
USDA is down - intelliot
http://www.usda.gov/
======
SolarNet
I realize that people are a little annoyed at this tact, and think it is
melodramatic. But consider:

* The servers may be hosted on a cloud system, and there is now no way to pay for them. (Even if the bill is due in 4 days, the employees can't do the work 4 days from now, they have to do it now.)

* Some of the information may be time sensitive, and the submission of forums may rely on employee feedback. These services may not be easy enough to remove in the time they have available to shut-down.

* Even if hosted in house, if the systems break, or are hacked into, then nothing can be done fix them. Better to deploy a hardened static page now than be infected with malware running massive botnets when they get back.

* They may have to turn off the utilities to their server farm, so they can't support anything but a simple static page.

* They have 4 hours to do all that, fill out some paperwork, and still make a backup, and whatever other responsibilities they have (like internal servers).

The USDA in specific also handles dynamic data from across the country, so
more than some, they have worries about being hacked and having their data
screwed with.

~~~
smsm42
I'm not sure I understand. Let's say there's a need to have people be on call
for the site 24/7 - for many sites it's not the case but let's assume they
need it. But these people don't need to be paid hourly. They most probably get
salary at the end of the payroll period (monthly or bi-weekly) as everybody
else. And even if shutdown would continue that long, they'd just get paid at
the next pay period. Now, it may be possible that some people would say "we
won't work if we don't know we'd be paid in time" \- but they don't know that
either way, and their salary probably is not contingent on specific work.

Same with cloud hosting and any other expense - I have hard time believing it
is billed hourly. Most probably it is billed monthly - and by the time this
months' bill arrives shutdown would be long over. And even if it isn't, I've
worked in the past with govt organizations, and not all of them always were
the most accurate payers - but I rarely seen any contractor refusing govt job
because of that. Everybody knows eventually it will be paid.

So I don't see the reason for the drama. It's not like US government suddenly
has no money at all. It's a temporary technical issue with administering cash
flows, and everybody knows it is temporary and everybody knows the bills will
eventually be paid.

~~~
ewoodrich
> It's not like US government suddenly has no money at all. It's a temporary
> technical issue with administering cash flows, and everybody knows it is
> temporary and everybody knows the bills will eventually be paid.

Sure, it may be temporary. But the most recent federal government shutdown (in
'96) lasted 21 days. Which is certainly enough time for issues/vulnerabilities
to appear. It's unlikely this one will last as long, but regardless, I don't
find it beyond reason that an IT team being furloughed could determine that
allowing an un-maintained, un-monitored, site to remain publicly accessible
could pose a security risk, or provide out-of-date information that otherwise
appears to be authoritative.

~~~
smsm42
What you mean "may be"? Do you seriously entertain a possibility that US
government as of today has ceased to exist and US government bills will never
be paid?

You must have misunderstood what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that there's
absolutely no need to wait for 21 days for issues to appear, because the same
people may do the same maintenance as always and there's absolutely no need to
leave the site un-maintained. Of course, staff can be reduced - no new
developments, no updates, no proofreaders, no marketing, no answering emails,
etc. - to avoid taking too much un-budgeted obligations. But no one doubts
there obligations will be repaid, so I don't see the issue here.

>>> provide out-of-date information that otherwise appears to be
authoritative.

This is easily solved by putting one line on top of the page that says "All
information is as available by 10.01.2013 and can be out of date". I admit,
it's much less drama, but it's possible.

~~~
SolarNet
Besides the fact that it is illegal
([http://www.bsnlawfirm.com/newsletter/OP0413_Natter.pdf](http://www.bsnlawfirm.com/newsletter/OP0413_Natter.pdf))
employees are NOT guaranteed to get their money. In the past congress has
sometimes not provided backpay.

Also, if the website gets hacked, without sys-admins to fix it, the server's
data could be corrupted or stolen, backdoors installed, ect.

------
bparsons
What the USDA is doing is called "Washington Monument Syndrome".

It is a political tactic, wherein you deny the public access to the most
visible aspects of a government operation during a period of budget cuts. You
will notice all government agencies ceasing stuff like twitter accounts, which
cost virtually nothing to operate.

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

~~~
darkarmani
> What the USDA is doing is called "Washington Monument Syndrome".

Where will all the school kids visit if the USDA website is down? What about
all of the international tourists that finally made the trip to the USDA
website?

You make a completely valid comparison, because everyone knows that after the
Washington Monument, the USDA is the most beloved site.

------
throwaway9848
Actual information on the effects of the shutdown on the USDA, for those
interested in that sort of thing:
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/30/usa-fiscal-
agricul...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/30/usa-fiscal-agriculture-
idUSL1N0HQ1W420130930)

~~~
aethr
Now that is very interesting. According to this article, earlier this year
meat and poultry inspectors were designated 'essential personnel', meaning
that they can continue to work even during a government shutdown. This is
important because it's against the law to sell meat in the US if it hasn't
been inspected by a USDA inspector.

