Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Court order cuts Alamo off Internet

Joe Warren El Defensor Chieftain Reporter

Students and teachers in Alamo have been logged off after a recent legal decision forced the Bureau of Indian Affairs to disconnect from the Internet.

Alamo Navajo Schools have been forced to shut down all its Internet connections, because of their link to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, due to the order by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth last week.

On March 15 Lamberth ordered the cease of all connections to the Internet by nine federal offices under the span of the U.S. Interior Department because of security concerns regarding Indian Trust Data.

That includes the BIA, which oversees schooling on many Indian Reservations including Alamo.

James Apachito, the executive director of the Alamo Navajo School Board, said that his district has been without Internet service since March 16.

He said that besides depriving students of educational opportunities online, the decision "could have long-term effects on the school as a whole."

"There is so much that we do out here with the Internet," he said. "We do most of our reporting for our programs online."

Apachito said the school receives much of its funding through government programs and grants. They all require that the school, in turn, report on the results of the programs and the uses for the funding.

"It ends up turning out that we are no longer in compliance with the program requirements (because of the disconnection)," he said.

Apachito said students are not the only ones to be effected by the loss of Internet service.

"We have community services as well," he said. "It's not just the school."

The order is actually a preliminary injunction connected to a case that has been going on since 2001between many national tribal leaders and the department.

The case alleges that the department has mishandled money given for use of natural resources on Indian lands. That money is supposed to be given back to Native Americans through trust accounts and the lawsuit contends that billions of dollars of this money has not been properly allocated.

Apachito said that this is the third time the school has had its Internet service shut down since the case began in 2001.

In addition to the BIA, the Office of Inspector General, the Minerals Management Service, the Bureau of Land Manage-ment, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Office of the Special Trustee, Fish and Wildlife, the Office of Surface Mining and the National Business Center also have been ordered to disconnect from the Internet.

In Lamberth's order, the department can submit a proposal to the court for reconnecting to the Internet but must first meet a series of guidelines, which include establishing a monitoring agency external and unrelated to the department and establishing a uniform standard to evaluate the security of computers and systems within the department.

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