

The Government Shutdown on the Web - erict15
http://www.cato.org/blog/online-washington-monument-syndrome

======
bradleyjg
We shouldn't treat the law as some sort of obscure documents that can only be
understood by high priests.

Here's the relevant parts of the anti-deficiency statute:

31 USC § 1341 - Limitations on expending and obligating amounts

 _(a) (1) An officer or employee of the United States Government or of the
District of Columbia government may not— (A) make or authorize an expenditure
or obligation exceeding an amount available in an appropriation or fund for
the expenditure or obligation; (B) involve either government in a contract or
obligation for the payment of money before an appropriation is made unless
authorized by law;_

31 USC § 1342 - Limitation on voluntary services

 _An officer or employee of the United States Government or of the District of
Columbia government may not accept voluntary services for either government or
employ personal services exceeding that authorized by law except for
emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property.
This section does not apply to a corporation getting amounts to make loans
(except paid in capital amounts) without legal liability of the United States
Government. As used in this section, the term “emergencies involving the
safety of human life or the protection of property” does not include ongoing,
regular functions of government the suspension of which would not imminently
threaten the safety of human life or the protection of property_

The government can spend money already appropriated -- either under permanent
"mandatory" appropriations or under some more limited multi-year appropriation
-- it can spend money under laws that explicitly allow for spending prior to
appropriation (the most prominent of which is the Feed and Forage Act of 1861)
and under section 1324 above it can spend money in emergencies that imminently
threaten the safety of human life or protection of property. That's it. An
executive branch official can't just decide it would save money in the long
run to spend a little now and save a lot later. The Anti-Deficiency Act is
enforced through criminal penalties of up to two years in prison for each
violation.

~~~
adelevie
This is all nice and good, but can you point to any government/federal agency
sources that are citing the Anti-Deficiency Act as rationale for the web
shutdowns? Seriously, I'd like to know, since OP just tosses the idea out
there at the end of the article without much discussion.

If the Anti-Deficiency Act is not used as justification, then your
interpretation of the law, as applied to the web shutdowns, is moot.

~~~
bradleyjg
The Anti-Deficiency Act, and opinions interpreting it from Attorneys General
dating back to the Carter administration, is the basis for OMB Memo M-13-22[1]
which provides guidelines to heads of Executive Departments and Agencies on
how to plan for a lapse in appropriations. Pages 13 and 14 deal with websites
and other IT concerns and specifically reference the Anti-Deficiency Act.

Here's question 5 from page 14:

 _Q5: What if the cost of shutting down a website exceeds the cost of
maintaining services?

A5: The determination of which services continue during an appropriations
lapse is not affected by whether the costs of shutdown exceed the costs of
maintaining services._

[1]
[http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2013/m-13-22.pdf)

~~~
001sky
How do they pay the cost of shut down, if they "can't pay" the cost of
operation? Just curious. Math, and all that.

~~~
dragonwriter
> How do they pay the cost of shut down, if they "can't pay" the cost of
> operation? Just curious. Math, and all that.

Math is not an issue. The legal issue isn't the _quantity_ of funds that can
be spent in the absence of appropriations, but the _purpose_ for which funds
can be spent in the absence of appropriations.

------
adelevie
The author seems to take a one-dimensional approach to these determinations.
There's much more at play than raw dollar amounts for running servers. While
some commenters might see these web shutdowns as part of a larger strategy to
win a political fight, they're overlooking some very basic and practical
reasons.

Agencies are _responsible_ for the content of their websites. If the agency is
shut down, there is legally-significant content online that is under no chain
of accountability. Every web page on a government site is a potential
liability. In the normal course of business (e.g. when the government is not
shut down), every piece of content goes through some sort of approval process,
or at least someone can be held accountable for it.

Imagine a law is amended, but FCC.gov still has guidance published on the pre-
amended statute. Kind of a crude example, but I think it highlights the
problems of not going whole-hog on shutting down these websites.

