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Fiber-Optic Map: A Classified Dissertation?
An anonymous reader writes "So you spent all that time researching, compiling and formatting your dissertation ... now what if it became classified information? That's exactly what may end up happening to Sean Gorman's dissertation.
He's compiled a detailed map of American companies and the networks that bind it all together, right down to the very last fibre connection.
The government wants it classified in the interest of national security. Large financial institutions want it classified/destroyed in the interest of economic security. But terrorists would love for this to be published ... it would make their job so much easier." If Gorman can map the fiber network though, doesn't that mean someone else could do the same? Update: 07/09 13:06 GMT by T : Sorry, I blinked past the story as posted yesterday.
Seems awfully familiar. Slashdot should look into applying some AI to submissions to see if it shares a high number of key words with a recent submisison.
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(define (.sig) (cons 'my (list 'other 'car 'is 'a 'cdr)))
http://4horsemen.net
Once it's posted to /., the dupes will ensure it never goes away!
You can read more about this here.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Quick, everyone. Post as many redundant comments as possible about a story being a dupe. It makes for some great reading.
Morons.
I'm sure technology for detecting duplicate Slashdot stories is classified as well. Slashdot editors want it to stay secret. Trolls would like to see it stay secret as well else they'd have less to troll on about.
Only die-hard Slashdot readers would like to see such a technology because it would make our lives much easier.
Not suprising considering that its well known little secrete that half of the scientists at Livermore labs did their disserrtations and had them classifeid on basis of National security..
In some Universities in US it happens every year regularly..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Not the first time it has happened. It is only the latest example. I had my thesis classified (1972) - to this day I still can't distribute the damn thing. I did my work on image enhancements through atmospheric perturbations. Being an amateur astronomer I wanted to be able to see images more clearly and the subject seemed natural for my thesis. In under a year I found it classified. Little did I realize what it was going to be used for.
Does anyone else find it ironic that a dozen or more people post duplicate messages complaining about this being a duplicate post?
Ow- that made my head hurt!
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
Aren't the government and big business pretty much stuck asking him to be 'patriotic' about the whole thing? Isn't it a pointless argument unless he's taken a security oath of some sort?
I had a sucky sig.
And this is exactly why his work must be classified or destroyed. Remember, kids, most recent laws are here not to prevent the bad guys from doing something (by deffinition, they are bad and thus expected to break those laws), but to prevent the average citizen from doing something.
When John A. Phillips designed an A-Bomb using unclassified info for is dissertation at Princeton.
"Much work is lost, for the lack of a little more." -Edward H. Harriman
Let's get the story on all the major news channels!
I sure hope no terrorists get wind of this and get any ideas about blowing up fiber optic trunks... that would be bad.
if he can do the research what's to stop other from doing the same thing. Keeping his work secret won't do any good if you leave the sources out in the open, where someone else can peace together the information for themselves.
Having just finished an advanced degree in Computer Engineering, I feel that I may have a little more experience than Mr. Gorman in the matter of PhD-worthy work. I'd like to point out that a computer program, whether in source or binary form, is not enough to earn a PhD. A dissertation, to earn one's PhD, is a written work that documents the research and describes the methodologies used to arrive at the final product (the fiber map program, in this case). Often, when the product is a computer program, the source is included as an appendix.
Considering that it's the data in the program that is sensitive and was time-consuming to compile, the algorithms themselves are pretty harmless. Why not call his dissertation "A Method for Mapping National-Scale Fiber Optic Networks," get his degree, feed the source to his dog, and get a job with the NSA?
I don't like it much when the government suppresses our rights. However, we all know that one person's rights end where the next one's begin. And if this paper was published, it could jeapordize a lot of people and information. I wonder how he was able to get all this information unchecked if it's supposed to be so secret? Did he have permission, or could any Joe Terrorist go find this stuff out too? It's scary to think what a malicious person or group could do with this information.
