House Ethics Committee Document Exposed on Public Peer-to-Peer Network [PC Magazine]
It's just the latest in government documents that were supposed to be secret, but became public after being leaked onto an unsecured peer-to-peer network. The U.S. House of Representatives Ethics Committee has issued a statement regarding a document that detailed secret ethics investigations against 30 members of Congress that became public after it was exposed via a committee staffer's use of peer-to-peer software. The committee's investigations take place under strict secrecy - with members and staffers taking oaths not to reveal information about the committee's investigations, so the leaking of the document represents a major breach in the committee's protocol. The leaked document contained summaries of investigations of 30 lawmakers, and was given to The Washington Post by an Internet user that had downloaded it from the staffer's computer via P2P.
This isn't the first time that sensitive U.S. government data has been inadvertently leaked on a P2P network. Earlier this year, schematics for a new Marine One, the president's helicopter, were found on a P2P network via P2P software running on a government contractor's computer. The issue has also become the subject of a piece of legislation in the House called the Informed P2P User Act, which aims to prevent these types of leaks from occurring. Given this breach, it appears that it's time to add rules for government employees' use of P2P software.
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