Trust Fund Security Flawed
The Associated Press
By: Robert Gehrke
Associated Press Writer
December 5, 2001
A hacker hired by a court investigator twice broke into a government-run trust fund that American Indians allege in a lawsuit has cost them $10 billion through mismanagement.
The hacker, working for court-appointed investigator Alan Balaran, exposed such poor security that Balaran said the Interior Department cannot be trusted to oversee the Indian money. He suggested a judge take charge of the fund’s computer systems.
“The stakes are simply too high,” Balaran wrote in a report unsealed Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth. “Without such direct oversight, the threat to records crucial to the welfare of hundreds of thousands of (Indian) beneficiaries will continue unchecked.” Balaran said the agency has known of the security risks for a decade. It was warned in thousands of pages of reports from government and private auditors, he said. Yet Balaran said the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ former top technology officer, Dominic Nessei, who commissioned the 18 security reports at a cost of $1 million, admitted he never read any of them.
Balaran’s consultant used a normal Internet connection and free software to access the system. Once inside, he found no firewalls, numerous missing passwords and no system to detect intruders. He had unfettered access to the Indians’ accounts and once even set up a fake account in Balaran’s name.
Another report by a private consultant hired by the Interior Department found similar security problems. “There is little in place to prevent an unauthorized user from getting into” the system, said the Electronic Data Services report, also unsealed Tuesday.
The computer system tracks $500 million a year in royalties from 54 million acres of Indian land held in trust by the Interior Department and its Bureau of Indian Affairs. The trust fund was established in 1887, with payments intended for Indian beneficiaries, but it was badly mismanaged for more than a century, the government admits.
“It is disgusting and shameful that (Interior Secretary Gale Norton) and her predecessors have allowed this situation to exist and have done nothing. They should be in jail,” said Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana who initiated the lawsuit. “They’re treating money that belongs to individual Indians – some of the poorest people in this nation – like it’s a candy store.”
Based on Balaran’s report, attorneys for the Indians asked Lamberth to shut down the system to ensure their money is safe. The judge has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday to decide what needs to be done.
Almost two years ago, Lamberth ordered Interior and BIA to overhaul its accounting system and demanded the government piece together how much the Indian beneficiaries are owed.
Neither has been done and government officials have misled the court about the progress of reform, according to reports by Balaran and another court monitor, Joseph Kieffer III.
Based on those findings, the Indians’ attorneys have asked Lamberth to hold in contempt almost 40 past and present Interior officials and their attorneys and assign oversight of the trust to a third party.
At an Oct. 30 hearing, an exasperated Lamberth called the Interior Department’s actions “clearly contemptuous” and advised a government attorney to “throw yourself on the mercy of this court.”
Government attorneys contested the contempt allegations. The judge has set a hearing for Monday to decide if Norton and BIA chief Neal McCaleb should be held in contempt.
Last month, Norton created a Bureau of Trust Assets Management, which removed trust responsibility from the BIA.
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