The National Weather Service Sends Hidden Message To Congress In Forecast

from the please-pay-us dept

You may have heard that the federal government is shut down. Some have been sent home, while others are still working -- though many of those still on the job aren't getting paid. They're getting IOUs for payment once the government finally starts back up again. Apparently, some folks at the National Weather Service are still on the job, and they've used their forecasting notices to send a secret message to Congress, as first noticed by meteorologist Mike Masco: Glad they have a sense of humor, though slightly disturbed as to how they'd create the forecast to work that way...

Filed Under: congress, government shutdown, hidden messages, national weather service

The Government Can't Even Figure Out How To Shut Down Its Websites In A Reasonable Way

from the government-shutdown-oddities dept

With the government shutdown, you have may have come across a variety of oddities involving various government agency websites that were completely taken offline. This seems strange. Yes, the government is shut down, but does that really mean they need to turn off their web servers as well, even the purely informational ones? I could see them just leaving them static without updating them, but to completely block them just seems... odd. Even odder is that not all websites are down and some, such as the FTC's website appears to be fully up, including fully loading a page... only to then redirect you to a page that says it's down. Julian Sanchez, over at Cato, explores the various oddities of government domains that are either up or down -- or something in between.

For agencies that directly run their own Web sites on in-house servers, shutting down might make sense if the agency's "essential" and "inessential" systems are suitably segregated. Running the site in those cases eats up electricity and bandwidth that the agency is paying for, not to mention the IT and security personnel who need to monitor the site for attacks and other problems. Fair enough in those cases. But those functions are, at least in the private sector, often outsourced and paid for up front: if you've contracted with an outside firm to host your site, shutting it down for a few days or weeks may not save any money at all. And that might indeed explain why some goverment sites remain operational, even though they don't exactly seem "essential," while others have been pulled down.

That doesn't seem to account for some of the weird patterns we see, however. The main page at NASA.gov redirects to a page saying the site is unavailable, but lots of subdomains that, however cool, seem "inessential" remain up and running: the "Solar System Exploration" page at solarsystem.nasa.gov; the Climate Kids website at climatekids.nasa.gov; and the large photo archive at images.jsc.nasa.gov, to name a few. There are any number of good reasons some of those subdomains might be hosted separately, and therefore unaffected by the shutdown—but it seems odd they can keep all of these running without additional expenditures, yet aren't able to redirect to a co-located mirror of the landing page. 

He also takes on the issue of the FTC redirect, in which he notes that the redirect after loading the full page shows that they're not saving any money at all this way, meaning it makes absolutely no sense at all.

Still weirder is the status of the Federal Trade Commission's site. Browse to any of their pages and you'll see, for a split second, the full content of the page you want—only to be redirected to a shutdown notice page also hosted at FTC.gov. But that means… their servers are still up and running and actually serving all the same content. In fact they're serving more content: first the real page, then the shutdown notice page. If you're using Firefox or Chrome and don't mind browsing in HTML-cluttered text, you can even use this link to navigate to the FTC site map and navigate from page to page in source-code view without triggering the redirect. Again, it's entirely possible I'm missing something, but if the full site is actually still running, it's hard to see how a redirect after the real page is served could be avoiding any expenditures.

Sanchez tries to piece together why this might be happening, and points to a White House memo which explicitly says that agencies should shut stuff down even if it's cheaper to keep them online:

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...

It's difficult to see how this helps anyone at all. But it does yet a good job (yet again) of demonstrating that logic and bureaucracy don't often go well together.

Filed Under: bureaucracy, ftc, government shutdown, websites

Furloughed Federal Workers Can't Check Their Email... But Don't Worry, The NSA Can Still Check Yours

from the life-under-the-shutdown dept

So with the federal government shut down, it turns out that it's actually illegal for furloughed government employees to check their work email. Yes, if you're a public servant who actually feels obligated to do some public service by checking your email (for example, to find out if you're supposed to go back to work), you're probably breaking the law. But, have no fear, while those government employees can't check their own email, the NSA will still be checking your email.

A government shutdown, set for Oct. 1 if lawmakers fail to strike a deal, would be unlikely to impede the National Security Agency's surveillance programs.

"A shutdown would be unlikely to affect core NSA operations," a government official familiar with the plans said.

Nice to see them focused on priorities. Perhaps there's a "modest proposal" sort of solution here, where we get the NSA and FBI to read the emails of the furloughed employees to let them know what they're missing.