Uhm....aren't subscribers supposed to help catch these things? I mean, after all, you get to see the damned article BEFORE it's published and if you see problems, email daddypants@slashdot.org. Or are there just not enough people awake when the stories are previewed to catch them? Just a thought. No, it's not our responsibility to be editors, but a little help couldn't hurt anything.
Blog,Twitter
"But terrorists would love for this to be published ... it would make their job so much easier"
:'(
Isn't this is a good point? I mean, Open Source and Communism are closely linked, and the only way we can get to a world where Open Source / Communism rule, terrorism has to partially exist. So using this logic, all open source buffs are terrorists, in one way or another. hmm...darn.
mirror here for those of you that were unlucky enough to miss it...
He's able to leverage the data so that he can see gains (I'm thinking an entire career) while the folks that have lots to lose (banks, utilities, transportation, US gov) pay for him to help show their achilies heels and bottlenecks. If 25 telcos happen to be sharing the same 'pipe' of fibre, it may not be a terrorist that breaks that connection... regardless of who severs that line, it ain't good for the telcos -- and the telcos should be using his data to reduce risks. Insurance companies and actuaries for corporations and governments love this kind of stuff, as do operations research people. Tell me how much it'll cost to reduce risk to this level, or: I have $10,000,000 -- how can I spend it to ensure that the worst case scenario isn't as bad. Hopefully the information doesn't become classified; hopefully, it's used over the next few years to sure up the bottlenecks and other weak points, making the infrastructure far more robust in the following years.
worry not, terrorist scum. give thinkgeek a couple of days~
The article conspicuously lacks any link to the website of John Young, although it references it in the article. So the two that I found are here and here.
I reckon the continent is spanned by a couple of (a few if you're lucky) fibre optic cables. Chances are you don't even need a map to find them. Just follow the line of solar powered repeaters, one of the handful of roads or the single railway line. Alternatively, just look for the line of brightly coloured posts marking the cables, in an attempt to stop people accidentally digging them up!
Take your ditch digger into a remote area, carve a 100 metre ditch perpendicular to the road and bingo, one severed optical fibre cable.
A point i'd like to make:
I'd much rather America's infrastructure was resilient, so that it was near-unbreakable even when the details are known, like a good crypto algo, than to have government and financial institutions cowering behind the false security of secrecy.
The report should be published, along with weekly updates!
The majority of Slashdotters, I imagine, are not subscribers, so I'm not directing this toward those of you who are. You guys are paying for duplicate stories (not that major papers don't do this, too, but still). That kinda sucks, and I can understand why you'd be upset.
/Slashdot/ ...
But to everyone else bitching to hell and back about duplicate posts (in redundant, duplicate posts to begin with), I say:
Big. Freaking. Deal.
If you don't like it sooooo much--if you have such a problem with the content of Slashdot--STOP READING SLASHDOT. You're not paying anything, you're not forced to read any of the sections, and no one here owes you anything.
I don't understand why people who are pissed off so much by typos and accidental duplicate story posts (it's not like it's done on purpose) would continue coming here just to bitch about it in the comment threads. Oh, wait, this is
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
Well you cannot keep information like this secure forever. Someone will always get it. The question is : will we allow the US government to to deprive us of our liberties to the extent that the gov't really can keep this information for ourselves, and only let it out when it's in their interest for a building to get bombed, or do we fight to keep information free?
People who claim this information is a security risk are looking at things the wrong way round...
Here in Ohio we had a backhoe hit one of UUnet's main fiber backbone knocking out service for most of the state for 3 hours.
I think that his thesis should be published and given to all the fine backhoe operators out there who thought that "that cable didn't look it was being used".
Just your average farmer.
Just your average Farmer
Thank You.
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
I am tried of the debate of whether to hassle Gorman.
Why isn't anyone stepping up to complain about the lies and misinformation of building and being sold a resilent internet? I mean, that was a goal of the original ARPAnet, we know how to do it. I've been told by all the big name backbones that they offer high relability, resilent networking, which appears to be a lie about their product.
I want the real problem fix, fix the networking!, build a truely resilent network backbone.
