DOWNLOADS A THREAT TO SECRETS.

Byline: Lisa Friedman Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - Employees at the nation's most sensitive defense institutions have downloaded software that could jeopardize hundreds of secret government documents, an antipiracy company revealed Thursday.

In a report to the Senate Judiciary Committee, MediaDefender Inc. found that more than 500 computers at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the National Space and Aeronautics Administration and the Space and Naval War Systems Command in San Diego had downloaded file-sharing programs.

``Hopefully, there's no one up there sharing any sensitive documents,'' said Octavio Herrera, vice president for business development at Los Angeles-based MediaDefender.

Known as peer-to-peer networks, the programs like Kazaa and Morpheus are most often used to share music and movies - often copyrighted material that is illegally downloaded. But the problem, experts say, is much bigger than patent protection or the waste of taxpayer time.

Once users download file-sharing software, they not only share music but anything else that happens to be on their hard drive - including tax returns, Social Security numbers or, if the computer belongs to the U.S. government, possibly even classified national security documents.

Herrera and MediaDefender President Randy Saaf told the committee that in a rushed, five-minute survey conducted at a nearby Kinkos before the hearing, they searched a file-sharing program for four terms - ``Madonna,'' ``porn,'' ``sex'' and ``The Matrix.''

That search found file-sharing software operating on 155 computers at the nuclear weapons laboratory at Los Alamos, N.M., 138 at NASA and 236 at the Space and Naval War Systems Command.

``What legitimate use does someone at NASA have for running Kazaa?'' Herrera said.

Los Alamos and NASA officials did not return calls seeking comment.

Navy spokesman David Luckett declined to comment on MediaDefender's findings, but said the Navy has a variety of methods to monitor and prevent this type of problem.

Also Tuesday, Rep. Mary Bono, R-Palm Springs, helped launch the Congressional Caucus on Intellectual Property Promotion and Piracy Prevention, aimed at focusing attention on peer-to-peer network problems.

But while most political attention has concentrated on copyright violations and the $3.5 billion hit that the entertainment industry says it suffers annually from illegally downloaded movies and music, lawmakers called the inadvertent sharing of highly personal data the real dark side of P2P networks.

Unlike Napster, which was limited to the sharing of electronic music files, the new generation of P2P networks allows users to share any kind of file. They also allow direct user-to-user file trading.

``A federal employee intending merely to download and share music files could easily make available every file on his computer, without intending to do so or even realizing it after the fact,'' California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said.

In a separate study conducted by the House Government Reform Committee, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, said his aides were able to obtain tax returns, medical records, attorney-client communications and a living will by using Kazaa.

``Once one personal file is discovered on a P2P user's computer, a feature on Kazaa called 'Find More From Same User' will reveal every file being shared on that user's computer. Use of this feature can result in the disclosure of a wide range of highly personal information,'' the report states.

Alan Morris, executive vice president of Sharman Networks Ltd., which owns Kazaa, testified that updated versions of his program make it much easier to ensure that private data are not shared. But he said the company does not assume responsibility for any material that is illegally or improperly shared.

``We cannot police the network. It's a technical impossibility,'' he said.

Feinstein said she fears there is a real danger to national security and has written letters to all of the Cabinet secretaries urging them to address the use of file-sharing at each agency.

``For normal users, this lack of security presents the real threat of identity theft ... for government users, the situation is far worse,'' she said.

Lisa Friedman, [phone]

lisa.friedman(at)langnews.com