Filed Under: email, federal shutdown, government shutdown, nsa, nsa surveillance

The USPTO Regularly Turns A Profit But Is Still Forced To Suffer Through Every Sequestration And Shutdown

from the sympathy-for-the-USPTO-somewhat-of-an-anomaly-itself dept

The US government is now shut down, thanks to both parties' inability to see a national budget as anything more than a partisan battleground, sniping at each others' pet funding for weeks on end without reaching a compromise. A number of gutless spending cuts were proposed, fought over and rejected, with very little forward progress being made.

This shutdown hits certain agencies harder than others. National parks, health services, immigration and housing (among others) are being closed while intelligence agencies (along with any agency that "provides for national security") have been greenlighted for business as usual. Fans of IP will be happy to hear that the USPTO will be staying open, at least for the next month or so, thanks to a reserve fee surplus.

In the event of a general government shutdown on October 1, 2013, the United States Patent and Trademark Office will remain open, using prior year reserve fee collections to operate as usual for approximately four weeks. We continue to assess our fee collections compared to our operating requirements to determine how long we will be able to operate in this capacity during a general government shutdown. We will provide an update as more definitive information becomes available.

Should we exhaust these reserve funds before a general government shutdown comes to an end, USPTO would shut down at that time, although a very small staff would continue to work to accept new applications and maintain IT infrastructure, among other functions.

Say what you will about the office's track record of granting trademark and patent protection to some very dubious applicants, but the USPTO does some things few other government agencies can claim: 1.) operate on its collected fees and 2.) turn a profit.

As it technically shouldn't require a budget allocation to operate, it seems odd that it should have to shut down at all. Arguments were made by the American Intellectual Property Law Association earlier this year that it shouldn't be part of the sequester, thanks to its ability to fund itself with collected fees.

“[W]e have serious doubts that the USPTO is lawfully subject to sequestration in the first place because it is funded through fee collections, not through government spending.”

“We believe that [the procedures being applied] restricts the spending authority of fee funded agencies and impacts them asymmetrically and unfairly relative to non-fee funded bodies.”

So, the USPTO is still a budget line and as such, is subject to the same treatment as other entities in these appropriations bills. Consequently, it will be shutting down along with the rest of the government if the shutdown outlasts its reserve. The other factor that plays into this strange situation is the fact that the reserve fees it's using to fund the next four weeks aren't safe from the rest of the government, which has shown a propensity for dipping into the USPTO's profits repeatedly over the past 20+ years.

Fee diversion (i.e., confiscating money paid to the USPTO by customers) has a long history that spans at least two decades and three different Presidents, although for a brief time during the Bush Administration it did cease thanks to the efforts of then Director Jon Dudas.

More details here.

Since 1991, about $1 billion in user fees have been withheld from the USPTO as a result of the practice of diverting user fees – collected from patent and trademark applicants – away from the Office to unrelated government programs. The America Invents Act, signed into law on September 16, 2011, created a “reserve account” in the U.S. Treasury to hold the fees collected by the USPTO that exceed its annual appropriation. The law instructs the USPTO to look to appropriations acts for instructions on how to access the money. The FY 2012 appropriations bill did include instructions for the USPTO on how to access money in the reserve fund, however such language must be reinserted each future appropriations bill. Therefore, the reserve account alone will not stop diversion and a more permanent fix is needed.

To that end, Rep. Mike Honda has submitted a bill to protect the reserve fees from being diverted to cover shortfalls elsewhere or fund new spending. But, much like the budget itself, it's currently languishing in the House, not having moved forward since June 28th.

The entire office (of nearly 12,000 employees) won't be shut down, though. Critical systems will be maintained in order to protect two mostly-imaginary things that the government holds near and dear: intellectual property rights and national security.

The excepted employees will ensure the functionality of processes and systems minimally necessary for the preservation of patent rights, to allow compliance with statutory provisions that cannot be waived, and avoid disclosures of information that would be detrimental to the national security.

Additionally, the excepted employees will ensure the functionality of processes and systems minimally necessary to preserve trademark rights. Preventing the public from accessing the USPTO’s electronic filing and payments systems may result in the complete or partial loss of intellectual property. Therefore, in order to prevent the loss of valuable intellectual property, these systems should remain open during any closure of the USPTO.

While I have (along with others) expressed some deep disappointment and incredulity at the agency's actions, the fact remains that it's a governmental anomaly. It turns a profit. And its reward for making money is being made to suffer through sequestration and shutdowns and have its surplus (which could keep it operating through both events) drained by opportunistic legislators who assume a penny saved is a penny better spent.

Filed Under: fee diversion, funds, government shutdown, upsto