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Mixing Business With Gov't Stupidity: General Clark Tells Congress Why It Should Regulate P2P (And Make Him Richer)
from the all-about-the-money dept
Remember the ridiculous story last month about how some clueless politicians were blaming the fact that some government employees were breaking rules and too stupid to understand how P2P software worked that P2P software needed to be regulated for the good of national security? It turns out that there's even more to this story. Congress called in a "star witness," in former presidential candidate General Wesley Clark, who took the position that P2P must be regulated: "If you saw the scope of the risk, I think you'd agree that it's just totally unacceptable. The American people would be outraged if they were aware of what's inadvertently shared by government agencies on P2P networks. They would demand solutions." And what kind of solutions would those be? Apparently, the kind whereby the gov't regulates P2P providers and requires they build in security. And what kind of security would that be? Why, perhaps the kind of security supplied by a company advised by the very same General Wesley Clark. We won't even bother to name the company here, because it doesn't need any additional free publicity, but its website is full of scary statements about how P2P software is threatening national security.
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Wow
How about this: Corporate policy the forbids P2P activity. Block the P2P ports on the firewall you are using (you are using a firewall, right? right? RIGHT?) and if anyone is found trying to circumvent and use P2P software, they are terminated.
That might be a bit extreme, but this is nothing that needs regulatory oversight.
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This is
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Flag level officers chase dollars
Look at any military installation for any service. The "civilian" dry cleaners, tailors, restaurants and bars and on and on are owned by senior enlisted or officers - sometimes retired but often not. These guys pass the regulations and then get wealthy providing the goods and services required by those very regulations.
Clark has just found a technical twist to a very old game.
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not to mention something that wouldn't work
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A BOFH can handle P2P. A private corp, with a multi-million dollar solution that'll be circumvented quicker than you can google "pr0n", can't.
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Re: not to mention something that wouldn't work
"you'd be amazed at the legitimate things you'd block and/or can't. Also you can't just "block encryption" since torrent programs use encryption as does VPN."
Again this is a military installation. Please tell me how many places these people need to be other than other military computers that probably already have a dedicated VPN set up in the routers or even a hard line.
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Clark was transparent about the affiliation
http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1424
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Re: Wow
Yes: Iraq.
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I've been at companies with tight security around software installation connecting to anything outside the LAN and use of company computers. The funny thing is, people actually wind up working instead of shopping EBAY, tracking their fantsy foot ball teams or building their music collections.
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Solutions
If you can't respect the rules of your organization you shouldn't be in it.
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groan
You know, nothing's constant in the universe except for one thing - politicians are unerringly stupid about regulating technology, and should not be trusted to do so without a HUGE amount of help from smart people. Like that's ever going to happen.
They'd screw it up even if they weren't listening to lobbyists with an ax to grind.
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Unfortunately I am not surprised by this. Attempting to regulate an 'industry' that's impossible to regulate since anyone with some decent programming knowledge can write and release a p2p app just gives a false sense of security and completely ignores the core issue. Hire some competent infosec admins, listen to their advice and enforce the policies they create. That includes the people at the top of the food chain.
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You don't penalize everyone because one person does something wrong. You punish that person. If we go down that road, cars should be outlawed tomorrow.
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I'm confused...
Like one of the posters already said, don't they have a VPN set up? And even if they really, really do need a p2p software program, who installed the program and allowed it share everything on the computer?
But, it's better to put in government regulations instead of holding the IT people and the government worker accountable for their actions.
(Yes, that was sarcasm)
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Clark is a moron....
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Re:
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P2P a threat to national security???
Why should the entire free world be penalised because of some incompetent government employees? GET REAL!!!!! Teach them how to use it properly, or block them from being able to use the P2P software on Government Computers. SIMPLE SOLUTION, that does not encroach on the rights and civil liberties of everyone else on the planet! Dead set these wankers in Government and politics seem to think that everything is an opportunity for them to bullshit their way in to making more money for themselves, whilst telling us all that "This is for your own good and for national security". What a crock.
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not employees
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Communication is the threat
To prevent any potential enemy from finding out things all we have to do is make any form of communication illegal. Muzzle mouths, bind up hands, etc.
With no communication possible, no information can be stolen.
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Re: Wow
But here's the trick. If a simple rule like that were to be passed and enforced then that means that there's no big corporation getting paid to do a job that they created themselves and we cannot have that.
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