FTC To Take a Second Look at P2P 132
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."
Just wonderful. (Score:4, Funny)
*bright flash of concussion grenade*
$#(FRe2%DEK#NO CARRIER
Re:Just wonderful. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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 [wsj.com]
Compuerworld article;
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9012961 [computerworld.com]
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 [smh.com.au]
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?
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Anyone that stupid should not be using the internet.
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True, but they do. As an example of a large collection of these people, visit My Space.
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Maybe you missed out on the 90s, so I'll recap it in three letters for you:
AOL
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1. Download and install LimeWire
2. Search for desired artist/song.
3. Download songs that others are sharing.
New method for getting free music via the internet:
1. Download and install LimeWire
2. Search for Quicken and TurboTax files that others are sharing.
3. Transfer their assets to bank account in Cayman Islands.
4. Use money in said account to buy CDs.
Just one extra step, and no angry settlement letters from the RIAA!
Re:Just wonderful. (Score:4, Interesting)
IMHO the P2P developer groups are going to have to get off their butts right fast and do some kind of patch to fix this hole, Such as an auto folder creation, or major pop warnings or something, or they are going to find themselves legislated out of existence.
And I do mean really really fast. There is a major attitude about foreign military and industrial espionage. This is the kind of legislation that has legs. It's got both fear and money on it.
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There is a major attitude about foreign military and industrial espionage. This is the kind of legislation that has legs. It's got both fear and money on it."
Yup...if copyright won't get rid of P2P or other potentially corporate threatening technology, lets use the good old standby of 'national security'.
I
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Off hand I would ignorantly guess that it at least needs to be made clear that anyone who manages to get their stuff shared unintentionally is a giant idiot. Traditional liability requires a gate lock equivelant, which in this case would be a default setting that did not allow main directory sharing, with a wa
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Why would I care about a Windows 95/98 password file? You can have full access to either OS without it.
Re:My Bad (Score:2)
My bad. I used torrents as just an example of P-P. The article was more specific mentioning Limewire.
Clip from the artice....
"Gregory Thomas Kopiloff primarily used Limewire's file-sharing program to troll other people's computers for financial information, which he used to o
I may not be a bureaucrat ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I may not be a bureaucrat ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to be too fucking obvious, here.
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Not to be too fucking obvious, here.
How about using deductive reasoning instead of putting the finger in the dike?
I mean, its already illegal to share illegal stuff illegally. Why focus on p2p? This kind of information could be spread via email, snail mail, http, ftp, newsgroups, pencil and paper, smoke signals, telephone, telegraph, stenography, steganography, etc, etc, etc.
I can't
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Re:I may not be a bureaucrat ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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What is this "My Documents" folder you speak of......I have no such folder on my systems...
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Re:I may not be a bureaucrat ... (Score:4, Funny)
Remember to file the acceptance forms or risk a lengthy repeat of this entire process!
Stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp
Re:I may not be a bureaucrat ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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The argument they are using is pure hockus. They say P2P is an issue because a number of the searches are for private and confidential information. This sort of argument can also be applied to search engines such as Google or anything else on the internet. There is also a big difference between s
Supportive idea (Score:2)
Blanket bans are difficult to enforce. Such early warning will instead shrink the window of opportunity for the adversaries.
Could be even sold as a commercial
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If government employees have really become that blindingly stupid just remove all of the obvious lawyer mandated warning labels from everything in government offices and let Darwin take it's course. Think of the money we'll save on pensions and paychecks!
More seriously, if an office that handles sensitive documents can't be staffed with people who will exercise rasonable care, it's an HR problem, not a p2p problem. Take away p2p and the only leaks left will be leaving folders in the restaurant, trading pa
Encryption (Score:2)
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Why is P2P always to blame? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
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You could go a step further and conceive a world in which not only servers, but even things we take for granted, such as a hard drive or DVD-R disc, would be regulated. Admittedly, this is a highly extreme case, but considering there's already a trend toward making web applications for everything, it wouldn't be too difficult to convince the less technically apt people that they don't need a "real" computer
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Licensing a car, I can see. You're driving it on the road and could possibly run over somebody, so it's in the public interest you have some minimal level of skill to drive it, say, eyesight. But licensing a tv, radio, or computer? How many times they want you to pay for it?