Moreover, it's pretty difficult to not defer to an agency's judgment when they
have been winnowed from ~1700 employees to something around 12.

~~~
zenocon
And that's all well and good, but the OP also points out the inconsistency in
policy -- e.g. front page shutdown but many other subdomain sites still
running.

I guess in the end one may chalk it up to pure inefficiency. I'm sure there
are probably multiple groups of people responsible for multiple servers under
one domain, but still, it seems a little childish at this point to shut down
one server if you're doing it for liability reasons, and yet leave up a whole
slew of others on the same domain. I mean nasa.gov -- really? Was it necessary
to redirect that?

~~~
jbooth
Hanlon's razor seems to be knocking on the door here. They made their best
effort to shut down the sites they're supposed to shut down, by law, whether
it's good business or not. They were doing this in a bit of a challenging
situation, with a skeleton crew and a lot of legal uncertainty, plus the
individuals in charge were probably operating at pretty low morale. Some
broken eggs and spilled milk (in the ironic form of better-functioning-than-
expected sites) are to be expected.

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nikatwork
This article and the many others like it are missing the point. The purpose of
the shutdown is not just to save money, it's also to force a break in the
stalemate. In fact, I'd argue that breaking the stalemate is the _primary_
purpose.

> _That doesn’t seem to account for some of the weird patterns we see,
> however._

The author is overthinking it. The most likely scenario is that an official
email went out to all webmasters with the message "Shut it down NOW, people.
And then go home." The assorted webmasters then executed the shutdown with
varying degrees of skill and diligence before heading off for a drink. Thus,
some subdomains are still available, redirects are implemented inconsistently,
etc.

Here's a list of agencies[1] exempt from the Antideficiency Act[2], a more
interesting question would be: are any of those websites down?

[1]
[http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34680.pdf](http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34680.pdf)
(p13)

[2]
[http://www.gao.gov/legal/lawresources/antideficiencybackgrou...](http://www.gao.gov/legal/lawresources/antideficiencybackground.html)

~~~
altoz
> The purpose of the shutdown is not just to save money

You write like there's some grand unified purpose to this whole thing. There
isn't. This is the natural consequence of not setting a budget, which many
different sides had different purposes to not set.

Ostensibly, the consequences of a government shutdown are, supposedly, lower
FUNDING to pay for some government service. Given this, it would seem that
HIGHER spending would seem ridiculous. Financial motivations in cases like
this are supposed to override anything else. The motivations are clearly NOT
financial.

So the belly-aching about how A and B are suffering because of a lack of
funding is not necessarily true. It could also be to make this situation seem
worse than it is. In public discourse, the squeaky wheel gets the funding.

~~~
nikatwork
> _You write like there 's some grand unified purpose to this whole thing._

I'd say there's a grand unified purpose at the upper govt level to make the
shutdown hurt as much as possible, as alluded to by those mentioning
Washington Monument Syndrome. At the lower levels, it's probably more a
diffused feeling of "fvck 'em, now we're not getting paid, let's shut it all
down". And you've raised a very good point about liability elsewhere - why
take chances?

Nobody is going to analyze the most fiscally effective website shutdown
configuration and enforce it. It's not in anyone's interest, which is why I
find these articles a bit silly; it's just another excuse to spout anti-
gubmint rhetoric.

A much more interesting angle is, "how can we alter our two-party system to
prevent these kind of Red vs Blue stalemates"?

------
ctdonath
Sometimes it's not about saving money, it's about deliberately making "saving
money" look a lot worse than it is.

~~~
lolwutf
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument_Syndrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument_Syndrome)

------
warmfuzzykitten
The point is, it costs something, as a recurring cost, to keep them up. In a
shutdown, the only costs you can justify are the costs of shutting down. It is
easy to project that the long-term costs of keeping almost anything running
will exceed the cost of closing the doors. The author wants to treat the
shutdown as though it is temporary, while the executive is required to treat
it as though it is permanent.

