Washington courts impacted by statewide IT outage.
The Internet is everywhere, and, on some level, it impacts the operations of just about everything, and everyone. To put this into perspective in the business I'm in. (Broadcasting) 20 years ago we were just experimenting with the concept of putting our radio station on the Internet. Today, almost every aspect of broadcasting passes through the Internet in one way or another.
How does the Internet impact our legal system in Washington state?
In Washington, we have The Administrative Office of the Courts or AOC. The AOC has a number of jobs that all relate to the maintenance of our state court system and that includes “overseeing technology that is used in the state courts”.
That brings us to the problem they have today.
According to theregister.com,
‘A statewide IT outage attributed to "unauthorized activity" is affecting the availability of services provided by all courts in Washington. The Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) confirmed the issues via social media and warned they could persist for days. In a statement, it said: "The [AOC] recently identified unauthorized activity on the Washington Courts network. We have taken immediate action to secure critical systems and are working to safely restore service.’
The AOC is being very careful not to say that it was a cyber-attack, but one can infer that one might have occurred.
The AOC associate director Wendy Farrell told the Seattle Times. "In an abundance of caution, we proactively took down our systems to secure them and are working around the clock with leading experts to restore services as quickly as possible,"
All courts in the state of Washington will be affected to varying degrees. As of this writing, the prediction is that they will be still experiencing problems for the next several days.
Ahhh, The Internet, Civilizations best friend.
'Unauthorized activity' downs Washington's court systems • The Register
WA courts’ online systems down after ‘unauthorized activity’ | The Seattle Times
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