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Dept. Of Homeland Security Chooses Groove, P2P

Posted by timothy on from the but-can-anyone-think-of-legitimate-uses-for-p2p dept.

Ryan Barrett writes "Groove Networks has announced that their P2P infrastructure will power the Homeland Security Information Network, an initiative to increase information sharing between federal, state, and local intelligence agencies. (The initiative doesn't give the govt. more information, it just helps agencies better share the information they already have.) Groove Workspace has also been certified with two govt. security standards, FIPS 140-2 level 1 and NIAP CCITSE. In related news, Groove's developers have been diagnosed with acronym whiplash."

13 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting by Bl33d4merican · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's a very interesting idea that the govt. is considering P2P technology as a way to share information...what a turnaround from their RIAA-hand-holding policy. (Sure, I'm a little biased). But more importantly, despite these security measures, I wonder how insecure our data will be. And how many more government employees will have access to it. One things for sure, they'd better make damn sure this system is safe.

    --

    Every windows user is a sadomasochist.

    1. Re:Interesting by Dashing+Leech · · Score: 3, Interesting
      HUH? What hand-holding policy?

      Well, let's see. There's the RIAA possibly having a big hand in writing California's policy on P2P. Then there's antitrust exemption. There's also the DMCA, which among other things give the RIAA the power to issue supoenas. So I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest the government is "hand-holding".

      On the other hand, there are also many examples of Senators and Congressmen who oppose the RIAA approach and these laws. So it's not a black-and-white issue of where the government stands.

  2. Ooohhh... by sr180 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This will make it hard for the RIAA and MPAA to denounce p2p as evil now doesnt it?

    --
    In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
    1. Re:Ooohhh... by digitalvengeance · · Score: 3, Interesting

      No, it won't.

      90% of the american population will never equate this with "that song downloading MP3 thing" and the 10% that do already know enough to decide for themselves whether or not the MPAA/RIAA have a valid point or just pointless rhetoric.

      --
      How many roads must a man walk down? 42.
  3. Well that Tom Ridge had a good idea by LinuxBSDNotSCO · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think it is a good idea because this way there will not need to be one central database. If my police station needed records from California they could just search and get it. It will also prove to the government that P2P programs are good and can often serve productive uses. Will medical records be next?

    --
    Get paid to read spam
  4. Re:Hold on... by smittyoneeach · · Score: 4, Interesting

    No. I've used a demo of Groove, and it provides nice real-time groupware on modest hardware/bandwidth. It could be used to do quite a bit of good work, in the hands of sophisticated users. Oh, wait...

    --
    Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
  5. Re:So, while researching porn... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    if it gets you really hot does that mean it's OK or extra bad?

    Extra bad, I would guess.

    Similar to the torturers during the Spanish Inquisition who considered their own sexual arousal as they tortured naked female "witches" to be proof of the Devil's influence.

  6. Help, I hate groove! by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I work with the DoD often, and am saddened to see them adopting Groove. (It's not just for Homeland Security either. Since Groove has been rubber-stamped as "secure" software, many other military/intel groups are using it)

    My dislike comes from two simple reasons: Groove is Windows-only, and Groove is non-free. (It's a paid product, not cheap, and the license enforcement is more effective than anything Microsoft Word has)

    If it were up to me, this wouldn't even be a concern: everyone would have Linux (or Mac OS X), there'd be no NATs blocking ports, and we'd all just share files via cvs or rsync (tunneled over ssh of course).

    Can anyone recommend a free competitor to Groove I can try to push on my Windows-using colleagues, before they get sucked into a proprietary protocol? I suspect the strongest advantage Groove has is it's ability to penetrate NAT (that and having been approved by Washington) "Free Software" would be prefered, but "free beer" is ok.

  7. No - Meta Information by Etrigan_696 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Have you ever done one of those "logic puzzles" you see in game/wordsearch/crossword magazines. You are told a story something like this.
    Bob, Mary and Jane went to the store. Each bought an item. One of them brought $.47 to spend, one brought $1.50 and one brought $.35. Bob didn't buy the popsicle. Jane didn't buy the bubble gum. Bob had less than $.50 to spend. The nachos one of them bought cost $1.29.
    Then you are given a chart that has each person's name on it, along with a list of the items and a list of the amounts of money brought to the store. Then you have to figure out who bought what, and how much money they started with. You aren't given enough information to answer straight away - you have to figure it out.
    Bringing all this information together (consider banking records, credit records, information gleaned through co-operative business (remember that supermarket "discount" card you signed up for?) forwarding addresses given to the post office, college records, income tax information - the list goes on) a decent computer app to display it all in a meaningful way, and a smart analyst to look at it, and they can figure out most anything about anyone.

