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Washington state courts’ computer systems have been down for nearly two weeks, disrupting the operation of local courts and preventing the completion of thousands of firearm sales.
The Administrative Office of the Courts announced Nov. 4 that the state’s Judicial Information Systems, Washington courts website and associated networks, and databases were taken offline after detecting “unauthorized activity.” Service is not expected to be fully restored until next week at the earliest.
“Good progress is being made, but it is extremely time consuming to bring our systems back up in a secure environment due to the complexity and interconnectivity of the networks,” Wendy Ferrell, associate director for the state Administrative Office of the Courts, said Tuesday.
On Facebook, court officials said Tuesday that so far “there is no evidence that any court or personal data has been accessed, altered or removed during the unauthorized activity that was detected.” They noted that reconnecting trial and appellate courts “safely to the services they need is our number one priority.”