>From Emma Livermore I thought everyone should know that the BLM records are no longer available on the Internet. Following is the article in regard to this from Eastman's On-line Newsletter dated December 30, 2001. "- Bureau of Land Management Computers Knocked Off-line By Judge Because of a lawsuit, Cobell V. Norton, genealogists are being denied access to the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management Web site. This site contains (or did contain) hundreds of thousands of records related to homestead claims and land sales. The site has been very popular amongst genealogists looking for records of ancestors in the western states. The site is off-line today with no planned date for its return. It seems that U.S. District Judge Royce has threatened yet again to hold Secretary of Interior Gale Norton in contempt as he ordered her department to "immediately" disconnect from the Internet every single computer, server, and system that has access to individual Indian trust data. The problems and lawsuit arose from the government's extremely long delays in paying for oil royalties and grazing leases. The records were housed in a computer infrastructure that was so weak that a court-appointed investigator and his team of security experts were able to break in and repeatedly access, modify and even create data -- all without raising a response from the government. Judge Royce ordered Secretary Norton to "immediately" disconnect from the Internet every single computer, server, and system that has access to individual Indian trust data. The Secretary of Interior did just that. If you try to access the Bureau of Land Management sites, you simply get an error message saying, "Not available." You can read more about this ongoing issue at several news sites. One with a lot of details is the admittedly biased Indian Trust site at: http://www.indiantrust.org/clips.cfm" My thanks to Judy Swett for letting me know about the BLM on-line access problems. ==============================================================