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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."
Give the federal agency more MP3s!!! And the Justice Department can finally get quick access to pr0n so they can research it to help ban it!
I thought p2p was evil and used only by terrorists. At least that's what the RIAA told me...
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.
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!
Or the DoJ might start investigating the underhand tactics RIAA has used to curtail P2P services.
Either way, this is very good news.
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
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
Surely a product of this process is more information?
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Oh yeah, and Jello Jigglers are quite pertinent as well.
Its a sad thing, but as the posts here points out, the association has stuck, and legitimate applications of P2P technology has suffered because of it.
Look at how JXTA has been languishing for the past few years.
Cmon folks, P2P is not piracy. It mirrors how distributed complex systems in nature behave and it has the potential to create dynamic, loosely-coupled distributed systems that may just get us out of this IT rut.
How does Groove archive data? Is there a centralized secure repository or is all of the data on client nodes, only as secure as that particular user chooses to be?
Neat in a way, but it sounds like a mess for doing real work.
File: post-911-plans.doc (share or u will b... 192 KB
If it just disgusts you, is it porn or what?
To paraphrase some supreme court justice or another, I can't tell you where I'd draw the line, but I'll tell you on a case by case basis, if you pay my normal hourly rates.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
In related news, all terrorist data has magically turned into porn, warez, and mp3's
Many of you may know the founder of Groove (Ray Ozzie) as the guy who created Lotus Notes.
Just showing that he's been in the spotlight before, it's not some random Joe who's suddenly found his product approved for Government use.
What does the DHS need with really old partitioning software?
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.
From their web site: the company has obtained more than $155 million in financing from Accel Partners, Microsoft(R) Corporation
Yup, this is P2P at it's best! With those kind of finantial backers, wonder what kind of DRM they push with each file served? Is it any wonder GWB and the folks at Homelad Security (and ain't that just a very Nazi sort of a name...) "choose" Groove?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
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...?
Take that, Osama!
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Actually, Mitch Kapor resigned in March of 2003.
A system for sharing information between different agencies is not necessarily a reason to dig out the tin foil hats! Honestly!
One of the major hassles as a government worker is that everyone has their own database and their own numbering system, and they don't necessarily share well. That's not referring to turf wars--that's just referring to the different systems. The FBI has their file numbers, the Department of Justice uses a different numbering system. And theoretically, the FBI is under the DOJ! HHS uses their own own numbering system, so does DCIS, etc. This is a major problem, especially when the investigative arms of different agencies are going after the same people.
I spent some time as a paralegal for the DOJ, and one of my jobs was to check the status of older investigations and see what the result was or if they were still open. In many instances, it took weeks to track them down, because all I had was a FBI number and I needed the file from DCIS's investigation. Or I might have a DOJ number and need a file from the FBI... In both instances, they'd have to search by name, and that takes a very long time.
I know very little about Groove Networks or how the technology works, but if it helps share information, it truly is a good thing. This is not a civil liberties issue--its an efficiency issue. The Government already has this data--this just lets them access it better.
This is strange. Through the NSF, the goverment is already pouring money into Project IRIS, a collaboration of some of the best minds in true decentralized peer-to-peer architecture. It includes some of the creators of Chord (MIT), Pastry (Rice), and Kademlia (NYU) -- three of the fastest distributed hash table implementations out there (logarithmic time). So why are they investing in the Groove? Although I realize Microsoft has a well-staffed, well-funded research department (they were partly responsible for Pastry), it seems better to just pour more money into an already-going, well-researched project.
- shadowmatter
This is a Government Server
**No Unauthorized Use**
_Directories/Files Available
__1. Emails Scanned
__2. Active Cases
__3. Cases on Hold
__4. Wire Tap Transcripts
__5. Satellite Photographs
__6. Prisoners Incarcerated List
__7. Archive Files
__-----A. Old Files
__-----B. Bob's Files **Top Secret**
__----------1. Porn0 Pics
__----------2. MP3 Files
__----------3. Porn0
__----------4. Misc. Pics
Hummmm . . . now where did I put that warez directory?
My Doctor prescribed daily nasal saline irrigation, hehe
Since someone else has already pointed out what the "crypt" is in technicality (part of a UUEncoded file), I'll tell you what it really is. It's proof that no amount of expanded or enhanced power on the government's part will ever make any of us safer from whatever Bogeyman we're worrying about today.
<hypothetical>Suppose you're a terrorist, and you've just finished the final draft of the Secret Terrorism Plans. Now you need to distribute it to your cohorts. The problem is, "the man" is spying on all internet traffic, and you suspect they might even be able to crack PGP. How, then, can you possibly send a copy of the Secret Terrorism Plans to 18 of your closest friends without being caught?
Easy, you bury it in shit.
You take your Secret Terrorism Plans file and PGP-encrypt it, just for good measure. You then UUEncode the encrypted file, and split it into 10 chunks. Each chunk gets posted as a comment to a different Slashdot story. Somewhere out-of-band - or even in-band, say, as part of the previous message - you tell the recipients to start looking for parts of the file in the first Slashdot story with "Linux" in the story text on March 15th.
Slashdot generates more than a million pageviews a day, with tens of stories and thousands of comments posted. Helpfully, your 10 UUEncoded chunks of the Secret Terrorism Plans are moderated -1, Troll, so that most people never even see them. Of those who do see them, most will ignore them, a few will wonder (as you did) what they are, fewer still will recognize that they're pieces of a UUEncoded file, and probably nobody will bother trying to track down all the parts and assemble them. Except for your intended recipients, that is.</hypothetical>
Am I saying that Slashdot is a medium for terrorist communications? Of course not, though it's certainly possible. What I'm getting at - finally, straying on-topic - is that no amount of Groove, or P2P, or database crosschecking, or FBI wiretapping cable modems and DSL connections, is going to find the Secret Terrorism Plans. People coordinated enough to simultaneously take control of three airliners are not going to be sending around "Secret Terrorism Plans.doc" via email.
IMO, Groove won't do any more to fight $BOGEYMAN than CAPPS or CAPPS II. It's just going to make it easier for "the man" to inconvenience the people who aren't doing anything wrong.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
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.