The United States House of Representatives proposed a new bill seeking the ban for government employee’s use of peer-to-peer file-sharing networks at work or even accessing sensitive government documents at home.
Known as the Secure Federal File-Sharing Act, Democratic Representative Edolphus Towns of New York said that there is a growing sentiment among members of the House for the Office of Management and Budget to immediately enact the new legislation that would ban the use of P2P networks like Limewire and BitTorrent on government owned computers.
“We can not tolerate such actions by our employees and we can no longer ignore the massive threat to the sensitive government data and business establishments. Securing these data is critical to our national security,” Towns said.
The new bill would also require the OMB to make new guidelines and policies for thousands of federal employees, who telecommute or access government data on their personal PCs, to refrain from using file-sharing websites.
Rep. Towns, who is also the chairperson of the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee, said that the bill has already passed Congress with a landslide vote of 408 to 18.
The new bill has been pending decision in the House for quite some time now following hurdles requiring approvals and definitions of new policies by concerned government agencies.
The US Senate is also seen not that serious in passing the Secure Federal File Sharing Act since it is considering its own version of the bill called P2P Cyber Protection and Informed User Act.
The P2P Cyber Protection aims to protect people by requiring all Internet users to install sharing software that would alert them every time a P2P program is being introduced to their computers.