Congress: P2P networks harm national security
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House of Representatives panel chairman says peer-to-peer networks pose a "national security threat," new laws needed.
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Rep. Mary Bono Mack says Congress shouldn't get in the way of Internet service providers that want to detect illegal sharing of copyrighted material.
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Lawmakers on House and Senate intelligence committees say that while the National Security Agency has amassed a huge database of Americans&#039; calling records, cooperation with the NSA by telephone companies was not as widespread as USA Today initially reported, the newspaper said Friday.
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An increasingly networked infrastructure and a paucity of laws defining cybercrime could lead to disaster in Russia if terrorists such as Chechen separatists started turning their attention to electronic warfare, says one security expert there.
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While Congresspeople have recently been quite vocal about their opposition to file sharing services, at least one has presented a contrarian view: Fair use promoter Rep. Rick Boucher (D - Va.) said in a CNET interview that Comcast should lay off BitTorrent.
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A month after giving the Bush administration new latitude to conduct electronic surveillance on American soil, some in Congress are having second thoughts.
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Timothy Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, advocated that the U.S. Congress protect net neutrality and questioned the value of DRM (digital rights management) Thursday.
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More data = more damage, when breached Silicon Justice The US Congress is trying to land a one-two sucker punch on internet service providers (ISPs).â¦
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Group says popular technique threatens U.S. security by sidelining other approaches more suited to decryption and the like.
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(InfoWorld) - Foreign Internet service and applications providers would be required to base inside the country the servers they use for U.S. customers, under a proposal from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The DOJ and its U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) division are taking that message to the U.S. Congress and asking lawmakers for a broad rewrite of U.S. wiretapping rules. However, some members of Congress have ripped into the Chinese government for a similar law requiring Internet providers to locate their servers inside its borders. U.S. lawmakers have criticized the Chinese law because it allows the government to censor and monitor Internet traffic. The DOJ proposal, which would amend a 1994 telephone wiretapping law called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), aims to allow the U.S. government easier access to servers so it, too, can monitor communications. The proposed law, not yet introduced in Congress, would likely set off an arms race in which other countries that want to conduct online surveillance require U.S. companies such as Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. to locate servers inside their borders, said John Morris, director of the Internet Standards, Technology and Policy Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil liberties group. "There are countries around the world that would like nothing more than have the United States set the example, to say, 'you have to have a point of presence in my country,'" Morris said. The CDT included the DOJ proposal, pitched to lawmakers during the last couple of months,Â on its list of "dangerous" tech proposalsÂ in Congress. The CDT listÂ wasÂ released Thursday. The CDT is concerned that Congress could take up the proposal yet this year as lawmakers look for ways to attract voters before the November general election, CDT officials said. The DOJ press office did not return a phone call seeking comment on the proposal. In February, members of the U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee scolded Google, Microsoft and Yahoo Inc. officials for allegedly cooperating with the Chinese government's censorship efforts. A day after that hearing, Representative Christopher Smith, a New Jersey Republican, introduced a bill that would bar U.S. Internet companies from locating Web servers inside "Internet-restricting" countries such as China and Vietnam, with penalties of up to five years in prison and a US$2 million fine for officers of companies that willfully violate the restrictions Smith's Global Online Freedom Act is awaiting action in the committee. Morris called the DOJ proposal "embarrassing" after lawmakers objected strongly to the Chinese law earlier this year. "The proposal has some horrendous provisions," he said. "The point-of-presence proposal itself would be devastating to the American economy." The DOJ proposal would force vendors of any Internet communications applications to redesign their products to allow wiretapping, Morris said. "The harm to innovation that would follow ... is hard to underestimate," he said.
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The U.S. Congress still needs to deal with network neutrality, and supporters in Congress are willing to block any legislation favored by broadband providers until the issue is resolved, a leading Democratic lawmaker said Wednesday.
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A surprisingly large number of people who share music and other files on P2P systems are inadvertently exposing bank account and similar personal information on their computers, according to a study by Dartmouth University's Tuck School of Business.
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(InfoWorld) - The Cyber Security Industry Alliance has given the U.S. government D grades on its cybersecurity efforts in 2006, and renewed its call for the U.S. Congress to pass a comprehensive data protection law in 2007. The CSIA, a trade group representing cybersecurity vendors, gave the U.S. government D grades in three areas: security of sensitive information, security and reliability of critical infrastructure, and federal government information assurance. "Government needs to take these issues very seriously," said Liz Gasster, the CSIA's acting executive director and general counsel. Among the problems in 2006: The U.S. Department ofÂ Veterans Affairs reported a data breach involving the personal information of 26.5 million military veterans and family members. Other agencies also reported multiple lost laptops containing personal information. The CSIA called on agencies to notify citizens of data breaches. After a rash of reported data breaches in early 2005, members of Congress introduced multiple bills requiring companies with data breaches to notify affected consumers. ButÂ a breach-notification law failed to pass, partly because of jurisdictional fights between multiple congressional committees. A comprehensive data security bill should include breach notification, but also a requirement that all organizations holding sensitive data -- including private companies, government agencies, nonprofits, and educational institutions -- use reasonable security standards, Gasster said. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has taken action against several companies, but a comprehensive law would give the FTC or another agency broad jurisdiction to investigate data breaches, she said. The CSIA is optimistic a comprehensive data breach law will pass in the next year, even though it stalled in the last Congress, Gasster added. Major data breaches continue to happen, and consumers will increase the pressure on Congress to act, she predicted. In mid-January, retailerÂ TJX Companies Inc. reported a massive data breach. "Consumers just are not going to put up with is," Gasster said. Here's how the CSIA generated its government cybersecurity grades: -- Security of sensitive information, grade D: Congress ratified the Council of Europe Convention on Cyber Crime, allowing the U.S. to work with other signatories on cybersecurity investigations, but failed to pass a comprehensive law to protect sensitive personal information. -- Security and resiliency of the critical information infrastructure, grade D: The Department of Homeland Security appointed an assistant secretary for cybersecurity and telecommunications and implemented some cybersecurity program, but it hasnât offered a clear agenda for its top cybersecurity research and development priorities or established a survivable emergency coordination network to handle a large-scale cybersecurity disaster. -- Federal information assurance, grade D: Government continues to offer a "mixed bag of successes and failures," the CSIA said, with progress within the White House Office of Management and Budget's enforcement of cybersecurity directives and implementation of U.S. President George Bush's Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12, requiring agencies to start issuing smart identification cards. But the government needs to do a better job in several areas, including security issues with telecommuting and releasing information on the cost of cyberattacks, the CSIA said. In addition to a comprehensive data protection bill, CSIA called for the U.S. government to strengthen the power of agency chief information officers and called on agencies to increase testing of cybersecurity controls.
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WASHINGTON -- The FBI seized computers, software, and equipment as part of an investigation into illegal sharing of copyrighted movies, music, and games over an Internet ''peer-to-peer&quot; network, Attorney General John Ashcroft said yesterday.
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Today the US Department of Justice launched an assault on P2P filesharing. Using search warrants, they searched five homes and the offices of one ISP.
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As Senate prepares to consider a Net access ban extension, Democrat behind original ban warns changes to current law approved by the House of Representatives could make that so.
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House Homeland Security Committee chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi), says hacks, virus outbreaks and other computer security problems undermine the government's efforts to encourage companies and private organizations to improve cyber security.