail and Web sites, but the one the public cares about most is the National Park Service Web system linking 384 national parks, easily the most popular outdoor-travel site in the nation with about 700,000 hits a day.
That was last month. Now it has zero hits a day.
The site is down because of fear. A lawsuit against Interior five years ago by Native American tribes over trust-fund money resulted in a court-appointed hacker testing the government's Web security. The kid breached the "firewall" in minutes, and U.S. District judge Royce Lambeth ordered the entire system darkened to maintain the trust fund's security.
There's no telling when or if the popular park sites will be back up. In the meantime, park rangers are living in the past, conducting business by telephone, fax, mail and stubby pencils.
--Burl Burlingame