    Big Brother never had it so good!

    And you say "bah - it's all public knowledge anyway. They can already find it out."
    and my response is this: Before, it was work. Before this, it cost money. Before this they had to have a reason to look at someone so closely. Now you go tickety-tickety-tick on the keyboard and blammo - you see that Mr. Johnson is apparantly feeling ill from the sushi he ate last night (from his credit report) because he bought some pepto bismol and OTC tagament from the supermarket (from the supermarket's customer tracking database - gotta love that discount card). But what's this? He took $300 out of the atm at 6pm, spent fifty at the grocery store, then took out another $300 at 9pm. This automated traffic camera places him in the seedy side of town at 11pm. What was he doing over there in the middle of the night with $550 in cash? Looks like we need to pay closer attention to Mr. Johnson.

    And yes - the terms and conditions papers from my bank when I opened my checking account said that "since 9/11 any large transactions (over $200) will be reported immediately to the department of homeland security".

    This is why the thought of a cashless society scares me.

    Now where's my typewriter and my compound in montana? I thought those things were standard to us luddite freaks...?

    1. Re:No - Meta Information by djradon · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Jeff, you make a good point, but remember that in a democracy, the rights and viewpoints of minority groups are not always respected. A lot of people feel like prostitution should be legal, for example, and it is in parts of Nevada. But when a policeman in Utah sees that you got ticketed in a brothel, he might decide not to reduce your speeding ticket like he usually does, and then harass you.

      Admittedly, this is a frivolous example, but still, you're paying an extra hundred bucks just because the policeman knows something about you that's really none of his business.

      Technology, as well as law, can create problems because laws do not change quickly and the law is never perfect.

      For example, take the controversial "Red Light Cameras," which automatically ticket you if you go through an intersection. Obviously, the law has to say driving through a red light is illegal. But in a dynamic, high-traffic city like Los Angeles, people in left-turn lanes habitually run red lights to maximize efficiency.

      Or sometimes, late at night in a small town, you should be able to proceed through a red light if it is totally safe.

      And I won't even get into sex, and how in many states, two consenting adults cannot legally get it on just because they're gay.

      Point is, the law is never perfect. Until we can model perfect justice in neural networks (j/k) and eliminate corruption, we should maintain a healthy skepticism about "Total Information Awareness" as a dangerous concentration of power.

      And even if you had perfect faith in the government, like the poster above says, what if somebody hacks it? Or what if the good guys get kicked out and the bad guys take over?

  8. Re:Many of you... by malowman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    BTW, did you see that the Lotus Development co-founder, Mitchell Kapor (also co-founder of EFF), resigned from Groove a few days ago? Not a positive sign for Groove, IMHO.

    http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-991986.html?tag= st _rn

  9. Re:Take a look under the hood. by martinX · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Since these documents are residing on the computers of federal, state, and local intelligence agencies, wouldn't you actually want some sort of Digital Rights Management to be used?

    This isn't some sort of government-sponsored MP3/mov fileserver for the public.

    BTW, A Nazi sort of name would be Homelandsicherheit.

    --
    When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
  10. p2p in government by griann · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Since the MPAA and the RIAA seem to have been attempting to demonise the very nature of P2P networking as, somehow, innately bad (rather than the specific instances in which individual users may have used the technologies for less than legal ends), this might very well act as a wake up call that a technology is, in itself, not an appropriate target for a moral, ethical or legal crusade.

    A technology is purely a means for achieving any number of ends. The specific ends for which it is used are individual and not directly the responsibility nor the scope of that technology.

    The specific uses it is employed for are the issue for anyone taking offence at the incursions on their business model.

    That the government is using that very same technology as a means to counter terrorism will make their rhetoric much more difficult to promote. Instantly any question of "how could this technology be used excapt for illegal purposes?" has been answered and with resounding implications for the security of the nation.

    Deal with the specific actions. Don't try to suppress the technology.

    Perhaps its adoption by the Department of Homeland Security will, once and for all, demonstrate that there are legitimate uses for the technology.

    By extension, perhaps this will also serve to undermine the RIAA and MPAA's rhetoric that they have some sort of right to monitor the private communications of citizens using this technology.

    Perhaps the Department of Homeland Security has genuinely made a move which will uphold the privacy rights of its own citizens.

    Maybe I'm a rose coloured glasses type of idealist or a romantic, but I'd like to think so.