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P2P snafu blows lid on secret Congress probes

30+ legislators under investigation

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A confidential memo from one of the most secretive panels in Congress was leaked on a peer-to-peer file-sharing network, publicly detailing sensitive probes involving more than 30 lawmakers and aides.

The release of the report was jarring enough that Zoe Lofgren, chairman of the House ethics committee, interrupted a series of House votes to alert lawmakers to the breach. The July document revealed a laundry list of ethics inquiries looking into possible corporate and defense industry influence peddling, according to The Washington Post, which obtained a copy.

The 22-page report was freely available on an unnamed file-sharing network after a junior staff member working from home stored it on a computer equipped with P2P software, according to a statement (PDF) released Thursday night. Lawmakers and staffers are required to protect the confidentiality of all sensitive information. The employee no longer works for the committee.

In July, the same month the confidential memo was prepared, a separate House committee held hearings on whether federal laws were needed to protect federal employees from accidental file sharing. Legislators have grown so worried about inadvertent leaking of documents over P2P networks they've considered draconian bills that could render entire web browsers and operating systems illegal.

The confidential ethics report discussed inquiries into potential wrongdoing by representatives including Charles Rangel, Jane Harman, Maxine Waters and Laura Richardson. ®

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Latest Comments

this will cost money.

I truly think that USA govt should not run any LINUX,APPLE,Microsoft OS.

The USA govt should run its own custom OS that is not compatible with any retail copy OS and ownership of this custom OS should only be in GOVT buildings and not in homes.

If they did this then I am sure security will be improved vastly.

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It could be win7

It is not just P2P, go into homegroup on win7, tick the docs file (everything else is set by default to share) and then go looking at it from a linux machine. If you input the password (and we all know how easy they are to get hold of on the majority of British wireless networks) You get access to every file. I was able to copy and rename system files in Windows FFS.

Blame p2p now. Once Win7 and home groups become the norm, it will get a whole lot more common.

AC because our crappy government is watching.

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@Paul 4

I guess we're talking about the sort of people who are so incompetant that they can't even spell "computer" here.......oh.......hang on.......EPIC FAIL!

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