The Government Shutdown on the Web | Hacker News Reader

The Government Shutdown on the Web

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56 pointserict1549 comments

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.

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.

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/...

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

> 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.

The 1981 AG memo, which unfortunately seems not to be online anywhere (if you have access to Westlaw or LexisNexis the cite is 43 Op. Att’y Gen. 293) interprets the law as implicitly allowing shutdown costs after the budget authority is exhausted.

> The 1981 AG memo, which unfortunately seems not to be online anywhere (if you have access to Westlaw or LexisNexis the cite is 43 Op. Att’y Gen. 293)

Well, I found it in the first page of Google results for the citation you provide:

http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2013/10/f3/Shutdown.OLC_....

Thanks for finding that, not sure how I missed it. The language regarding orderly shutdown can be found in FN 12 on page 9.

From my understanding most if not all federal agencies had to weigh the Anti-Deficiency Act with there decision. There is also what qualifies as essential vs. non-essential and how contracts that support those services are structured with a dash of Solicitor and management interpretation of those things. And all that had to be done for all IT, not just web sites, in a given Department in about a week. So, my guess is everyone did a mad-dash-scramble do something they couldn't believe would happen.

They don't have to use it as justification. It's the law! If they use something else as justification, but not this, then you can say that. But if they just say "This website unavailable due to shutdown" they can be talking about any law, including this one.

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.

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?

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.

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 (p13)

[2] http://www.gao.gov/legal/lawresources/antideficiencybackgrou...

> 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.

> 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"?

Right. Bosses in the government are not any more amused by these legislative shenanigans than we the people are. The more things that are broken, the louder people will complain and the quicker the bosses will get their funding back.

This is a rather simplistic view of "bosses in the government."

Sure agency heads and managing directors might have their own opinions on the shutdown, especially since they were nominated by President Obama (or appointed by someone who was). But they have their own responsibilities as stewards of an agency. One responsibility is ensuring the agency acts within the law and shields itself from liability. Shutting down a website is a very reasonable measure for minimizing liability when there is no one around to ensure accuracy of content.

That's a fair point I suppose but I suppose it depends on the website. In general rules and regulations change at a pretty glacial pace. It would seem easy enough to place a disclaimer at the top of every page stating something to the effect of "No email will be answered and the validity of this information may in some cases not be up to date due to the government shutdown". A government website is a public resource that we paid to put into place so as far as I'm concerned it's not really acceptable to shut if off when it takes almost no money and more importantly staff to simply keep it up.

With all this talk o liability, would it not be cheaper to simply add a disclaimer to every homepage, etc, saying "due to the shut down some info may be inaccurate"?

I imagine that might be even easier than going through the steps to ensure a website goes offline. But, that would avoid spreading panic and pain, which is what the powers that be want in order to score points.

It's like the April sequestration all over again.

You're missing the point: people can't touch anything until the shutdown ends. You put up that disclaimer and go home for awhile. Tomorrow, you have drive fail or someone defaces it tomorrow and you cannot – by federal law – fix it until the budget passes, so you're basically hoping the essential staff — who, remember, are juggling a ton of new responsibilities – notice and can at least pull shut it down without causing too much extra damage.

I understand that absolutely CAN happen though in my experience it's fairly rare. However, it's akin to shutting down all public roads because a few may develop potholes we can't fix until funds are available. You are removing a critical resource from the hands of people that paid for it in the first place.

Congress is removing it, not the federal workers following the rules. If you don't like the laws or don't like the way they're stalling on authorizing spending, contact your representatives and express your displeasure.

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument_Syndrome

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.

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.

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.

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

That's because it's not funded by the budget bill that's not being passed. Kind of stupid isn't it.

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

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...

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)?

The FCC is down. As a radio operator, I find this extremely disappointing: http://www.fcc.gov

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.

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

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

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...

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. "

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.

I have no experience with amateur radio, but from a quick google search, it looks like the relevent regulation is:

(a) No amateur station shall transmit: ... (4)...messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning, except as otherwise provided herein

If you read through the rest of the restrictions, it looks like they are trying to setup a fairly specific environment on amateur radio, and encrypted traffic is inconsistent with that environment.

http://www.hallikainen.com/FccRules/2013/97/113/index.php

Presumably to keep people from using the frequency for commercial purposes.

Also paramilitary purposes

The FCC doesn't actively police the amateur spectrum. Instead they rely on self-reporting from the community. The official observers will file reports after the FCC reopens. It takes months for them to take actions on the reports. So this really changes nothing.

You are assuming that the FCC will reopen in anything like it's present capacity. That assumption may not be fully justified.

I saw that on QRZ. The radio spectrum still works fine while the FCC is on break though. I am not too worried about it.

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.

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

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.

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.

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