Copyright Law

Congressman Proposes Banning P2P from Govt PCs

By soulxtc

It’s about time, but also plans to force the file-sharing software industry to introduce “greater safeguards,” calling it “predator-to-prey” instead of peer-to-peer.

Lawmakers in our nation’s capital have been trotting out LimeWire’s CEO for years now as it rehashes the same tired discussion about how to prevent the leak of sensitive and confidential information on govt and private PCs.

This past March sensitive information about President Obama’s Marine One helicopter, including ?entire blueprints, engineering upgrades, avionic schematics’, was found, and just a few months later private info about Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer was also discovered. A recent study also discovered that countries like Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia actively scour P2P networks for classified information

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee reopened an investigation into LimeWire this past April and demanded to know what it was doing to address the problem, and it subsequently released a new version, LimeWire 5.0, which by default, does not share documents even if a user purposely attempts to do so.

It was apparently not enough for lawmakers and so a new round of hearings was conducted.

“From what we heard today, it is clear that private citizens, businesses, and the government continue to be victims of unintentional and illicit file sharing,” said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Edolphus Towns. “At its best, with the proper safeguards in place, peer-to-peer software has great potential. At its worst, it isn?t peer-to-peer; it?s predator-to-prey.”

Guess he hasn’t heard that LimeWire 5.0 doesn’t allow default file-sharing, even though LimeWire CEO Mark Gorton reminded him of the fact in his written testimony.

He writes:

• LimeWire 5 does not share any Documents by default. In order for a LimeWire user to change their default settings to enable Document sharing, they have to click nine times and disregard three warnings.
• A LimeWire 5.2.8 use cannot share or even place into the LimeWire Library their ?My Documents? folder,?Documents and Settings? folder, ?Desktop? folder, or ?C? drive no matter what. And this setting cannot be changed.
• If a user shares the contents of a folder, LimeWire 5.2.8 will not share the Documents in that folder even if the default settings have been changed to allow Document sharing.
• In LimeWire 5 there are no ?shared? folders, meaning that if a user elects to share a folder they are only electing to share the contents of that folder at that particular time, nothing will be shared that a user adds to that folder at a later point in time. All LimeWire versions 5 and above automatically un?share Documents that a user may have shared using an earlier version of LimeWire 4.

So it would seem Rep Towns is a victim of a lack of knowledge about P2P. LimeWire has already addressed the problem, but it can’t physically go door to door and demand that people update their versions of the program.

The real problem, which has been glossed over in the past, is the fact the govt employees are being careless enough to put P2P programs on govt PCs or home PCs that also contain sensitive govt data! The outrage has always been shockingly absent in the discussion.

Until now.

“For our sensitive government information, the risk is simply too great to ignore,” Rep Towns continues. “I am planning to introduce a bill to ban this type of insecure, open network, peer-to-peer software software from all government and contractor computers and networks.”

Finally some common sense. Rather than blame a third party for its own failings at least one lawmaker has realized that they have no business being installed on govt PCs in the first place.

However, Rep Towns doesn’t want to stop there. He feels that P2P programs need some sort of regulation, that they need some sort of regulation if they won’t protect users on their own.

“I plan to meet with the new Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission to request that the FTC investigate whether inadequate safeguards on file sharing software such as LimeWire constitute an unfair trade practice,” he says. “The file-sharing software industry has shown it is unwilling or unable to ensure user safety. It?s time to put a referee on the field.”

Again, it’s though LimeWire is speaking to deaf ears.

Rep Towns, a Democrat, even took a pot shot at the Bush Administration, insinuating that it took a sinister hands off approach when it comes to P2P even though Republicans are hardly advocates of the free flow of copyrighted material.

“In the last administration, the Federal Trade Commission took a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil approach to the file sharing software industry,” he told Reuters. “I hope the new administration is revisiting that approach.”

Gorton suggests that some of the lawmakers he testified before at the hearting, though not specifically naming Rep Towns, didn’t come to the hearing with an open mind, that entertainment industry campaign donations may have blurred their vision.

A peek at his reported lifetime campaign contributions places “TV/Movies/Music” at $370,361 USD so certainly they have his ear from time to time. Nowhere on the list the a file-sharing or technology related industry.

“To some extent I think many of them are also not familiar with the technical details of file sharing and don’t understand the difference between a search using LimeWire and finding a file that is served by a completely different program,” he told ComputerWorld. “It is a distinction that is very important in terms of understanding the security issues. But I think most of them did not come there to learn. Most of them came there to be angry at me without taking the time to understand the facts.”

I had to install Limewire 5.2 recently (gasp right?) and it was anything but easy to share files or folders on my PC. Everything was a very deliberate manual add and at no time did it share anything by default.

In short, the real problem lies with the user. LimeWire users, or any other P2P program for that matter, need to know what their installing on their PCs and how it affects it, especially those who handle important govt data.

Too bad he won’t propose a law mandating common sense.

I’ll certainly send a few dollars in campaign contributions for such a cause.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on August 04, 2009 (boomark / email).