Here, lets say I was speaking up about the fact that there is public information available that would allow terrorist attacks on our country by means of cutting our data communcations. Simply by saying this publicly I could reasonably be causing a risk to national security. My statement might cause a terrorist to become aware that the information is available,and cause him/her to go looking where they otherwise wouldnt have. The government with the power to shut me up might censor me to avoid this risk. By doing so, however, they might put the country more at risk because now the problem will not get the attention, and may not get fixed before someone wishing to do harm stumbles on it by themselves.
What if Im a person with communist ideas? May I speak about them? Speaking about them might insite some group of people to riot or attack some US interest. Am I a risk to national security. What if I speak up against war? Am I a risk to national security. What if I speak publicly and ask the postal service to strike, and that causes a national mail crisis. Am I a risk to national security?
Maybe you havent been paying attention to the news. Have you heard about Hong Kong, and how the Chinese Govt. wants to instate their "Subversion, and National Security laws" in HK just like there is in main land China? Do you think our country would be better with if we were reduced to the pittiful lack of free speach rights they have in China? Have you heard of the Great Firewall of China that protects Chinese "National Security" ? It will never be the right of the government to say who has the right to speak. Not on the basis of their 6th grade education. Not on the basis of National Security, not on the basis of "subversion", not on the basis of "Lewdness", not on the basis of "Morality". Any line drawn on the basis of an unclear or subjective measure will necessarily result in abuse and the eventual erosion of the most wonderful freedom available. (for those of you who are dense :) thats free speech)
I worked once with a guy who had worked in anti-sub warfare in the USN. He said Clancy was onto all sorts of classified stuff (_and_ a lot of baloney, too). Seems he was able to piece together a number of unclassified bits into a (synergistically) classified piece.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
I blinked past the story as posted yesterday.
Toothpicks lightly jammed to prop open eyelids.
So, now anyone wanting to replicate Gorman's work will need to take the next 4-6 years off, have an advisor who will keep you from going down dead ends as Gorman's advisor probably did, get paid by someone (Mr. Bin Laden?) during that time, work in a newly, informational hostile environment, and keep updating your map even as you map new areas. Not a piece of cake.
Let us go to the stars, dream new dreams, and renew the embers of hope that have long since grown cold.
It's quite simple, really. I'm supposed to PAY for the privilege of seeing the stories early, so that I can write email to the editors telling there is a duped story, and have it IGNORED ?
Seriously, dupes are the only big complaint I have about slashdot. And seriously, it's not that hard to figure something out to prevent them. Regardless, it's even easier to read the email sent to the editors warning them.
Check out our infosecurity industry blog: http://securitymusings.com/
Slashdot has always been this way. It's still got the good stories, at least my 30+ posts per month seem to suggest I care about them.
;).
It's just that Slashdot has an audience of computer nerds. SCO is threatening to dismantle a piece of software that means a lot to the community, so obviously, we're watching everything they do. Microsoft is the biggest company on the planet, and anything they do has great ramifications on us and our industry. So obviously, we're going to eye them closely.
And of course moderators are going to cull stories that don't agree with their personal beliefs. Even with meta-mod, moderators are totally anonymous and therefore they can have no fear when hitting the "Troll" button on viable stories with a dissenting point of view. In fact, I think the rarity of this is a testament to the honor of those mods who do read at -1.
I read at 2, because I don't care what newbies, radicals and cowards have to say. I should be a republican.
Oh, and if you want to read really interesting, informational or insightful posts, add me as a friend
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I have asked this question a number of times, but I am still confused.
The Internet was designed to be durable. It is built with many points of failure and it is supposed to function even with many of those points disabled.
Why is it then that a backhoe operator in California can knock out Internet access or at least cripple traffic for the entire country?
Is it simply that there is not enough redundancy to make this possible? If that is the case, forget about supressing research like Gorman's and increase the infrastructure.
Regrettably, I must agree that spilling this information out into the public domain is not the best. Computer security concerns should be publicized, but physical security issues should not. They differ insofar as the means of resolving security issues. If some operating system has a vulnerability, it is repaired once and the patch gets disseminated to all affected systems. You cannot simply build a stronger door and pass that door around to all affected sites.
