Why would banks need to go offline for hours to freeze some accounts?

government decrees that certain accounts need to be frozen. the infrastructure to do so isn't there and needs to be implemented/deployed, or is implemented but hasn't been used in a while so nobody knows how it works. in either case, the roll-out gets bungled and causes downtime.

The infrastructure to freeze accounts has existed forever, it's not a new concept.

i thought the conspiracy theory was there was a bank run caused by lack of faith in the banking system and then in order to stifle the run banks had some 'downtime' and 'networking' issues.

Tracking and freezing accounts is something banks do all day every day, there's no reason this would be related to bank downtime.

Oh, no. I was referring to the conspiracy theory portion of the comment. I've no idea what is responsible for the down time. Could be software tracking at time of, before people start pulling funds in preparation for the freezing of funds as the order went through, or a simple network error. Any speculation, is just that. Speculation. The timing is suspect, though, but that's really all that can be said.

EDIT: Or in thinking about it further, it could have been thoughts of self preservation on the banks part. In order to keep a decent portion of their customer base from transferring their funds to "offshore" banks, of some sort, they simply closed their proverbial doors for a time, to let the panic die down.

Is it a conspiracy?, or a conspiracy theory...?

lol, forgot to put the word theory. What a difference a word makes =)