House Passes Bill to Secure Govt. PCs from Peer-to-Peer Networks

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on October 8, 2003 - 4:55am.

Washington -- The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday passed legislation regulating the use of peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa on government computer networks, in an effort to protect sensitive data from accidentally being exposed to millions of P2P users. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Tom Davis (R.-Va.) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Ca.), who noted that peer-to-peer networks been found in use on computers in such sensitive locations as the government's nuclear laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The law mandates that executive branch departments and agencies come up with security measures and employee training to prevent the leakage of sensitive information; both the House and Senate have already secured their own respective offices' networks. "File sharing technology is not inherently bad, and it may turn out to have a variety of beneficial applications," said Davis. "H.R. 3159 recognizes this by protecting the ability of federal agencies to pursue innovations in peer-to-peer technology on government networks, as long as they do not put government information or computers at risk."
http://tomdavis.house.gov/cgi-data/news/files/58.shtml
http://makeashorterlink.com/?O11F21526