White House Decides P2P Isn't All Bad?

ethericalzen writes "An article this week at Cnet revealed that the White House doesn't necessarily hate everything about P2P. The Bush Administration apparently has called into question a law, known as the Federal Agency Data Protection Act, that would force all federal agencies to have plans guarding against the risks of P2P file sharing. In a Congressional hearing on IT security threats, the LimeWire founder was questioned about how his service warned users about the files and folders they are sharing. Karen Evans, the chief information officer for the federal government, stated that she was against singling out a particular technology when issuing computer security requirements. As it is the government already has a law which requires federal agencies to report on information security plans and risk assessments known as FISMA."

Not the "stance" of the Bush administration.

[Anonymous Coward]

This was an off-the-cuff remark made by an individual who is loosely associated with the Bush administration. It is clearly not the stance of the administration, nor of the Republican Party as a whole.

Re:Not the "stance" of the Bush administration.

[Guinness2702]

To be fair, you are quite correct.

FTA: Karen Evans, the federal government's chief information officer, told a House information policy subcommittee ... "While we recognize that technologies that are improperly implemented introduce increased risk, we recommend any potential changes to the statute be technology-neutral,"

Which kinda shoots down my earlier cynical FUD suggestion....in fact everything I've said sofar. I hang my head in shame at missing the key point of the article, and I shall go and start writing for the Daily Mail [wikipedia.org], where I belong.

Don't Blame Technology

[ilikepi314]

My favorite part was this:

The most scathing criticism came from Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), who launched into a lengthy monologue in which he deemed Gorton "one of the most naive chairmen and CEOs I've ever run across," and accused his company of making the "skeleton keys" that grant access to material harmful to U.S. national security.

"I'd feel more than a shade of guilt at this point, having made the laptop a dangerous weapon against the security of the United States," Cooper said. "Mr. Gorton, you seem to lack imagination about how your product can be deliberately misused by evildoers against this country." (Cooper also, at one point, claimed that Gorton's own home computer was probably leaking sensitive documents.)

This is exactly the problem, not enough people understand technology... or really common sense. Limewire is not some default protocol available on any computer, it must be installed. It shouldn't be on any computer with sensitive information in the first place. Limewire didn't force it on those computers, so leave them alone, go after the idiots that installed it!! Of course, that would probably be themselves, and they're not going to put themselves in jail. And as far as deliberate misuse goes, I say we call in all baseball bat makers while we're at it; don't they realize how many felons they've aided by providing a product that can be used to assault people?

This reminds me of a classmate of mine that got a letter saying her information was possibly exposed to the internet through a website run by her high school. All I could think of was: "Why in the world was ANYONE's sensitive information anywhere near a computer with an apache server?".