US Congress To Use Skype For Video Teleconference 96
dkd903 writes "The US House of Representatives Committee on Administration has announced that Skype will be made available to the Members of Congress and their staff to improve efficiency and cut down on time spent traveling."
"Made available?" (Score:2)
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It was previously unavailable on the Federal Internet. It's a need-to-know basis kind of thing.
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The congressional internet is not the federal internet.
The real deal here is that now Skype is owned by a company that can install all the backdoors that the Feds have wanted over the years.
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exactly.
skype was properly protected from prying government eyes. MS will open the flood gates, and in return get more uptake from the government sectors.
Corporates with anything to hid will run back to blackberries
g
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skype was properly protected from prying government eyes.
[Citation--- you know the rest.]
Surely there's some Open Source tool they could use? Of course SIP and strong encryption are easy to put together, the real benefit of Skype is the phonebook service mapping names to their Internet locations. All other OSS video solutions I'm aware of require knowing an IP addy/domain name/URL for your destination.
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Anthony Weiner is up for it!
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Anthony's Weiner is up for it!
FTFY
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FTA:
Members and staff can now use popular video teleconferencing services within the House network to communicate with constituents.
Skype says that their engineers have worked with the Congressional network security team to ensure the security of the communication channel.
I would assume they have a very strict IT policy, with every single network app needing pre-approval. At least, that's what I'd require, and lock incoming and outgoing ports down to the bare minimum with the heaviest security and packet filtering and require only encrypted channels. I think the concern here was verifying encryption... and they had to wait for Weiner to resign since I'm sure they have a "no weiners on Skype" policy.
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The following policy announcement is still in effect (since early 2006) at a federal work site I am closely aligned with. It's not one of the traditional three letter agencies hyper concerned with security. Acronyms have been replaced for non-bureaucrat readability.
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Congress is not a Federal Agency. They do pretty much what they want.
Seems odd (Score:3, Insightful)
But I guess now that Microsoft owns it, doesn't sound too surprising
Re:Seems odd (Score:5, Interesting)
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Amen! But .. (Score:2)
I'd imagine they selected Skype over some well managed SIP implementation that archives all their phone call specifically because Skype isn't nearly so practical to archive.
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Especially since they applied for a patent for listening in on online conversations...
Name one enterprise-grade VoIP client and service that doesn't give your employer the ability to listen in on calls.
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I'm sure Microsoft paid good money to become the official videoconferencing system of the US Congress.
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Bunch of smarties, those guys. (Score:2, Insightful)
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But hey, if you look at Microsoft's LIS draft [conceivablytech.com], you'll see that there is nothing to worry about, and/or nothing a Congress member will worry about, or understand.
(And just to quote TFA from yesterday: "A request for clarification we sent to Microsoft has remained unanswered so far.")
Just curious... (Score:3, Insightful)
I ask this because i admit that my initial response was "oh look, the government is buying into the Microsoft monoculture once again" before i stopped myself and realized that wasn't very fair.
Re:Just curious... (Score:4, Insightful)
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My first thought on yours is: "Who would want to spend all their time on a plane using Skype?" Then I saw your sig, and got puzzled.
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Great countries were not made of people complaining.
Just look at the countries where people complaining had been promptly executed. Those were the greatest countries! For the executioners, at least.
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"Great countries were not made of people complaining."
See: The Declaration of Independence for a list of complaints that resulted in the American Revolution.
Are you Michelle Bachmann, by any chance?
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Case in point, the US is not a great country. It's a country where it's obsession with taxes is leading to deteriorating infrastructure and no collective will to pay for fixing any of it. Civilizations that don't maintain their infrastructure generally collapse. The US had it's brief moments in the sun, but realistically it was an ascendant superpower from say 1900 to 2005. It's already in decline.
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Same here. I'm always reminded of an old IBM commercial(?) which featured this businessman in his office where some tech was installing a new video conferencing system and explaining how great it was and how it was going to save the company lots of money because they wouldn't have to pay for this guy to travel all over the place. Meanwhile, he's looking at the pictures on his wall of all of his trips around the world and obviously thinking, "This sucks."
Trust me: There will still be "fact-finding" trips
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Wellll my problem isnt that ms owns skype now, but rather that they just introduced the patent to evesdrop on skype calls. I prefer my elective representatives use stronger security but hey what do i know?
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Wellll my problem isnt that ms owns skype now, but rather that they just introduced the patent to evesdrop on skype calls. I prefer my elective representatives use stronger security but hey what do i know?
Yes, what do you know? The patent was filed 2 years ago. That article was just someone with too much time connecting tangentially related dots and drawing wild conclusions.
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Wellll my problem isnt that ms owns skype now, but rather that they just introduced the patent to evesdrop on skype calls. I prefer my elective representatives use stronger security but hey what do i know?
Isn't that the opposite of transparency?
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Transparent to whom? The people or blackmailers?
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Who are the blackmailers? Do you mean another gov't agency, or do you mean the mob or something...?
