If you go to the main U.S. National Park Service website at http://www.nps.gov, you’ll find a notice to the effect that the website is shut down until further notice. If you go to the main Department of the Interior website — the Park Service is part of the DOI — you’ll find a little more information, including a link to a DOI memo about the court order that has resulted in this idiotic state of affairs.

It’s hard to untangle exactly what’s going on, but it appears that the DOI had, either through software bugs or lack of attention to what they were doing, put Indian trust information online in such a way that made it accessible to everyone.

The relevant part of the court order reads as follows:

… ORDERED that defendants shall immediately disconnect from the Internet all information technology systems that house or provide access to individual Indian trust data; and it is FURTHER ORDERED that defendants shall immediately disconnect from the Internet all computers within the custody and control of the Department of the Interior, its employees and contractors, that have access to individual Indian trust data

Okay, that makes sense. The court has found that information that should be private is accessible; it therefore orders the DOI to make this stuff inaccessible while the case drags on.

The DOI’s response, though, is utterly insane. They’ve disconnected everything they have from the Internet. They even disconnected the U.S. Geological Survey initially; that was at least re-connected after a while when they realized that the USGS’s information could, in some cases, mean the difference between life and death.

Still the NPS and other websites — and all DOI e-mail — are offline, though. Gives one great confidence in government.