After seven years of distressing over the issue of P2P leaks of sensitive information, it seems the government is finally gearing up to introduce new legislation to ban P2P file sharing software from government and government contractor computers.
Leading the witch hunt is Representative Edolphus Towns (D-NY), who wants to burn file-sharing programs, like LimeWire, BitTorrent, and Morpheus, at the stake for being “unwilling or unable to ensure user safety.” Adding, “As far as I am concerned, the days of self-regulation should be over for the file-sharing industry.”
Towns is planning to introducing a bill, and he may have the support of his constituency behind him. Sensitive information leaks in the past have included, data on the President’s helicopter Marine One being leaked to Iran, details on the President’s motorcade route, and the locations of the First Family’s safe houses, just to name a few.
Thomas Sydnor, a director at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, demonstrated the dangers of P2P at the hearing by installing the latest version of LimeWire5 on a computer. The program’s default settings very quickly put all 16,798 files in the My Documents folder up for sharing. However, LimeWire Group Chair Mark Gorton, contended that LimeWire does not share user-originated files or Word Documents, pdfs, Excel spreadsheets, and other such presentation documents in its default settings.
Many companies have already taken this step and banned P2P use by their employees. Businesses have their own sensitive data that they must secure, including customer credit card numbers, private emails, etc. By intentionally allowing file sharing, P2P essentially undoes everything IT security is trying to do.
This isn’t the first time the issue was brought before Congress, the House oversight committee has raised concerns about the risks associated with data leaks from the use of P2P software in two previous hearings. However, on this occasion Towns is now stating his intention to introduce a bill, and it’s likely he will follow through.
While I agree with Towns that P2P software obviously presents a risk of leaking sensitive or classified information, I’m not sure I agree with using government regulation to simply ban P2P. As P2P continues to develop it may eventually overcome its security flaws, but with an antiquated law banning their use, we would be unable to utilize the advantages of the software.
I would prefer to see P2P software developers take a stronger approach to securing their products. This push for banning P2P may be the incentive they need to make the necessary changes. But it may be too late.
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