The State Department's electronic system for visa applicant failed
 

Washington, Sep 24, SPA -- The State Department's electronic system for checking the background of every visa applicant failed worldwide late Tuesday because of a computer virus, leaving the U.S. government unable to issue visas.
The virus crippled the department's Consular Lookout and Support System, known as CLASS, which contains more than 12.8 million records from the FBI, State Department and U.S. immigration, drug-enforcement and intelligence agencies. Among the names in the files are those of at least 78,000 suspected terrorists.
In an internal message sent late Tuesday to embassies and consular offices worldwide, officials cautioned, "CLASS is down due to a virus found in the system." There was no backup system immediately available, and officials could not predict how long the outage might last.
State Department spokeswoman Joanne Moore said the agency experienced some computer problems, but could not confirm the visa-checking system was affected. "We did have some computer problems," she said. "They're working on it."

no backup system available? lol gotta love how prepared the government is...

2 other posts on this already.