Imagine the outcry if this government shutdown meant that all meat and poultry
sales in the US halted until an agreement was reached.

~~~
Tzunamitom
I'd be one happy vegetarian!

~~~
easytiger
Would you? Economic forces would drive up the cost of your fodder.

~~~
Tzunamitom
In the short-term perhaps, but if it lasted a while the reverse would be true
as the market would be flooded with excess fodder production that would drive
down the price of my fodder (Amount of grain needed to end extreme hunger - 40
million tonnes. Amount of grain fed to animals in the West - 540 million
tonnes. United Nations)

------
fpgeek
Ironically, you can't straightforwardly get to the USDA contingency plans. The
whitehouse.gov link on the page points to an index of all the contingency
plans (across the federal government). Unfortunately, the entries for the USDA
plans are just links pointing back to usda.gov...

I'd imagine you might get somewhere at archive.org (and there may well be
other ways to get them from a .gov source), but still...

------
Steuard
Is this purely symbolic, or is there some real sense in which replacing the
USDA website with a placeholder saves the government a measurable amount of
money?

~~~
nwh
Symbolic really. The same servers are sitting there, just idle rather than
pumping out pages.

~~~
bsdetector
If they have legal requirements like a report of contamination or unsafe
conditions is investigated within N days after being received their only
option may be to not accept the report at all. Unless everybody involved in
the whole process is an essential worker.

~~~
palidanx
Reports of contamination would most likely go through the FDA for
announcements.

------
robomartin
I fully expect Obama and Democrats to use every available tactic to make this
as painful as possible for the population.

They truly need to have the US wake-up to an apocalyptic scenario. Anything
less than that and people are going to see that the emperor has no clothes. If
they could have airplanes falling out of the sky, they would. If they truly
use such tactics I really hope people take them to task for it. With nearly
four million people working for the federal government --a good deal of them
solidly in the Democrat camp-- I fully expect them to terrorize us by fucking
things up to the extent of their abilities.

As for the argument of cloud servers and other services in the private sector
causing shutdowns, the question is very simple: Anyone thinking that the US
isn't going to pay for these services is a moron. This shutdown will last as
long as it does and then everyone will get their checks. Anything to the
contrary is pure theater.

I just got an email from whitehouse.gov full of FUD. It's a disgrace that
whitehouse.gov is being used this way (this isn't the first time). Democrats
would raise hell if Republicans were in power and used whitehouse.gov for
partisan propaganda. What a shame.

Tomorrow is likely to be the US politics version of Kabuki Theater. Could be
fun to watch.

------
abalone
It's likely this is more than political. There's a lot of work they'd need to
do to disable just the parts of the site that would cease to function without
backend staff, or place appropriate disclaimers on out-of-date information,
which drives literally billions of dollars in economic activity.

Four hours isn't enough time for that.

~~~
ewoodrich
A shutdown risk appears every three or so months due to reliance on short term
continuing resolutions to fund the government. Most recently, formal
preparations began several weeks ago.

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

~~~
javert
Yep. This situation is something that can easily be prepared for.

This is probably either mismanagement or political posturing. (I'd bet the
latter.)

------
briandear
The healthcare.gov site certainly works. This whole thing is nothing more than
two fat guys arguing over the last piece of sausage. It's theater. From my
perch in Avignon, France it's actually pretty entertaining. Watching Sheila
Jackson Lee's caps-lock shouting 'speech' and wondering if the speaker of the
House is going to start crying is good fun.

------
lukeman
Somehow Heaven's Gate still manages to keep its site going fifteen years after
its members committed suicide.

~~~
_delirium
There are some advantages to having a purely static-HTML website, in terms of
unattended maintainability.

In addition to the government, it seems many companies don't have one anymore.
If servers get compromised, it's common for companies to just take the whole
site down pending a fix, and replace it with a single HTML splash page. If
they had a full-featured static-HTML version of the site, they could fail over
to something more complete than one HTML page, but that seems uncommon.

------
Shank
This is a little confusing. The USDA's website is presumably hosted on some
server, so what exactly is preventing it from remaining online?

I mean, the domain is clearly still here, and there's a web page serving that
error, so...

~~~
rob05c
Just speculating, but perhaps the IT person(s) responsible for maintaining the
site are nonessential, and considered a simple placeholder safer than leaving
the full site online and unattended?

~~~
SolarNet
That IT person has 4 hours to shut-down the agency internet presence for an
indeterminate amount of time. Also, their server farm may not have power in 4
days, better to set up a simple website on some "essential" box somewhere.

Especially since the USDA receives information from across the country and
performs statistical analysis. It would be safer to shutdown the dynamic
services rather than let it get hacked. In 4 hours they probably do not have
enough time to separate dynamic and static information when they also have to
do a backup and a bunch of paperwork.

------
ferdo
nsa.gov is still up, so they do have some priorities.