Nevertheless, we should make efforts to nullify the vulnerability so that when this information becomes public, the point is moot and a few bombs destroying some fiber will do nothing.
Join Tor today!
The most puzzling aspect of this story is that the job of mapping the US internet is sufficient to earn a Ph.D. Of course, it is possible that there are aspects of the author's thesis that go beyond what is advertised above.
I admit that this author is not alone--in the CS department where I work, "experimental" Ph.D. theses featuring poorly designed experiments or no scientific work at all (which appears to be the case above) are a constant problem.
Perhaps this is an accident of the youth of the field.
Has there been any mention of making the information, rather than his collection of the information, classified? sounds like another case of putting a top-secret band-aid on a sympthom and forgetting about the disease it self.
Q: Which came first, the chicken, or the egg?
A: I'm sorry but reasons of national security that question cannot be answered.
"Knock the stones together, guys!"
Instead, the work should be used to increase our knowledge of our infrastructure so that we can know our own weaknesses. If we are aware of our weaknesses, we can then do something to protect them.
There are probably many legitimate applications that can be built using this knowledge. For instance, my company is launching a Web service which may someday have millions of users worldwide. It would be very nice to be able to analyze our nation's infrastructure for the most secure and reliable places to co-lo our servers.
Those who trade freedom for security will lose both, and deserve neither" -- Ben Franklin
At least the write-up made sense this time. The previous time this story was posted should go into the HOF for its poor description of what the article was about.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Is your identity classified too, AC? ;)
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I don't know. I don't recall seeing as many dup posts, same story different day, and old news as I notice now. Maybe I've just found other places that get me my news fix as fast as slashdot. Of course, I've already been modded down into oblivion...imagine that.
Then again, maybe I'm just ragging today.
The article conspicuously lacks any link to the website of John Young, although it references it in the article. So the two that I found are here and here.
Sorry, I blinked past the story as posted yesterday.
That's okay - the writeup was much better this time.
my original post has becomed classified?
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
..time to classify think geek's internet map!
Terrorist training: "Attack the purple bit..no no the one above the orange spidery bit..
was it my comment that was redundant or was it this story? If it was this story, then my comment was only redundant relative to the first story, but if this story was not redundant, then my comment should be marked as a flamebait. Moderators on drugs.
You can't handle the truth.
Will I no longer see this story if I get my comments right this time?
I've always said that terrorists don't have brains - so you really don't have a whole lot to worry about...
If they did have brains, they'd realize that just by riding a bicycle down a bike path, that there's loads of orange signposts every half mile or so saying "DANGER! DO NOT DIG HERE! FIBER OPTIC CABLE. CALL BEFORE DIGGING!"
What terrorist needs a precise map anyway? By definition, a TERRORIST is some moron who wants to create havoc... So being precise isn't what they're after. Simply opening up two or three manhole covers around some financial institution and dropping in a stick of dynamite would probably sever any telecom/utility infrastructure in the vicinity...
Going out on a remote path and digging up the fiber would do the trick (hell, it's only 3 feet down...)
Ummm, tossing a large steel cable across a set of high-tension lines out in the middle of no where would do the trick too...
And if one wants to find out where the electrical infrastructure is, just look at some aerial photos.... Show up in the middle of the night with a bicycle chain, and toss it over the fence and into the transformer legs...
But by all means, go ahead and classify this guy's dissertation - it'll make us feel good anyway...
yea, like you have a life. you're sitting there reading this crap.
mod this parent up. it's a voice that should be heard, even if it is offtopic.
Slashdot editors must have the memory spans of a gnat, or Homer...
"Ooh look a butterfly! Whee! Oh a bird! Wow! Look at the funny kitten!!!!"
Seriously though... do the editors even READ the articles that get posted?!
My patience is infinite, my time is not.
Hes a anstromer from that era and famous computer literi.
One piece of information, by itself innocious, but a lot of such pieces aggregated together constitute a roadmap for hostiles. This is why security people seem paranoid and compulsivly secretive.
