By Edward Walsh
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 8, 2001; Page A04

Responding to a court order, the Interior Department has cut itself off from the Internet, crippling the ability of Interior employees to communicate by e-mail and blocking access to information gathered by the department that is routinely used by other agencies and the public.

The shutdown occurred Thursday afternoon on the order of U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who is presiding over a long-running lawsuit alleging decades of mismanagement by the federal government in the handling of trust funds for American Indians.

Lamberth earlier commissioned a computer security test that concluded trust fund accounts were vulnerable to manipulation by outside hackers. He then ordered the Interior Department to "immediately disconnect from the Internet all information technology systems that house or provide access to individual Indian trust data."

The judge also ordered the disconnection of "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."

The Internet cutoff threw the Interior Department back to a time of communicating by telephone and paper documents. It left department employees without access to e-mail, an increasingly common form of communication within the government and between the government and the public. For example, Megan Durham, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said her agency now distributes almost all of its news releases electronically.

The cutoff also shut down department Web sites, such as the National Park Service site, which are widely used by a public accustomed to easily accessing government information for research on a variety of topics.

In a statement issued yesterday, Interior Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles said that as a result of the court order, "our ability to conduct a large portion of our daily business has been impacted."

"For this reason," Griles said, "we are working aggressively and diligently with our information technology staff to seek an acceptable way to restore operations, while ensuring compliance with the court order. Until further notice, continued compliance with the court order is required."

The overall effect of the cutoff was not clear yesterday, but concern appeared to be particularly acute with regard to the U.S. Geological Survey, which gathers and transmits data used by the National Weather Service and other agencies.

The memo said the National Earthquake Information Center "is not able to issue bulletins in real time," and in the case of a natural disaster, "we are not able to push critical information" to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The Federal Aviation Administration uses USGS data to warn pilots of debris from volcanic eruptions. "The hazard to aircraft of an unheralded eruption in either Alaska or Russia is greatly increased," the memo said.

The Defense Department uses USGS seismic information to monitor for nuclear tests around the world. However, a Pentagon official said use of this data was only one of several ways to detect a nuclear blast.

The USGS also maintains an extensive system of gauges to monitor river levels throughout the country. An Interior official said that because of concern about possible flooding around Seattle, USGS employees have begun manually monitoring river gauges in the Cascade Mountains and transmitting the data by telephone.

Curtis Carey, public affairs director for the National Weather Service, said most of the river level and flow data are transmitted to the weather service by satellite, not the Internet, and are still being provided. But he said some river gauge information was transmitted by the Internet, and the weather service was doing a review to determine what information had been cut off.

"The data becomes critical during flooding," Carey said. "The real concern is if this lasts beyond a day. We constantly take this data and put it in our computer models to build an historical record to help us the next time a flood comes along."

Staff writer Neely Tucker contributed to this report.