A sharp rebuke for the largely unrepentent, though emptily gesturing, Sony-BMG, from an unexpected source: the Department of Homeland Security. Writes Brian Krebs of the Washington Post:

"Stewart Baker, recently appointed by President Bush as the Department of Homeland Security's assistant secretary for policy, made a comment that suggested that some anti-piracy efforts introduced by the industry could have profound and unexpected effects on the security of the nation's critical infrastructures. ...

'I wanted to raise one point of caution as we go forward, because we are also responsible for maintaining the security of the information infrastructure of the United States and making sure peoples' [and] businesses' computers are secure. ...There's been a lot of publicity recently about tactics used in pursuing protection for music and DVD CDs in which questions have been raised about whether the protection measures install hidden files on peoples' computers that even the system administrators can’t find.'...

'It's very important to remember that it's your intellectual property -- it's not your computer. And in the pursuit of protection of intellectual property, it's important not to defeat or undermine the security measures that people need to adopt in these days.'"

Previous relevant Copyfight coverage: How You Can Help Stop Sony's DRM Abuse and Felten's Four-Step Program for DRM Abusers. And don't miss the latest @ Freedom to Tinker: SonyBMG DRM Customer Survival Kit.