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To read some great discussion on this ShadowMonkey story, see the related post on Slashdot , where 300+ comments were made.

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Update: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 (Original story maintained below)

It appears the mainstream media is finally starting to hear about this idiocy. How about this, Congress: instead of screwing with peer-to-peer networking, implement legislation requiring that any federal employee who installs or uses P2P software on government computers be fired; quit messing with the free market and police your own folks.

From CNet News (July 24, 2007):

WASHINGTON--Politicians charged on Tuesday that peer-to-peer networks can pose a "national security threat" because they enable federal employees to share sensitive or classified documents accidentally from their computers.

 

At a hearing on the topic, Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said, without offering details, that he is considering new laws aimed at addressing the problem. He said he was troubled by the possibility that foreign governments, terrorists or organized crime could gain access to documents that reveal national secrets.

Also at the hearing, Mark Gorton, the chairman of Lime Wire, which makes the peer-to-peer software LimeWire, was assailed for allegedly harming national security through offering his product.

The documents at risk of exposure supposedly include classified government military orders, confidential corporate-accounting documents, localized terrorist threat assessments, as well as personal information such as federal workers' credit card numbers, bank statements, tax returns and medical records, according to recent studies by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and private researchers.

Read the full story on CNet

In today's Let's Be A Little Overdramatic file, a newly released report from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office suggests that networked file and music sharing could harm children and threaten national security.

The November, 2006, report, entitled "Filesharing Programs and Technological Features to Induce Users to Share," makes two main points across the span of its 80 pages:

• that peer-to-peer networks could manipulate sites so children violate copyright laws more frequently than adults, exposing those children to copyright lawsuits and, in turn, make those who protect their copyrighted material appear antagonistic, and
• file-sharing software could be to blame for government workers who expose sensitive data and jeopardize national security after downloading free music on the job

Interestingly, the report makes numerous references to RIAA and MPAA legal actions against file-sharing activity, as well as cites a 2005 Department of Homeland Security report that government workers had installed file-sharing programs that accessed classified information without their knowledge.

On the national security front, the report's introduction, by Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO Jon W. Dudas, includes the following:

A decade ago, the idea that copyright infringement could become a threat to national security would have seemed implausible. Now, it is a sad reality.

Is file sharing a threat to our children? Is it a threat to our national security? Broad claims. Read the report for yourself:

PDF version

HTML version

Links:

Related article from Information Week

USPTO Page on which the report is hosted

 

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Oh, man... gzel (Unregistered) 2007-03-14 18:58:57 Thx for bringing this one up, Monkey. How ridiculous are these folks going to get? I wonder how much the RIAA and MPAA folks spent 'underwriting' this report.... ~gz~ Quote

AMERICANS ARE EASY FOOLED REDICULOUS! (Unregistered) 2007-03-14 19:37:49 Wow, just wow. I can't believe americans could live in such a society they'd believe every report released. They really are fools. Quote

Very Carefully Worded Czolgosz (Unregistered) 2007-03-14 19:42:12 Note the wording: "on their home or work computers"..."by 'sharing' files containing sensitive or classified data." Well. Lots of "or" there. "Home or work" means "home" since work computers are generally locked down. And if they carry classified data, they're REALLY locked down, and off the Internet. So there already needs to have been a security breach in order for data to be visible on a system on which a file-sharing client could be installed. Do government employees do such idiotic things? Considering the astronomical amount of low-level classified data, they very well might. But here's the real kicker: "sensitive" data is defined as basically any data, including data that is available to the public. So one interpretation of this frightening pronouncement is that a goverment employee may have been exposed to the risk of inadvertently sharing unclassified, publicly available information on their home computer. Yeah, could be. In this case the author is not an outright liar, just a deliberately misleading weasel. This is a common propaganda tactic. The current administration has often communicated very carefully crafted messages that are factually correct but, to the inattentive, imply a conclusion that was not actually there in the exact words used. For example, once it was conclusively shown that the Iraq/Al-Qaida linkage was phony, Bush continued to mention them in the same sentence, in contexts that implied a connection without his explicitly saying that they were linked. On the other hand, Cheney just kept on lying, but that's another story. This article seems to be crafted on similar principles. I think it's just a crude ploy to get more funding for USPTO by agitating wingnut congresscritters about jihadis finding nuggets of sensitive information among the billions of porn and mp3 files that flow over p2p networks. Anyway, if anything does turn up, it's more likely to be a specification for yellow road-stripe paint, or an order for a million more $600 hammers. Or the names of a million veterans geting treated by the VA. Quote

