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Dept. Of Homeland Security Chooses Groove, P2P
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Mar 15, 2004 10:52 PM
from the but-can-anyone-think-of-legitimate-uses-for-p2p dept.
from the but-can-anyone-think-of-legitimate-uses-for-p2p dept.
Ryan Barrett writes "Groove Networks has
announced that their P2P infrastructure will power the
Homeland Security Information Network, an initiative to increase
information sharing between federal, state, and local intelligence agencies.
(The initiative doesn't give the govt. more information, it just helps agencies
better share the information they already have.) Groove
Workspace has also been certified with two govt. security standards,
FIPS 140-2
level 1 and NIAP CCITSE. In related news,
Groove's developers have been diagnosed with acronym whiplash."
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It does, however... (Score:5, Funny)
So, while researching porn... (Score:5, Funny)
If it just disgusts you, is it porn or what?
To paraphrase some supreme court justice or another, I can't tell you where I'd draw the line, but I'll tell you on a case by case basis, if you pay my normal hourly rates.
Parent
Re:So, while researching porn... (Score:3, Interesting)
Extra bad, I would guess.
Similar to the torturers during the Spanish Inquisition who considered their own sexual arousal as they tortured naked female "witches" to be proof of the Devil's influence.
Re:It does, however... (Score:5, Informative)
Holy CRAP! There are healthy *human* *beings* in the government? With the same urges and activities as in every other field? Call the news media!
Seriously, working at a courthouse versus a finance company, I saw pretty much the same amount of people surfing porn from work. It's called being human. Not a big deal unless you happen to get called on it. That only happened once when the idiot started showing it to coworkers and HR got involved. Otherwise, anyone sitting on a router or proxy knows that there's a good deal of... err... personal internet use in every office.
--
Evan
Parent
Re:It does, however... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It does, however... (Score:4, Funny)
Roses are red
Violets are blue
While you're deriving me
I'll be integrating you
Parent
Hold on... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hold on... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
In related news... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Hold on... (Score:3, Informative)
In all seriousness, it is pretty impressive that Groove got their FIPS certification. My old company gave up once they saw all the hoops they would have had to jump though.
Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
"Groove jumps to Microsoft beat"
Looking further, it is clear that Groove is comfortably in bed with Microsoft.
So I am quite sure they will "make damn sure this system is safe".....
Parent
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't say they are comfortably in bed with Microsoft, if anything their Groove Workspace product looks like a server less alternative to an Exchange. Just because their products integrate with the MS Office suite doesn't mean they are in bed with MS.
Parent
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, let's see. There's the RIAA possibly having a big hand in writing California's policy [slashdot.org] on P2P. Then there's antitrust exemption [slashdot.org]. There's also the DMCA, which among other things give the RIAA the power to issue supoenas [com.com]. So I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest the government is "hand-holding".
On the other hand, there are also many examples of Senators and Congressmen who oppose the RIAA approach and these laws. So it's not a black-and-white issue of where the government stands.
Parent
Ooohhh... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ooohhh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, do you think the general public will hear or care about this or even connect it with the evil music swappers? I very much doubt it.
Parent
Re:Ooohhh... (Score:5, Insightful)
So while the general public may not hear about it savvy EFF-type lawyers will invoke this and prevent injunctions,etc... as regards this incipient technology.
Parent
Re:Ooohhh... (Score:4, Interesting)
90% of the american population will never equate this with "that song downloading MP3 thing" and the 10% that do already know enough to decide for themselves whether or not the MPAA/RIAA have a valid point or just pointless rhetoric.
Parent
RIAA vs. DoJ (Score:4, Funny)
Or the DoJ might start investigating the underhand tactics RIAA has used to curtail P2P services.
Either way, this is very good news.
Well that Tom Ridge had a good idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Well that Tom Ridge had a good idea (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Well that Tom Ridge had a good idea (Score:4, Insightful)
It also lends the possibility that the data can be corrupted by injecting false or spurious data into one host and everyone syncing up to/with it.
Neither of these problems are insurmountable, but they should be examined carefully.
Parent
More information (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely a product of this process is more information?
Re:More information (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
No - Meta Information (Score:5, Interesting)
Bob, Mary and Jane went to the store. Each bought an item. One of them brought $.47 to spend, one brought $1.50 and one brought $.35. Bob didn't buy the popsicle. Jane didn't buy the bubble gum. Bob had less than $.50 to spend. The nachos one of them bought cost $1.29.
