Managers can now add e-mail, along with the year 2000 problem and hackers, to the growing list of threats to agency computer systems.
The Forest Service learned to distrust e-mail the hard way, after its computers almost buckled under a deluge of e-mail from activists and individuals who discovered a method of mass e-mailing all of the agency's employees, the Associated Press reported Monday.
Earlier this year, a member of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, an activist group, found a way to e-mail the agency's 27,000 employees with a single mouse click. Word of the e-mail list spread quickly among groups and individuals with interests in forest industries. The Forest Service estimates it received a total of 1.3 million bulk e-mails before tackling the problem.
Now, under a new agency policy, anyone who wishes to e-mail the entire Forest Service staff must first send the message to Forest Service Chief Michael Dombeck. If Dombeck approves the message, it is then posted on the agency's Intranet.
Other agencies are feeling the stress of bulk e-mail. In 1996, the Federal Communications Commission received 200,000 messages in under a week due to an erroneous report that the agency might impose an Internet tax. As a result, FCC's public affairs computers crashed.
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