Anonymous (Unregistered) 2007-03-14 19:43:06 And you are foolish to believe that Americans are all the same. Don't we all love stereotyping ? Quote

They forgot global watming.... Dom De Vitto (Unregistered) 2007-03-14 20:15:56 They forgot the other danger of file sharing: PCa are left on longer this uses more fossil fuels to power them. We all know this will result in global warming, but bitorrent author Bram Cohen simply refuses to take responsibility. Lucky for Bram he's not from the US, or he'd no doubt get "the chair" for such crimes against humanity. Of course, it would need to be a solar powered electric chair, to be eco-friendly. What about cancer and HIV? Surely they have some link too? Hmmm. yes, thinking about it, the ed2k network makes people 'share' more - and everyone knows that sharing more is only one step from shooting up with someone else's needle! I could sooooo easily go on.... Quote

Freedom (Unregistered) 2007-03-14 22:57:43 Government workers are taking their retarded "family household security" to work with them, that's the problem. The second problem is the US government still has not taken security seriously. Otherwise their secrets wouldn't be leaking out like a hole in a boat. Oh wait they don't care about security, they only care about war profiteering. The fact that filesharing has legitimate uses is ignored totally. They'll be f-ing with your TOR and freenet networks next. Because they don't want the 1st amendment. And you can't have the 1st amendment if you do not have anonymity. At the same time though it COULD be argued that if you DO have anonymity, then you can't have copyright. So if it's a choice between my first amendment and DRM and copyright I choose The Constitution. Quote

Other gaping flaws in the repo Anonymous (Unregistered) 2007-03-15 05:33:22 The report suggests that users remain blissfully unawere about shering. Show me a person that sets his Share folder as that which he just happens to keep his tax information, state secrets, bank receipts, locations of nuclear missile silos, plans for global domination... etc and I will show you someone who does not deserve to fork for the CIA. And it is evil to " make those who protect their copyrighted material appear antagonistic." No, we wouldnt want the truth to get out. Quote

Um... Me (Unregistered) 2007-03-15 05:43:36 Dom De Vitto wrote: Lucky for Bram he's not from the US Bram was born and raised in New York. Quote

File sharing not the threat IAmAI (Unregistered) 2007-03-15 06:29:44 File sharing isn't a threat to children. Copyright holder's are the threat; they don't have to sue anyone and I bet they would be no worse off if they didn't. If copyright holders want to look less 'antagonistic', then they should stop suing individuals because they always look antagonistic when ever they do, regardless of who they are suing. As for the crap about threat to national security, that's just a case of a poor workman blaming his tools - if you know how to use file sharing software properly, it is no threat. Quote

re: Um... Porkpiehat (Unregistered) 2007-03-15 13:19:53 Me wrote: Dom De Vitto wrote: Lucky for Bram he's not from the US Bram was born and raised in New York. I would say that is an argument for him not being from the US. ;) Quote

All in the name of security... DarqueWing (Author) 2007-03-16 17:24:14 Once again waving the magic wand called "national security," the government tries to push unpopular (and likely unconstitutional) policies under the guise of keeping everyone safer. What could be safer than having every computer, everywhere, on constant lockdown? What could be safer than securing all data? What could be safer than bolting bars to all the windows? At some point, we're going to have to check to see if the bars are on the inside or the outside - and just where the lock is. Quote

Jez (Unregistered) 2007-03-18 16:44:47 Regardless of people's thoughts about the veracity of the report consider the implications of the "findings". If there are "hidden" features that allow unnotified or invisiblesharing of any files on a host computer then how do the RIAA & MPAA prove that anyone they prosecute for alleged music or movie file sharing was doing it knowingly and voluntarily? I'd think that more than a few defence lawyers would be more than interested in the answer to that question. Quote

I believe... Demolishun (Unregistered) 2007-03-27 13:28:16 Yes, we Americans are stupid. We believe everything we read, see, hear, smell, or touch as the truth. After all, seeing is believing... BTW, were you talking about North, Central, South America or are you just assuming US citizens? If so, what part of the US are you talking about? You are sure you got the right continent, right? Quote

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