Then you are given a chart that has each person's name on it, along with a list of the items and a list of the amounts of money brought to the store. Then you have to figure out who bought what, and how much money they started with. You aren't given enough information to answer straight away - you have to figure it out.
Bringing all this information together (consider banking records, credit records, information gleaned through co-operative business (remember that supermarket "discount" card you signed up for?) forwarding addresses given to the post office, college records, income tax information - the list goes on) a decent computer app to display it all in a meaningful way, and a smart analyst to look at it, and they can figure out most anything about anyone.
Big Brother never had it so good!
And you say "bah - it's all public knowledge anyway. They can already find it out."
and my response is this: Before, it was work. Before this, it cost money. Before this they had to have a reason to look at someone so closely. Now you go tickety-tickety-tick on the keyboard and blammo - you see that Mr. Johnson is apparantly feeling ill from the sushi he ate last night (from his credit report) because he bought some pepto bismol and OTC tagament from the supermarket (from the supermarket's customer tracking database - gotta love that discount card). But what's this? He took $300 out of the atm at 6pm, spent fifty at the grocery store, then took out another $300 at 9pm. This automated traffic camera places him in the seedy side of town at 11pm. What was he doing over there in the middle of the night with $550 in cash? Looks like we need to pay closer attention to Mr. Johnson.
And yes - the terms and conditions papers from my bank when I opened my checking account said that "since 9/11 any large transactions (over $200) will be reported immediately to the department of homeland security".
This is why the thought of a cashless society scares me.
Now where's my typewriter and my compound in montana? I thought those things were standard to us luddite freaks...?
Parent
Re:No - Meta Information (Score:5, Interesting)
Admittedly, this is a frivolous example, but still, you're paying an extra hundred bucks just because the policeman knows something about you that's really none of his business.
Technology, as well as law, can create problems because laws do not change quickly and the law is never perfect.
For example, take the controversial "Red Light Cameras," which automatically ticket you if you go through an intersection. Obviously, the law has to say driving through a red light is illegal. But in a dynamic, high-traffic city like Los Angeles, people in left-turn lanes habitually run red lights to maximize efficiency.
Or sometimes, late at night in a small town, you should be able to proceed through a red light if it is totally safe.
And I won't even get into sex, and how in many states, two consenting adults cannot legally get it on just because they're gay.
Point is, the law is never perfect. Until we can model perfect justice in neural networks (j/k) and eliminate corruption, we should maintain a healthy skepticism about "Total Information Awareness" as a dangerous concentration of power.
And even if you had perfect faith in the government, like the poster above says, what if somebody hacks it? Or what if the good guys get kicked out and the bad guys take over?
Parent
P2P Piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at how JXTA has been languishing for the past few years.
Cmon folks, P2P is not piracy. It mirrors how distributed complex systems in nature behave and it has the potential to create dynamic, loosely-coupled distributed systems that may just get us out of this IT rut.
Groove - neat, but practical? (Score:5, Insightful)
How does Groove archive data? Is there a centralized secure repository or is all of the data on client nodes, only as secure as that particular user chooses to be?
Neat in a way, but it sounds like a mess for doing real work.
Re:Groove - neat, but practical? (Score:5, Insightful)
First responders have radios. They work. Replacing those functional radios with laptops and forcing people to type (or draw low-res pictures) to each other is a complete waste. Data collection systems exist or are in development that understand that data requires analysis and evaluation. Groove treats everything as a free-for-all where nothing gets analysed, just thrown all over the place because it's the easiest thing to implement. Analysis requires thought, but throwing everything out there to inundate everyone with random garbage is just So Much Easier.
I can almost guarantee that this is the usual marketing bullshit from BEA Systems (British Aerospace contactor that inexplicably has an in with U.S. Homeland Security) who has been peddling this crap for a few years now. Too stupid to develop custom solutions, they expertly peddle off-the-shelf stuff at a huge markup to glassy-eyed bureaucrats who get wowed because some Tablet PC can share data with some other Tablet PC without using ethernet cables. And it runs XP Tablet Edition version 1.0! Neato! Wanna see it reboot again?
Some god-forsaken police or fire department leader is going to get saddled with yet another fraglie and tempermental piece of battery-dependent equipment that will serve only to force him to talk to higher-echelon bureaucrats instead of doing his job. I pray he'll have the sense to use it to extinguish a precise 12 inch by 18 inch portion of a conflagration where it will be far more functional than it's intended purpose.
