FTC To Take a Second Look at P2P

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."

Comments

I may not be a bureaucrat ...

[Arabani]

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?

Re:I may not be a bureaucrat ...

[MoonFog]

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.

Re:I may not be a bureaucrat ...

[speaker of the truth]

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

Why is P2P always to blame?

[MoonFog]

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.

Re:Why is P2P always to blame?

[iminplaya]

It's about changing the internet from its present P2P nature where anybody can run a server into centrally controlled repository of "authorized" servers where uploading, like present day broadcasting, will require a license. Chances are the public will fall for it and go along. And the ISPs are already doing their part by restricting upload speeds and volume.

Your honor...

[Romicron]

Financial information is more important data. All those numbers take up lots of tube space. Soon we'll have all those tubes clogged up with dollars and cents* unless we can cut off the P2P box from trying to get this data! *Dollars and cents are number figures, not actual coins. Please don't go digging around and cutting open the tubes for money.

Re:Just wonderful.

[Technician]

Now, instead of RIAA, I have to worry about the Secret Service and the NSA when I'm browsing pirate bay looking for some mus

Your search for muscle building is probably not going to raise any eyebrows. The fact you are sharing your entire My Documents folder with your Turbo Tax records is of a bigger concern. Go to any P-P site and do a search for common applications extensions. .doc, .xls, .ppt, are just the tip of the iceberg. Try searching for .pwl.. enjoy.

Many people just don't get the fact they shouldn't use their home directory as a place to download their goodies. It is what they share without even knowing is what is dangerous.

Here is a WSJ article detailing the problem..
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118134946950829716-QWDmBwH_qAgisaepbCCMoT_4cPA_20070710.html?mod=fpa_editors_picks
Compuerworld article;
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9012961
and an article regarding an ID theft and arrest
http://www.smh.com.au/news/security/man-used-filesharing-program-to-steal-data-money/2007/09/07/1188783469524.html

They are not interested in your searches for marginal photos. They are interested in the security leaks.

So just where are you pointing your downloads? Just what are you making available?

I have to ask this...

[Storlek]

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.

p2p is too democratic, a danger to the US

[br00tus]

I've done various work with p2p for a while, including writing my own Gnutella application. Peer to peer technology is much too democratic and egalitarian to be allowed free reign. For example, currently if I wanted to publish a 30 minute video online, I would have to pay a lot of money to host it. Nowadays, I could send it to sites like Youtube if I was willing to accept it being surrounded by advertising (or possibly banned if running afoul of their rules). With peer-to-peer, anyone can publish, and if it's popular enough, the "cost" is really paid for by the consumer. For a society like the US, with most of the media in the hands of a few conglomerates, this is far too much freedom and equality, and I knew it was just a matter of time before they attempted to get their claws on peer-to-peer, at the behest of those conglomerates.

Last year Javed Iqbal, a satellite installer, was thrown in jail. His crime? He allowed people in the US to watch Al-Manar, the television station of Hezbollah. Of course Hezbollah is legally considered to be a terrorist group - if you're a country that is or formerly was a British colony. Or, for some reason, Holland. Outside of Holland and current/former British Dominions, the rest of the world considers Hezbollah to be what it is, a representative of Palestinians pushed into southern Lebanon by the Israelis from 1948 on. But anyhow, the US and UK are at odds with the rest of the world on this as so often they are, Iqbal was thrown in the slammer, and nary a word is heard about it or the supposed First Amendment. Meanwhile, narcissistic attention-seekers like Salman Rushdie are feted and praised year after year. In fact, this is done by the same corporate media propaganda machine which is working to dismantle things like peer-to-peer, all the while of course never reporting on what they are in fact doing, or about many things that are going on in the country of interest but that we'll never know about.

Chasing the wrong goat

[Camael]

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?