Now this is pretty darn scary. Rep. Edolphus Towns says he plans to introduce legislation to ban such software. Whether or not that’s the answer, is another question. But someone needs to find the answer. It seems a more effective way would be to create a software that prevents this from happening. Banning software seems like a tough task.
By Brian Krebs and Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writers
WASHINGTON — The indiscriminate use of a popular online data-sharing technology has led to the disclosure of sensitive government and personal information — including FBI surveillance photos of a Mafia hit man, lists of people with HIV, and motorcade routes and safe-house locations for then-first lady Laura Bush, a congressional panel was told on Wednesday.
The information is often exposed inadvertently by people who download the technology to share music or other files, not realizing that the “peer-to-peer” software also makes the contents of their computers available to other users, experts said.