Parent
Re:Groove - neat, but practical? (Score:3, Funny)
file list (Score:5, Funny)
Many of you... (Score:5, Informative)
Just showing that he's been in the spotlight before, it's not some random Joe who's suddenly found his product approved for Government use.
Re:Many of you... (Score:4, Interesting)
http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-991986.html?tag
Parent
Last Year (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
FIPS? (Score:3, Funny)
Public P2P Infrastructure? (Score:3, Interesting)
Dizzam, this is risky as hell.
The Federales can't even protect thier friggin' nuclear research labs from 5cr1p7 k166195 hacking thier way in and having thier own way.
Now, all of DHS is going to open up their entire information exchange apparatus to possible cyber-attacks, spoofing and God Knows What Else by a-Q and others?
Nice.
I don't think a-Q is going to be swapping any pr0n, unless you define it as putting fuses into hot boxes of combustible materiel.
Help, I hate groove! (Score:5, Interesting)
My dislike comes from two simple reasons: Groove is Windows-only, and Groove is non-free. (It's a paid product, not cheap, and the license enforcement is more effective than anything Microsoft Word has)
If it were up to me, this wouldn't even be a concern: everyone would have Linux (or Mac OS X), there'd be no NATs blocking ports, and we'd all just share files via cvs or rsync (tunneled over ssh of course).
Can anyone recommend a free competitor to Groove I can try to push on my Windows-using colleagues, before they get sucked into a proprietary protocol? I suspect the strongest advantage Groove has is it's ability to penetrate NAT (that and having been approved by Washington) "Free Software" would be prefered, but "free beer" is ok.
Re:Help, I hate groove! (Score:4, Insightful)
So the fact that it's a Windows product (Oh, last time I looked, there where still a lot of Windows users out there.), and they charge for it (Suprise, the GPL allows for charging for software too!), that's all you can come up with?
How about the fact that it includes Windows DRM? Or that it's just another arm of the Borg? That it's probibly just as insecure as Windows?
Ther is nothing wrong with charging for software, and nothing wrong with building apps for Windows.
Parent
Re:Help, I hate groove! (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you know how goofy you sound, dismissing my practical reasons and then spitting out stereotypical Slashbot-isms? And you ignored my most important reason, the lock-in to an undocumented protocol.
By the way, Groove used to have a half-hearted Linux version [macadamian.com]. Wonder what happened to it...
Ther is nothing wrong with charging for software, and nothing wrong with building apps for Windows.
Ther is something wrong with charging a lot for software that does nothing I couldn't accomplish in an hour of python scripting around ssh. The needed functionality is so easy to achieve (since the tough part, the security, is handled by existing software) that chances are somebody else has already given away a free implementation. That's what I'm asking about.
If I were inclined to touch Windows programming, I might do it myself...
Parent
Take a look under the hood. (Score:5, Insightful)
From their web site: the company has obtained more than $155 million in financing from Accel Partners, Microsoft(R) Corporation
Yup, this is P2P at it's best! With those kind of finantial backers, wonder what kind of DRM they push with each file served? Is it any wonder GWB and the folks at Homelad Security (and ain't that just a very Nazi sort of a name...) "choose" Groove?
Re:Take a look under the hood. (Score:5, Interesting)
Since these documents are residing on the computers of federal, state, and local intelligence agencies, wouldn't you actually want some sort of Digital Rights Management to be used?
This isn't some sort of government-sponsored MP3/mov fileserver for the public.
BTW, A Nazi sort of name would be Homelandsicherheit.
Parent
I just downloaded tons of MP3s off of Kazaa! (Score:5, Funny)
Centralized is not automatically bad (Score:5, Insightful)
A system for sharing information between different agencies is not necessarily a reason to dig out the tin foil hats! Honestly!
One of the major hassles as a government worker is that everyone has their own database and their own numbering system, and they don't necessarily share well. That's not referring to turf wars--that's just referring to the different systems. The FBI has their file numbers, the Department of Justice uses a different numbering system. And theoretically, the FBI is under the DOJ! HHS uses their own own numbering system, so does DCIS, etc. This is a major problem, especially when the investigative arms of different agencies are going after the same people.
I spent some time as a paralegal for the DOJ, and one of my jobs was to check the status of older investigations and see what the result was or if they were still open. In many instances, it took weeks to track them down, because all I had was a FBI number and I needed the file from DCIS's investigation. Or I might have a DOJ number and need a file from the FBI... In both instances, they'd have to search by name, and that takes a very long time.
I know very little about Groove Networks or how the technology works, but if it helps share information, it truly is a good thing. This is not a civil liberties issue--its an efficiency issue. The Government already has this data--this just lets them access it better.
