P2P Network Exposes Obama's Safehouse Location

Lucas123 writes "The location of the safe house used in times of emergency for the First Family was leaked on a LimeWire file-sharing network recently, a fact revealed today to members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Along with the safe house location, the LimeWire networks also disclosed presidential motorcade routes, as well as sensitive but unclassified document that listed details on every nuclear facility in the country. Now lawmakers are considering a bill to ban P2P use on government, contractor networks."

Comments

Wow

[GofG]

If it had been leaked by uploading it to a server, would they ban the ftp protocol?

ban the man

[OrangeTide]

We must ban everything that we don't understand until we can feel safe again.

Re:ban the man

[dirtyhippie]

Congress's reaction is predictable and hilarious, but to be fair, they are only talking about banning P2P use on government computers. I don't have a problem with that. If you are working on government contracts, you should probably have a seperate computer from where you keep your music, porn, etc.

Re:ban the man

[NotBornYesterday]

You say this as a joke, but that's what members of congress are actually talking about. FTFA:

Towns [House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Rep. Edolphus Towns, (D-N.Y.)] said that the file-sharing industry's promises to self-regulate itself had clearly failed. "Specific examples of recent LimeWire leaks range from appalling to shocking," Towns said. "As far as I am concerned, the days of self-regulation should be over for the file-sharing industry."

Saying "the days of self-regulation should be over" is congresscritterspeak for "we're about to regulate another industry", which in this case would be a) bad, b) useless, and c) undeserved. Bad because it would stymie technical development in the US, and useless because said development would then simply take place elsewhere in the world. Undeserved, because Limewire did not attempt to spread US government secrets. Their software was simply the mechanism by which some idiot (presumably a government-employed idiot, but that would be redundant) knowingly or unknowingly loosed this material into the wild.

Other members want the issue investigated by the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission and law enforcement authorities. They said that the continued failure by companies such as LimeWire to take more proactive steps to stop inadvertent file-sharing is tantamount to enabling illegal activity resulting from the data leaks.

And how do they propose that Limewire prevent sharers from sharing government secrets? By sending someone to each Limewire installation to make sure the luser configured it correctly? To the power-grabbing, meglomaniacal nanny state committee-rats in congress, here's an idea: clean your own house first. Clamp down on those with the poor judgment to run p2p sharing apps on systems that have sensitive data. Is there a rule against it? No? Make one. Yes? Enforce it. Hell, ban p2p on all govt systems, sensitive or not, and enforce it like the matter of national security it is.

Re:ban the man

[BobMcD]

To the power-grabbing, meglomaniacal nanny state committee-rats in congress, here's an idea: clean your own house first.

You're completely discounting the possibility that this data was planted on LimeWire by the government expressly in order to give them this exact leverage.

Those files could be completely false, for all we know.

People that take action based on this allegation alone are dumb, dumb, dumb.

Re:ban the man

[hairyfeet]

Exactly. As long as this doesn't turn into a "P2P is bad, we must ban it from the internet tubes" kind of deal I have NO problem with the government madating what can and can't be on your work machine if they are paying your check. This is just common sense, just as no admin with a brain would allow someone to run Kazaa or Limewire on the corporate Intranet. But placing rules (along with penalties) for using an unauthorized application when dealing with high level clearance materials just seems like basic security.

They probably are simply dealing with laws written before the Internet and therefor have no rules against it. And with the government rules and procedures are king.

Re:ban the man

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a defense contractor. We have sensitive government data on our networks because of the nature of the work we do, and the only thing we're allowed to do to the internet is make http and https connections through a heavily firewalled and restrictive proxy, so that not only we can't leak stuff out on purpose with filesharing software, but so that commercial software can't phone home and give away something it shouldn't even by accident. Not to mentioned that we sign an NDA when we hire on that explicitly says we (individual employees) will not leak stuff out or through carelessness allow stuff to be leaked out. In my opinion whoever leaked this stuff out onto limewire probably broke several federal laws already on the books and might be looking at jail time.

Re:ban the man

[T Murphy]

some idiot (presumably a government-employed idiot, but that would be redundant)

As an idiot, I take offense at the notion that I am on the same level as a government employee!

Re:ban the man

[Beardo the Bearded]

I work with military ... stuff. When we have a classified or higher document, it doesn't go on our normal computers, like the one I'm using now. It goes on The Secret Computer, which is in its own room, on no networks, and it requires a key, a passcard, and supervision. Things like USB are locked out. It's a secure station. You can't hack it because there's no access to the device. Social Engineering won't work that well because you've got to be vetted every 5 years to maintain your access. Plus, we're all psychologically tested, have credit checks, and are generally very well looked after.

