Your government in action

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Your government in action

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Your government in action - 7/31/2007 12:00:45 PM

3BlkC4Ragtop

Posts: 135
Joined: 6/24/2006
Status: offline

Your rights are about to be infringed upon again.

This actually made me feel kinda sick to my stomach when I read how bad some of our 'protectors' are.

++++++++++++++

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/filesharing_and_national_security
Filesharing and National Security
Posted 07/26/07 at 10:02:31PM | by
Erin Simon

Filesharing may be dubiously legal (or maybe not so dubious), but until recently its only problem was IP infringement. That changed Tuesday at a hearing of the Government Reform Committee on inadvertent filesharing, where Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said he was considering new laws to solve the threat P2P posed to homeland security. The threat? That government employees may accidentally share classified documents on their computers, making them available to terrists or organized crime. The problem with filesharing is that congressional staff are inept. Waxman said he didn't want to shut down the networks, but rather to strike “a balance that protects sensitive government, personal and corporate information and copyright laws.” The Committee had conducted searches on Limewire that turned up sensitive personal, corporate, and even military documents. From this and stories like the Department of Transportation official whose daughter installed a P2P program on the family computer and accidentally shared official DOT documents, the Committee concluded that national security was at risk.
Leaking classified documents is already a crime (unless, that is, you can un-classify them before people find out). To be sure, researchers have reported that sensitive personal information shows up on filesharing networks. Not everyone is privacy-savvy; spammers get some return on Nigerian Scam emails, too, but the solution isn't to ban email.
If your staff are too inept to keep their sensitive documents out of the folders they share on Limewire (what do they do, keep their Classified folder in their iTunes Library folder for safekeeping?), the problem isn't Limewire. The problem is your staff. It doesn't inspire a whole lot of confidence in Congress when they say government employees aren't smart enough to keep classified information classified; nor is it a confidence boost to hear that instead of prohibiting filesharing on government computers, the best solution they can think of is to outlaw it altogether.

Post #: 1

RE: Your government in action - 7/31/2007 12:51:58 PM

Lee Willis

Posts: 1953
Joined: 7/27/2005
Status: online

Well, people make mistakes all the time: there is a difference between that and being inept. Once upon a time I managed a global division for a Fortune 50 company and that was the biggest issue our IT people had with data security and database integrity too - mistakes which most folks never even realized they'd made. I can't see how this proposed governemnt action, whatever it may actually be, will adversely affect me in my private life, or unduly inconveninence my business, but I can see how it might improve security both nationally and at big credit reporting companies, etc., so I'm not too concerned about any 'big brother" aspect myself.

_____________________________

2007 Aston Martin Vantage Prodrive
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(in reply to 3BlkC4Ragtop)

Post #: 2

RE: Your government in action - 7/31/2007 2:41:12 PM

3BlkC4Ragtop

Posts: 135
Joined: 6/24/2006
Status: offline

What makes me sick is very simple...

We cannot trust the government employees to keep national security secrets off their personal computers.. OR.....

We can't keep them from downloading P2P software to their classified government pc's.

Just plain failure on the part of the user to keep his or her data safe by any means of the imagination.

Read some of the responses on the web page.

Even when its something I don't use, I don't want the government taking away a service from me because they cannot control their employees bad computing habits.

Im a total user at my work(not a techie), and I'd be fired by the end of the day for actions like this.

(in reply to Lee Willis)

Post #: 3

RE: Your government in action - 7/31/2007 4:28:30 PM

C3 Starship

Posts: 4761
Joined: 7/25/2006
Status: online

Ragtop, I think ya got a good point.

There are a lot of governmental short commings, reguarding almost every issue they confront.
They recognize a problem, but then come at it, at such a tangent, they tend to loose track and all reason.

Tighten the security at the facilities.

Ya don't need another dang law.

_____________________________

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