Dept. Of Homeland Security Chooses Groove, P2P

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."

Comments

Interesting

[Bl33d4merican]

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.

Ooohhh...

[sr180]

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

Well that Tom Ridge had a good idea

[LinuxBSDNotSCO]

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?

Re:Hold on...

[smittyoneeach]

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...

Help, I hate groove!

[Minna Kirai]

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.

No - Meta Information

[Etrigan_696]

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...?

Re:No - Meta Information

[djradon]

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?

Re:Many of you...

[malowman]

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

Re:Take a look under the hood.

[martinX]

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.