Re:Centralized is not automatically bad (Score:5, Insightful)
This does not make the new legislation harmless.
Some branch or other of the government already has almost every scrap of information on you that they want. Coordinating it between departments that otherwise wouldn't have access to it can be just as scary as gathering too much information in the first place. This is mostly what Total Information Awareness was all about; sharing information.
A particular danger associated with this is it's potential for facilitating the transition to "rule of men" instead of "rule of law" in this country.
That is, almost everyone has something that's technically illegal in their backgrounds. Unpaid parking tickets, mistakes on taxes, an unpaid bill, or any of hundreds of little things. If you want to get really technical about it, there are kinds of flashlights that are illegal to have in conjunction with a firearm, there are outdated traffic laws that are widely unknown, always ignored, and never enforced, and for a while, Tryptophan, an amino acid essential to life, was illegal to possess in the US. There are elements of the tax code where it's illegal no matter how it's done, and throwing batteries in the trash can tecnically lead to huge fines and years in jail. If they want to put the information together and be picky enough to try to get someone, everyone can be gotten for somehting. Luckily, most of the silly stuff usually goes unenforced. But that doesn't mean it's not scary that, technically, we're all criminals.
Allowing a variety of authorities- from police, sheriffs, & highway patrol, up to FBI and CIA, and down to your neighborhood precinct representative to have easy access to tons of information on you increases the possibility for selective enforcement of laws.
Maybe the officials will use this information wisely to help track down big criminals, murderers, terrorists, etc. more effectively. Or maybe they'll use it to harass good people. Or maybe they'll even use their newfound power over everyone for extortion and blackmail.
Be very wary of governments making sweeping or vague laws, and of classifying lots of things as illegal. Also be worried when they gather or consolidate information. I'll agree the information gathering's/access is potentially useful, and it's the overflow of laws and regulations that scares me much more. But the two in conjunction can be a dangerous combination.
Parent
Project IRIS? (Score:5, Insightful)
- shadowmatter
DOJ P2P File Structure (Score:5, Funny)
This is a Government Server
**No Unauthorized Use**
_Directories/Files Available
__1. Emails Scanned
__2. Active Cases
__3. Cases on Hold
__4. Wire Tap Transcripts
__5. Satellite Photographs
__6. Prisoners Incarcerated List
__7. Archive Files
__-----A. Old Files
__-----B. Bob's Files **Top Secret**
__----------1. Porn0 Pics
__----------2. MP3 Files
__----------3. Porn0
__----------4. Misc. Pics
Hummmm . . . now where did I put that warez directory?
Re:I think... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:First Block (Score:5, Insightful)
<hypothetical>Suppose you're a terrorist, and you've just finished the final draft of the Secret Terrorism Plans. Now you need to distribute it to your cohorts. The problem is, "the man" is spying on all internet traffic, and you suspect they might even be able to crack PGP. How, then, can you possibly send a copy of the Secret Terrorism Plans to 18 of your closest friends without being caught?
Easy, you bury it in shit.
You take your Secret Terrorism Plans file and PGP-encrypt it, just for good measure. You then UUEncode the encrypted file, and split it into 10 chunks. Each chunk gets posted as a comment to a different Slashdot story. Somewhere out-of-band - or even in-band, say, as part of the previous message - you tell the recipients to start looking for parts of the file in the first Slashdot story with "Linux" in the story text on March 15th.
Slashdot generates more than a million pageviews a day, with tens of stories and thousands of comments posted. Helpfully, your 10 UUEncoded chunks of the Secret Terrorism Plans are moderated -1, Troll, so that most people never even see them. Of those who do see them, most will ignore them, a few will wonder (as you did) what they are, fewer still will recognize that they're pieces of a UUEncoded file, and probably nobody will bother trying to track down all the parts and assemble them. Except for your intended recipients, that is.</hypothetical>
Am I saying that Slashdot is a medium for terrorist communications? Of course not, though it's certainly possible. What I'm getting at - finally, straying on-topic - is that no amount of Groove, or P2P, or database crosschecking, or FBI wiretapping cable modems and DSL connections, is going to find the Secret Terrorism Plans. People coordinated enough to simultaneously take control of three airliners are not going to be sending around "Secret Terrorism Plans.doc" via email.
IMO, Groove won't do any more to fight $BOGEYMAN than CAPPS or CAPPS II. It's just going to make it easier for "the man" to inconvenience the people who aren't doing anything wrong.
Parent