~~~
BrandonMarc
If it costs more to bring the website down (and then back up, later) than it
does to simply leave the website up with a disclaimer, that means someone will
get paid more money for doing it this way.

In a way, they have a financial incentive to go the more costly route.

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coldcode
Healthcare.gov however is still running (sort of, signups are dead today due
to the crush of traffic). It's ironic that the site at the center of the
shutdown is running but many of the other gov sites are shutdown.

~~~
adestefan
Because it's funded already. Ironic isn't it.

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ethana
The sky is still up...so I guess I'll carry on with my day.

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philwebster
They should really use a banner that blocks out the page, similar to what
Wikipedia did during the SOPA/PIPA protests [1]. This would still make the
point that government shutdowns are disruptive to the services that people
depend on, without incurring the extra costs of an actual shutdown. Maybe the
point is better made by letting people stew in actual frustration though...

[1]
[http://www.macworld.com/article/1164871/how_to_access_wikipe...](http://www.macworld.com/article/1164871/how_to_access_wikipedia_during_its_sopa_blackout.html)

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spoondan
_It’s easy to imagine how this might often be the case: if the “inessential”
public-facing Web pages are hosted on the same systems you’ve got to keep up
and running for other “essential” back-end purposes [...]_

Does this not then constitute an information leak about what seemingly
"inessential" public-facing sites are housing "essential" services (that
perhaps should not be on public-facing hosts)?

------
16s
The FCC is down. As a radio operator, I find this extremely disappointing:
[http://www.fcc.gov](http://www.fcc.gov)

~~~
olefoo
That just means that now is the time for all those Software Defined Radio
experiments we've been putting off. Spread spectrum mesh networks encrypted so
NSA can't spy on them... for the win.

~~~
rietta
That is an idea! It would be fun to run SSH over packet radio while no one is
around to enforce Part 97!

~~~
darkstar999
Off topic, but what's the reasoning behind the rule against encrypted traffic
on amateur bands?

~~~
rietta
I actually researched this long ago - 2004 - when I was a student at Tech and
gave a presentation to the Atlanta Radio Club about cryptographically secure
authentication that would be Part 97 friendly. Nothing came of it, but I did
later post the write up to my blog it 2009:
[http://blog.rietta.com/blog/2009/08/17/authentication-
withou...](http://blog.rietta.com/blog/2009/08/17/authentication-without-
encryption-for/)

My opinion at the time was: " What Does Part 97 Say?

Section 97.113 (4) '…messages in codes or ciphers intended to obscure the
meaning thereof, except as otherwise provided herein…' (emphasis added).

Based on the above quote, we can use any method at our disposal to provide for
secure authentication which does not obscure the meaning of communications. As
we start using more computing environments and bring the Internet to ham
radio, we have to make sure that service is not provided to non-licensed
users. In voice space, it is generally easy to spot a non-ham, but when
everyone is using the same software there is not a similarly intuitive way to
distinguish between the licensed user and the unlicensed user. "

~~~
16s
Where I'm from ___Tech_ __means Virginia Tech. We beat Georgia Tech in
football this year too ;)

Just joking... thanks for that write-up. I'd rather keep the Internet away
from Radio (it's too centralized). I much prefer station to station
communication over the air rather than packets over some government/corporate
controlled network.

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haspoken
The sites have not been shutdown, rather they are hosting a shutdown message.
They are still incurring the costs of running the sites: power, bandwidth,
cooling, and whatever else is used to keep the sites up and running serving up
pages.

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badman_ting
Silly, but a good way to avoid this would be not shutting down the government.

~~~
BrandonMarc
A better way would be:

* pass a budget, as is required by law anyway

* spend no more than what was budgeted in the first place

* formulate the budget to be at or below revenue

It's not rocket surgery. Yet all of the above are heresy in DC.

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simple10
In China, the government removes non-government websites to punish the people.
In the USA, the government just removes itself. Maybe they should just hide
Healthcare.gov at Silk Road's onion address to really make an obfuscated
political statement.