~~~
CamperBob2
They're down now, although it almost seems more like a DDoS ("Taking too long
to respond").

~~~
dibarra
It actually looks like they withdrew their A records. anl.gov is having the
same issue (Though strangely enough, not mirror.anl.gov, so thankfully my
systems can still update.)

------
LAMike
PR stunt or massive budget decreases in government services? Either way it's
not a good place to be in as a country.

~~~
scarmig
My guess is more the former than the latter.

Then again, federal spending can be pretty funky in how Congress requires it
be spent. I'd love to see all the information on how the decision to shut down
the site was made.

~~~
SolarNet
Well if they have a server farm or cloud server on which the website is hosted
it likely needs power and bandwidth (or money for a cloud service). Either
they disappear completely or put up a static page.

------
rob05c
Does anyone know who designates essential personnel? (5 mins of Google didn't
return an answer)

Could the President designate all federal employees as "essential," to
circumvent the budget requirement? (Yes, this would be a power grab by the
Executive branch)

------
eps
Just got en email from a client who is with the Dept. of Agriculture and he
said "it looks like the government is shutting down on Tuesday" and for the
life of me I just couldn't understand what that was referring to.

------
ck2
Yeah who needs that pesky regulation of food quality anyway.

Now if gun permits were suspended, it would get an exemption almost
immediately.

~~~
anonymoushn
Your gun permit is in the bill of rights. Why do you need a web site for that?

~~~
ck2
So is your right to vote - why do we need voter registration?

~~~
CamperBob2
Where?

~~~
ck2
14th, 15th, 19th, 23rd, 24th, 26th amendments?

Took them awhile to get it spelled out. But it also took them 100 years to end
slavery.

One might also suggest the freedom from searches and seizures is also fairly
clear. Be sure to tell that the TSA agent that is groping your genitals. Oh
and the TSA is still fully funded.

~~~
fsck--off
The Constitution does not explicitly give you the right to vote in the same
way that it gives you the right to free speech.

Wikipedia has this to say about it:

"The "right to vote" is not explicitly stated in the U.S. Constitution except
in the above referenced amendments, and only in reference to the fact that the
franchise cannot be denied or abridged based solely on the aforementioned
qualifications. In other words, the "right to vote" is perhaps better
understood, in layman's terms, as only prohibiting certain forms of legal
discrimination in establishing qualifications for suffrage. States may deny
the "right to vote" for other reasons."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_States)

------
ForFreedom
What has a funding got to do with a website being up, the servers are still
running.

------
ck2
tsa.gov is still fully operational [http://www.tsa.gov/](http://www.tsa.gov/)

~~~
SolarNet
Well that's basically just a static blog site anyway. The USDA site had
dynamic information, statistics, graphs. The IT infrastructure for USDA is
probably much more complicated than the TSA.

------
nodata
If it's down, don't link to it.

------
josh2600
NSA.gov is down.

[http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/nsa.gov](http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/nsa.gov)

~~~
est
[http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/www.nsa.gov](http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/www.nsa.gov)

~~~
001sky
<spoiler alert>

It's just you. [http://www.nsa.gov](http://www.nsa.gov) is up.

------
na85
Wow, such melodrama.

------
freework
How cute.

------
Daniel_Newby
A pandering PR stunt by an overgrown bureaucracy. (The USDA is the home of the
rabbit inspectors, bravely protecting our children from risky pet bunnies.)

~~~
olefoo
So the USDA is largely responsible for our having some of the safest food on
the planet. I mean you can mock it all you want, but if USDA meat inspectors
aren't there to watch over the production; you might want to consider becoming
a lot more vegetarian for a while. I mean, unless you really like eating cows
infected with MRSA or Mutton with a side of scrapie...

Seriously, if meat inspection goes by the wayside for any length of time;
people will die, because it won't be anybody's job to make sure the meat is
safe and the folks who run meat-packing plants don't like that they can't
wring every last bit of profit out of every animal they buy.

~~~
markost
Can I get a citation for any of this? It was my understanding that the USDA
allows cattle to be fed "cage lining" which is chicken feathers, poop and feed
taken from the bottom of chicken cages. The chicken feed, in turn, contains
cattle meat and trimmings, thus making your "side of scrapie" scenario a small
but significant possibility.

In other words, what makes you think the USDA is not beholden to the
commercial interests that it regulates, like every other government agency?

~~~
olefoo
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foodborne_illness#Epidemiology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foodborne_illness#Epidemiology)

Look at the difference in Salmonella rates between the US and France for
instance.

And yes, regulatory capture is an issue with the FDA, that has periodically
resulted in scandals; but the meatpacking industry knows that without some
obvious checks on their hygiene their industry as a whole is worse off. If one
plant cuts too many corners and starts shipping moldy meat, the entire
industries sales suffer; so it's in the meat companies interest to have
someone policing defectors from good practices.

------
droopybuns
Oh emm gee. what will we do without google cache?

