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FTC To Take a Second Look at P2P

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the any-excuse-to-cause-trouble dept.

BlueMerle writes to mention that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has asked the FTC to take another look into the world of peer-to-peer file sharing. This time around however the inquiry has nothing to do with copyright. "But a USPTO report earlier this year stirred up the issue again by claiming that P2P installs could adversely affect national security when they made confidential government information available. This has already happened several times, as the Oversight Committee learned in July when it held hearings on the USPTO report and its findings. At that hearing, representatives were also shown real-time P2P search data. While most of the searches were for porn, movies, and music, the committee noted a surprisingly number of searches for private financial information."

6 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. I may not be a bureaucrat ... by Arabani · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But wouldn't the real solution be to train government employees in the arcane art of not installing P2P applications on government computers in the first place? Or does that just make too much sense to be effective?

    1. Re:I may not be a bureaucrat ... by MoonFog · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And teach them that, even at home, sharing the entire "My Documents" folder when you keep your private and work related stuff there is a bad idea. I mean, most P2P programs I know of don't just make your entire harddrive available, you actually have to put these documents up for grabs.

    2. Re:I may not be a bureaucrat ... by speaker+of+the+truth · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You think you're joking but how is needing a permit to protest much different?

      --
      Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
  2. Why is P2P always to blame? by MoonFog · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But a USPTO report earlier this year stirred up the issue again by claiming that P2P installs could adversely affect national security when they made confidential government information available.

    How is this even remotely related to any P2P protocol? That's an issue no matter what protocol used. Hell, in Norway there have been lots of screaming because some soldiers have put information and pictures that were confidential in one way or the other up on Facebook. Making confidential information available is a breach of security no matter what protocol you use to distribute it. Perhaps things get distributed more with P2P, but you still have to look for information and download before (while) you distribute it yourself.

  3. I have to ask this... by Storlek · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why are classified documents even on a computer that's connected to the internet in the first place? The government has their own separate networks for that stuff.

    --
    Bears don't normally eat things that talk and move backwards.
  4. Chasing the wrong goat by Camael · · Score: 4, Insightful
    From the original article:

    The committee has a bee in its collective bonnet about the issue of data security, and believes that P2P users across the country are inadvertently leaking private information and financial records into the tubes. Such information could be used for identity theft (and also has national security implications in some cases), and the Oversight Committee wants the FTC to do something. So why is the committee going after the medium (p2p) instead of the users leaking the secrets? Going by their logic, other methods of communication like email, msn, icq, snail mail etc. are also potentially capable of leaking national secrets. Isn't it simpler, cheaper and more importantly, less inconvenient to the general public to just issue a directive to all government officials not to use any p2p at their work computers or at all?