Since when did we become a nation of wimps? If it were up to our current government, the biology of the human body would be suppressed, so that "terrorists" wouldn't know where to shoot us in order to kill us. Just like this case - if we can figure it out, so can they. This information is just like any other information -- it can be used for good or evil. Obviously there is information that is more pertinent than other information, the size of Jenna Bush's bra, for instance, would be considered by most to be unimportant. How that information was obtained; however, would be a little more important. In what way is our government censoring this information any different than what the Chinese government does? Perhaps he should release this onto Freenet. It would finally validate what Ian Clarke has been saying for the last few years. Censorship must be eliminated if we are to have a democratic society.
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It's likely he used the traceroute utility, and correlated hostnames with domain name records, combined that with geolocation systems.
Not too novel or ingenious, just tedious. Will the US ban traceroute now?
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
This quote really disturbs me ...
"He should turn it in to his professor, get his grade -- and then they both should burn it," said Richard Clarke, who until recently was the White House cyberterrorism chief.
Knowledge should be used to empower. Knowledge should be passed along from generation to generation. It is our knowledge that makes this (or any country) worthy of defending.
How about finding ways to better secure our national infrastructure instead of "persecuting" researchers. What's next? The Bush administration will outlawing thinking?
Maybe I am just overreacting, but the above quote from this article reminds me of The Burning of the Library of Alexandria.
Does not work.
:)
This is yet another case of groups wanting to keep the public dumb, supposedly for security. But what they seem to forget is that that way lies...no, that just IS a fascist cencorship.
Not only is it useless (as the blurb states, what has been done once can be done again), but the map itself can be very usefull for purposes of statistical analysis, extrapolation, troubleshooting, and it also just makes a cool map
An analogy would be classifying a map of all the universities in a country. Trust me, blow them up (and the students/prof's in them, of course), and that country will be in deep shit in a year's time, even more so than blowing up the government/some financial centre/some computers.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
But terrorists would love for this to be published ... it would make their job so much easier
yes, isnt their *just a little* paranoia in that statement? What is more likely, that A) the World-trade-center event was rather isolated and abhorent or B) There are vast numbers of Evil Terrorists(tm) plotting from within America just waiting -- literally foaming at the mouth in breathless anticipation -- of this kind of information in order to plot their Next Terrorist Attack(tm).
Really, you yanks need to get out more. The rest of the world deals with these kinds of criminals ALL THE TIME(!) and you dont see them in a paranoid funk do you? Your wife/mother/daughter is more likely to be raped and killed by your husband/father/son than they are to die bc of the Next Terrorist Attack(tm). You gonna lock up anyone who looks cross-eyed?
I understand the world trade center was a very tragic and emotional event, but really -- CALM THE HELL down and start to think rationally again. Your government/military has your nation whipped in such a lather that *YOU* are *really* a greater threat to World Peace than any Evil Terrorist(tm).
It was not OK for the US to invade Afghanistan because they cant/wont extradite osama binladen*. It was not OK for the US to invade Iraq because they didnt like sadam hussein*. It will not be OK the next time the US decides to invade %somewhere%.
*setting up these straw-men, and demonizing them was a propaganda tactic meant to shift the public's views of these events... instead of understanding the events as Germany->Poland style invasions, justifying them as "go after this Real Evil Dude(tm)" is pretty straight-forward propaganda... the fictional rationale is irrelvant really. The bottom line is that the USA just invaded/occupied two nations in the last few years. These subtleties may be lost on the domestic audience, but the rest of the world A) doesnt buy it and B) sees the USA as a rogue nation... but I digress.
PS to the Brits amoungst us; please toss Blair out of office for this misdead - but dont elect the god-darn conservatives in his place, they will only be worse.
The only way to fix a weakness is to reveal it. Once it is revealed then we can take appropriate measures.
I say publish it! if he can figure it out so will Al Queda eventually. Instead of hiding something fix it! I could understand giving appropriate time to fix the situation before publishing the weakness, but to not publish it at all is not healthy.