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Mike said, "First thing you need is Social Security and driver's license."
Gordon looked puzzled. "Driver license? For what, mass driver? Disk drive?"
http://www.baen.com/library/067172052X/067172052X.htm [baen.com]
I'd go further than that... (Score:3, Interesting)
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Many people simply don't read the manual. They go "Oh, goody, freebies" and point the software at their My Documents folder. Later they wonder why someone else is using their credit card info. Have you ever saved a confirmation screenshot for an online purchase? Does it include your shipping info, full name and credit card details? This oops in security is the focus of the article.
The I di
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Why is P2P always to blame? Answer: (Score:3, Interesting)
How could a legislative committee discover, discuss and decide to take action on a problem like this before the leading edge of the community, which is to say here, has even heard about it? Remember these guys don't even type themselves, they have people to do that. That intertube guy genuinely thought he was being insightful at the time.
There may be other evidence. Where an when did these
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How is this even remotely related to any P2P protocol?
That's what I came in here to say. It's not about P2P protocols. If you share your home directory with P2P apps, yeah, it's a security problem-- but then again it's a security problem if you set up an FTP server and give access to your home directory without a password. It's not about the protocol.
However, the article seems to indicate that what they're talking about is not regulating the protocol, but regulating the software vendors who sell P2P a
How convenient... (Score:4, Funny)
How much pr0n does the government have laying around, and why isn't it on Limewire yet?????????
Re:How convenient... Maybe it is... (Score:2)
How much pr0n does the government have laying around, and why isn't it on Limewire yet?????????
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Great! (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's dangerous because file sharing applications (what they really mean) generally cause people to make information available that they didn't mean to. People don't think, and just share as much as they can for whatever reason they have.
Just how fucking stupid do you have to be to upload your entire My Documents contents? I was using p2p apps when I was a kid (the only time I ever used them) and I still didn't manage to accidentally upload stuff. Oh wait, I forgot, these are government employees. Nevermind.
Your honor... (Score:4, Funny)
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they know better than this surely (Score:2)
It's definitely financial information... (Score:1)
A surprising number of searches? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Most P-P stuff is copyright violations of photos (porn) movies (Hollywood & Porn) and sound (RIAA stuff which is mostly audio soft porn and cursing with parental advisory stull the parents won't let the kids buy) Most P-P stuff does not involve theft (unless you ask **AA who will tell you copyright violations is theft) and when ID is stol
What is P2P? (Score:3, Insightful)
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I have to ask this... (Score:5, Insightful)
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(Full disclosure warranted, I do have a clearance, and knowing about this kind of stuff is a part of my job.)
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You'd think people would know better. Unfortunately...
I've seen exactly the situation this article talks about, on a military computer. Luckily the only thing shared was pamphlets about military health benefits.
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It's even worse when you've got an outbound mail filter that then trips over it and blocks it. It's a lower case "confidential" in the art
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For the field. Not every place gov't workers with clearance go to has a connection to their seperate networks.
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p2p is too democratic, a danger to the US (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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If so, are there any vacancies?
I call strawman (Score:2)
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I'll take the bait. Once a group has been classified as a terror group, due to active hostile activities, they get the treatment warranted by that classification, regardless of any other activities they may want to pursue. If Hezbollah wants to be a political group that gets respect by other political entities, they need to act as one and stop funding violence, stop passing out munitions to their members.
If their goals were to raise up their people and gain them the respect from the world they deserve, they
Not violence (Score:2)
Jeez. If only the US would do that.
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The US and allies should have pre-negotiated various agr
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Chasing the wrong goat (Score:4, Insightful)
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Rep Dumbass(RIAA-R): Hey, Bogknock, check this bill out. It's for "Banning All P2P For Any Reason Totalitarian". Heh, I love the acronym, a real work of the Congressional art there. Do you know what a P2P is?
Rep Bogknock(Tobacco-R): *blushes* Er, no, but I sure don't like the sound of it!
Dumbass: So, it's fair to say that banning it wouldn't inconvenience you or anyone you care about?