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Whoever intercepts the phone calls, and decides which calls to put on wikileaks and which to hide.
If you want to make their phone calls readable, you have to have a mechanism where they're ALL published in the open, and not merely readable by whoever can hack an Autonomous System carrying their call.
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Whoever intercepts the phone calls, and decides which calls to put on wikileaks and which to hide.
Wouldn't that discourage a bunch of bad behaviour?
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Complain? I just find it funny that yesterday there's a story about Microsoft patenting eavesdropping tech and today an announcement that US Congress will use Skype to communicate.
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It's more fair than you think. Even before the MS purchase, Skype was a monoculture just as bad: a nonstandard voip protocol with one single implementation, not interoperable with anything else, with a userbase almost entirely sustained by network effects. People "need" Skype because they want to talk to other people to use Skype (who in turn inst
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I wonder how many people are going to find a reason to complain about this?
I had a different take: "They're just now figuring out Skype is useful? I've been using it for years, and yet they have the temerity to tell me how to run my business?"
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Skype for Congress (Score:1)
That combined (Score:2)
with Microsoft's recording/monitoring policy will make some interesting scenarios.
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I'm going to complain. (Score:3)
Because allowing the Skype PtP client on to office computers makes them insecure, and probably uncontrollably violates the Congress firewalls in the process.
Morons.
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I doubt they're using the stock version. The federal government does have the budget and gravitas to demand special things and Skype must be falling over backwards to accommodate them just for the PR alone. Until we have more details, its a little presumptuous to think that they have the stock version.
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Skype without firewall punching. that would be something new. Who cares if you have stock or non-stock version, if software you are using is network security nightmare.
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Most likely they aren't doing p2p like typical skype, but have a dedicated super-peer. I'd be very surprised if they were.
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>> Because allowing the Skype PtP client on to office computers makes them insecure, and probably uncontrollably violates the Congress firewalls in the process.
Can you provide a link that discusses this in detail? I'd like to know what about Skype is inherently insecure.
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>> Because allowing the Skype PtP client on to office computers makes them insecure, and probably uncontrollably violates the Congress firewalls in the process.
Can you provide a link that discusses this in detail? I'd like to know what about Skype is inherently insecure.
Assuming he meant insecure in the workplace, not insecure in general, then the link is here: http://www.bluecoat.com/doc/644/ [bluecoat.com]
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Where does the quote end and your comments begin. I assume after the [97].
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exactly, the evil commies at Skype Technologies SA in Luxembourg are well known to collaborate with the enemy
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Egyptians revolution found a skype backdoor! (Score:1)
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.. or a trojan present on the computer of one of the parties. Every Skype call, regardless of the crypto, still starts and ends totally naked in the sound chip (or speakers headphones, if you are concerned with more traditional surveillance)
MS Eavesdropping? (Score:2)
Didn't MS just file for a patent that would allow them to eavesdrop on Skype [slashdot.org]? Hmmm, this is not a good combo!!!
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Didn't MS just file for a patent that would allow them to eavesdrop on Skype [slashdot.org]? Hmmm, this is not a good combo!!!
My thoughts exactly... this reminds me of people putting wifi connections in cars that have access to the firmware that deals with the engine!!
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Kool Aid (Score:3)
Congress is drinking the Microsoft Kool-Aid.
WTF??!?! (Score:2)
They have Tandberg and Polycom Video conference devices ALL OVER THE PLACE at congress. Are these morons simply too uneducated to use them?
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The problem is that no one pays $1000 a plate for dinner with 500 people over Skype.
Too bad he resigned now... (Score:2)
Think of Congressman Weiner's possibilities for hooking up using live video! The new avenues to pose in his underwear would have been expanded!
Any guess on what his Skype ID would have been? I'm thinking "IAMACONGRESSPERV"
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"Any guess on what his Skype ID would have been? I'm thinking "IAMACONGRESSPERV""
Actually, that's the ID of "Diaper" David Vitter [wikipedia.org] (R. Louisiana), Senator and Lawbreaker (Soliciting a Prostitute) in both his home state and Washington, D.C.
Larry Craig's [wikipedia.org] ID is "TOILETAPDANCER" and Mark Foley's [wikipedia.org] is "NAKEDBOYPAGEFAN".
Hope this helps!
Have A Nice Day!
kthnxbai!
Microsoft KNEW this was coming! (Score:1)
Now we know why Microsoft paid that price for Skype. They have a new cash cow gov't contract. The purchase by MS (or similar big corp capable of supporting large gov't contracts) may have even closed the Skype deal for Congress. Surely, Congress is most comfortable with the known entity vs. the unknown. (...and don't call me Shirley.)
Great - and let Microsoft listen in (Score:2)
Well it's about time (Score:1)
Why skype... (Score:2)
That's why MS bought it (Score:1)
Oh great! (Score:2)
So they get the Eavesdropping feature in their's? (Score:2)
Hell Yeah! Transparency at last! (Score:1)