When an company or gov't entity hides or covers up their own sensitive information, I could see this being classification.
However, when they make a private individual or entity cover up such information, wouldn't it better be called "supression", "oppression", or something similar?
How can they make a private indivual cover up information not gained from already-classified sources?
Why did these companies put it out on the web in the first place? Is it required by law to do so?
-- taking over the world, we are.
This is exactly the sort of thing that real world spies do. They don't generally get tuxedo's and cool gadgets ... they get papers and magazines and trade publications and they spend their time clipping things out and cross referencing. It has long been known that you can find out secrets by putting together lots of public information.
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
Deja vu is just a change in the matrix... They know...
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
Anyone have a link to the dissertation?
Thx,
Mohammad Al-Kabir Bin Salmon
I agree that having this guy's thesis as common public knowledge is bad. But, he can do this. The government already wants him to not publish, but, what if he worked with say, the FBI, NSA, and CIA, and sell the data that he has gathered to companies that have been cleared by the fore mentioned authorities? Pretty simple, and he would pay for his college pretty quick.
I know a few Telcos and cable providers that would love to have the maps he has made so far. Plus the government could see where the US is ACTUALLY more in danger of being attacked.
Plus, I would get really pissed if for some reason, a terrorist cut a long haul fiber line and I couldn't call my girlfriend in Japan.
eh, this sucks, I am going back to bed....
I stopped wondering that years ago. Slashdot in general, and the YRO section in particular, is one big trollfest. Enjoy!
sulli
RTFJ.
I'm not going to repeat my comments from yesterday's topic here, but instead invite you to read my thoughts on Defending disserations and visionaries and Part 2 of the same. Please read both links since they are part of the same post (split due to a mis-clicked Submit instead of Preview button).
The question I have for you is are you cleared to read your own disseration? You wrote it, but have you received government clearance to access your thesis. I'm also curious which department determined it should be classified. The NRO?
The other issue in Sean Gorman's case that is slightly different from yours is that your thesis was (presumably) classified after it was published since you haven't mentioned anything about not receiving your degree. Sean Gorman is faced with being denied his degree because his work has been classified before he can complete his disseration.
What I found interesting is that a 30 year old CS theory is leading edge Cartography.
Fiber-optics as terrorist targets...blah....
Want to see something that would be MUCH scarier if it got hit? And, I might add, a target that would seriously hurt us that is OUTSIDE our borders? Try this:
http://armageddononline.tripod.com/tsunamis.htm
(I'm on the east coast btw...this is scary stuff)
-PARANOIA is fun. D20 is not fun. The Computer says so.
-The Computer
I worked at a company that takes paper maps of major telcom companies' (ie. AT&T, ComCast) fiber runs, and puts them in a proprietary computerized form. Some of the maps, only one person at the telcom regional office knows what the various symbols mean, and/or what parts or the run do/do not actually follow the mapped routes.
Record keeping during the 'boom' of fiber optic installation was generally pretty poor. I mean, if the companies themselves don't know what the hell some of these maps mean, how's 'Al Terrorist?' ;) Besides, it's not like most anyone can easily splice into a fiber line to 'listen in.' Simply cut lines, yes, but most companies that own fiber run monitoring tools to watch for physical breaks and signal strength/quality, so spliced 'taps' most likely -will- be seen.
There's no wrong way, to eat a Rhesus...
It probably has something to do with the costs associated with uranium enrichment projects, if I were to hazard a guess. Maybe it's valuable to someone who wants to figure out how much a program would cost?
Amtrak own the right of way there, and several companies lay fiber there because its easier than securing the right of way elsewhere.
So don't blame Amtrak for UUNET's failure to secure their infrastructure.
I live in Northern Ireland, a place that actually has terrorists, and for years they did block information like this. For example, government buildings such as courthouses and jails were blanked out on maps.
This is silly. Terrorists kill people in big cataclysmic shocking ways. They dont blow up our internet. Gimme a freakin break. How many power stations, switches, nodes, dams have been blown up in isreal???? none.