That is for that rare slice of documentation that is classified and is allowed on a computer. It's a nightmare to get a copy of a classified document -- do you think they would allow you to just hit "print" and get a second (or hundredth) copy? These files are very often (and yes, it's 2009) paper only, sent via special channels. You don't just email Secret documents off to whomever has a .mil email address. Generic workstation + classified document = security violation = jail.

Now, the WHOLE ARTICLE IS BULLSHIT

IT IS A PRESS RELEASE BY A COMPANY THAT STANDS TO MAKE MONEY FROM A MONITORING CONTRACT

Things like the nuclear document are just bullshit. If it's sensitive, it's Classified. If it's not sensitive, it's not. The End. If it was sensitive and improperly declassified, then that's a Monumental Fuckup. You can't say "oh noes nukelar secrets on lemonwire! give us teh monitoring contract!" What are the details, mailing addresses?

(Note for the pedantic: I'm using "Classified" as an umbrella term for anything that requires a security clearance because I didn't feel like typing out the various levels of document classification over and over again.)

Re:ban the man

[Bovius]

People that take action based on this allegation alone are afraid.

Fixed that for you. The USA's policies these days are driven primary by blind, largely irrational fear. Although I suppose that could be transliterated into stupidity.

The sad truth is that we have plenty of incompetent people to perform these kinds of blunders without the need for shadow organizations to orchestrate them. Anyone in the government with a will to exact more control over the public has their arms more than full of these kinds of stories.

Encryption?

[sexybomber]

If the leaked data was so sensitive, shouldn't it have been encrypted, or at the very, very least, password-protected? That seems like a no-brainer.

Information wants to be free

[davidwr]

Information wants to be free.

Especially high-value information.

Re:Not this again...

[gnick]

Still, unless there's some strange and compelling business need, no big business should be allowing employees to run Limewire at work IMO. Especially on government machines with sensitive information. Some P2P may be useful for business purposes. But Limewire?

And?

[Vinegar Joe]

Biden has already told the press the secret location of the VP's emergency bunker.

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2009/05/15/shining-light-on-cheney-s-hideaway.aspx

Not just those in the goverment are stupid...

[sherpajohn]

I heard a "security focal" in a large helpdesk group once tell us that mp3 files were "illegal" and anyone caught with them would be charged and fired.

Re:Not this again...

[MozeeToby]

The issue isn't the P2P per say, it's the fact that many P2P programs make it easy to accidentally mark files for uploading that you don't mean to. A lazy/stupid/uninformed user stands a decent chance of sharing information without even realizing it, I remember trying to explain that to someone in my family way back when Napster was big, that they were sharing all of their documents out over the network because that is where they happened to store their downloaded files and they had marked the folder as one to share, not realizing that it would share files other than those they had downloaded.

Any program that can upload user documents without the user having knowledge of it shouldn't be used on any kind of sensitive system. In my mind, bit torrent is relatively safe from this, since it requires the user to create a torrent and make it available, not the kind of thing that is going to happen accidentally.

BAN VERBAL COMMUNICATION!

[popsensation]

Lets ban all means in which people communicate, or at least have the government moderate it. MUAHHAHAHAH

Come on Obama...

[Maltheus]

...surely you've got the cash to just buy the tunes.

Lights, Cameras, Lies

[JackSpratts]

they could have fabricated similar testimony 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 year ago (you pick). oh wait, they did. meanwhile harddrives, laptops and usb drives keep wandering away with impunity & multi gigabytes of really sensitive data. god forbid you encrypt. much easier blame p2p on the house floor in front of the bright lights of the very media cartels who create this artificial drama.

baby and bath water

[zogger]

Some leaks are good though, and necessary for maintenance of a free Republic. They are last ditch efforts by someone who is aware of "clear and present danger" when all else has failed to affect honesty and following the law in whatever bailiwick this person is working in, and usually the leakers are anything but traitors, they can be overwhelming patriots helping to expose the real bad guys and bad stuff. They can help expose government lies and corruption, when the official channels (all the way to *the very top*) are themselves completely corrupt, making any other effort doomed to failure.

    Here's a prime example. This leak was a *really big deal* for my boomer generation and certainly did some good, long range/historically speaking.