Bogknock: Nope, not a bit.
Dumbass: Me neither, so who the hell cares? Ban it!
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other methods of communication like email, msn, icq, snail mail etc. are also potentially capable of leaking national secrets.
I agree completely, and I think its high time we limit government bureaucrats' access to these potentially damaging technologies. To this end, we should isolate them in in a sealed room without any outside access. Futhermore, since communication is possible via sound waves that travel across air, we should take the precaution of pumping all the air out of these rooms, thus ensuring our national secrets are inviolably safe.
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So why is the committee going after the medium (p2p) instead of the users leaking the secrets?
If you re-read the quote you just quoted, you'll see that they're largely (or at least partially) concerned with normal citizens having their information leaked inadvertently, and therefore exposing themselves to identity theft. The article says that, because of this, they are discussing some regulation of P2P software vendors to ensure that each vendor makes it clear what is being shared in their P2P applicatio
Also ban HTTP, email and touch-tone, pls. (Score:2)
Looks like the "X is bad, X ON TEH INTERNETS is worse!11!!" meme is mutating into "X ON P2P is worserer!11!!"
The protocol, not the application usage? (Score:2)
Well, e-mail has proven to be a pretty bad thing too. With e-mail, many things that shouldn't have leaked out to the public has.
I think things have even leaked out via HTTP.
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Remote Access (Score:2)
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AFAIK, with windows, the user has to specifically request a help session. If you want to be able to connect remotely to a windows box without the request, you've got to check the box enabling RDP (the Remote Desktop Protocol).
The mac has all remote services turned off by default except for Bonjour (automatic service d
Is it going to ban P2P video games too? (Score:2)
That's a mighty big phonebook (Score:2)
ok, it is surely a problem, but why the USPTO? (Score:2)
They should rather care about fixing their patent approval process.
How you use the data... (Score:2)
I think more frightening is how one can use the data, once it's "discovered" on a P2P network.
Imagine if there were a company with a collection of what people are searching for, generally, plus patent-specific searches. [google.com] And imagine that company, while professing that they will do no evil, notices that there's a whole lot of patent searches coming from a certain domain or IP-address (say a competitor like Microsoft) for some technology key words.
Wh
Will somebody please (Score:2)
On a slightly related and marginally entertaining note, in 2002 I lashed together an experimental poem made up of nothing but bits of personal data people were sharing over Kazaa. It's still available near the bottom of this lovable old zine issue. [phonelosers.net]
ARGH. (Score:2)
From now on, nobody is allowed to communicate with anybody except for specially designated "servers". These "servers" must relay all messages from one person to another, vetting the communication to make sure there is nothing illegal, immoral, obscene, libelous, traitorous, unpatriotic, or just plain questionable about it.
It's for our own safety, dammit.
"...a surprisingly number of searches..." (Score:2)
Just another angle... (Score:2)
I am suspicious of this; it seems to me like part of the this ongoing decentralized campaign: "The Internet is a DANGEROUS place." (Dangerous for children; dangerous for you and your banking/personal information, dangerous to the entertainment conglomerates)..
I have seen over the past few years; which has especially intensified l
Let's solve the REAL problem (Score:2)
The problem is that the Government can't get their shit together enough to enforce a security policy that won't let those users do this kind of thing.
If P2P is illegal. . . (Score:2)
This is the old cart and horse problem their going after and should serve as some heavy food for thought for any of those that don't understand the importance of privacy and fall back onto the "if you don't have anything to hide" tripe.
If P2P is illegal, only criminals will use P2P. The line between criminal and law abiding citizen is only a congress away.
I think a little Thoreaux quote is rather apropos:
Took them long enough (Score:2)
Stupidity (Score:2)
I have an idea, how about we get rid of the credit reporting system. Each person is given credit based on there references and the history they provide. This way we remove the incentive for identity theft.
FTC to take a look at TCP/IP, HTTP and SIP (Score:2)
The REAL plea to end p2p (Score:2)
(Bah... if only I could embed a .wav file into my /. post at least attach one...)
So... (Score:2)
Yea like letting lose with SS Information... (Score:2)
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Just because the Nazis used something doesn't mean its evil.