Congressman: FTC May Have Inaccurate View of P2P Dangers

In a letter issued yesterday to US Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman took issue with the findings of an FTC staff report issued last July, suggesting that P2P file-sharing use may only be as dangerous as any other form of Internet activity.

Rep. Waxman cited testimony in a committee hearing last July in which Chairwoman Majoras took part, which provided evidence that secret government documents found their way - along with the mixed bag of other questionable material that makes the rounds - into the hands of private citizens through P2P networks.

"In light of the Committee's recent investigation and hearing," Waxman wrote, "we believe the FTC should expand its efforts to protect consumers from inadvertent file sharing."

During that hearing, Majoras said the staff report concluded that P2P was, in and of itself, a "neutral technology." "That is, its risks result largely from how individuals use the technology rather than being inherent in the technology itself," read Majoras' prepared testimony to Congress.

While the report conceded there are risks involved in using P2P, those risks borne by users are no greater, some contributors to the report commented, than the everyday trials and tribulations of using Microsoft Windows.

"The staff report emphasized that many of the risks to consumers associated with P2P filesharing are not unique," Majoras continued, "but also exist when consumers engage in other Internet-related activities such as surfing web sites, using search engines, downloading software, and using e-mail or instant messaging. At the Commission's workshop, participants offered conflicting views as to whether the risks arising from P2P file-sharing were greater than other Internet-related activities. For example, one commenter argued that P2P file-sharers were substantially more likely to be infected with spyware than Internet users in general. In contrast, one participant opined that the spyware risks are the same, because those risks are attributable to problems with the design of Windows-based operating systems."

But there was no hard empirical evidence presented in that report, she said, to lead the FTC to scientifically conclude P2P use was any more or less dangerous than any other online activity. In his letter, Waxman weighed into that omission.

"At the Committee's July 24, 2007 hearing, government and independent witnesses testified about the sensitive data of all types that are available through popular P2P programs," Waxman wrote. "A demonstration at the hearing showed Committee members - in real time - the millions of searches being conducted through P2P networks from computers around the world. Although much of the searching is for the purpose of illegally downloading music and movies, an alarming number of searches targeted personal financial information or security data.

"Based on this demonstration and on several heavily redacted documents turned over to the Committee for review," he continued, "we believe that the problem of inadvertent file sharing is a much more significant problem than previously thought." With regard to the FTC staff report's conclusions, he added, "We question this assessment. We have not seen evidence that any of these other 'Internet-related activities' leads to the wholesale information disclosures described at the Committee's hearing."

Waxman's comments accompanied a questionnaire for the FTC to complete, with a due date of November 1, asking among other things whether the Commission has followed up on its investigation of P2P facilitators other than LimeWire and Streamcast - whose representatives also appeared before Congress last July - and whether it plans to take greater actions to protect citizens from what the questionnaire calls "the enhanced risks of utilizing P2P file sharing programs."