How about finding ways to better secure our national infrastructure instead of "persecuting" researchers. What's next? The Bush administration will outlawing thinking?
Welcome to 1984, my friend. I've been saying it and saying it until I'm blue in the face... the only thing Orwell was wrong about was the year... the world (well, the USA at least) *is* evolving towards something like what he described...
The sad thing is, there's still time to do something about it... but the problem is, most Americans are lazy, apathetic and "Fat, dumb and happy." As long as the economy doesn't go *completely* to shit (I mean, like, the Great Depression), and there's food on the table, and the telephone and cable TV work, most Americans seem to not give a fuck, about what's going on here.
It's time for us as American citizens to top standing idly by and watching our basic Constitutional rights get eroded away by power-mad, corrupt politicians, in the name of "War on Terrorism", "War on Drugs," "War on Communism," or whatever the fuck the flavor of the day is.
Let's vote these fucking major party fuckers OUT of office, and end this cycle of politicians who get elected and then do nothing but work to establish their own power base.... demand term limits, increased governmental accountability, the restoration of Constitutional rights that have been raped and pillaged by these fuckers.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Umm...SubtleNuance. Here's a nuance for you. It's not about 9/11, or terrorism, or Iraq. It's basically people taking advantage of a situation to push through their own agendas. Agendas, if you look, they had tried in the past to push through, and failed because the anti-(whatever that may be) lobby shot them down. Fear is a great laxative when it comes to relieving, legal, social and political blockages.
and is available as the X10 camera...
*_s_l_a_s_d_o_t_s_u_c_k_s_*_s_l_a_s_h_d_o_t_s_u_x
s_/_____\____ADVERTISE\___ON_______/__P_\______s
l|___I___|__SLASHDOT___\LOW RATES_|___U__|______l
a|__LOVE_`.__Call_1-800-BLOWTACO__|____D__:_____a
s`___M____|_____________|________\|_____G_|_____s
h_\__I____|_/_______/__\\\___--___\\_____E_:____h
d__\__C___\/____--~~__________~--__|_\___&_|____d
o___\__H___\_-~____________________~-_\__T_|____o
t____\__A____\_________.--------.______\|A_|____t
s______\__E__\______//_________(_(__C__\_C_|____s
u_______\__L.__C____)_________(_(___C___|O_/____u
c_______/\_|___C_____)/_MORE_\_(____C___|_/_____c
k______/_/\|___C_____)|_DUPES|__(___C___/__\____k
s_____|___(____C_____)\__!!__/__//__C_/_____\___s
*_____|____\__C_____\\_________//_(__/_______|__*
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Considering on a 1-10 scale, 1 being the higest, an average person has geek rating of 9, your average system admin has geek rating of 4, and Sean Gorman has geek rating of 1! He must have proud parents.
I teach part time at a local University and I'm currently working with six Masters students on their dissertations.
:
They started in January and will hand in by August 15th. After I grade - and I know their work intimately since I approved topics and see drafts every six weeks or so - the Chairwoman of the department will grade them as well and then that's it. They're done.
So who the hell raises the bell when a dissertation crosses the line? I teach Econometrics so I know National Security implications aren't so readily possible, but this does make a reasonable query possible
Do most US Universities have spooks - or "friends" - in the faculty? Folks that will send over an "interesting" dissertation for approval?
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folks... there are dissertations which are still classified. research funded by DARPA/NSF/NSA/NRL/... regularly goes through such review. e.g. Dr Joe Goodman's (Prof Emeritus, Stanford) PhD thesis (Stanford in the early 60s) is still classified. must have been a helluva work...
Its economic guerilla war.
The idea is not to hit the enemy where he has you way overpowered... instead you sneak behind his back and disable the machinery supporting his capacity to make war. Like not fighting powerful enemy soldiers in the trench, instead you kill off the supply line so the soldiers don't get fed.
I don't think they have all that much to worry about trying to destroy America by damaging its infrastructure though... I think Congress is doing a fine job of doing this already when you consider how fast this country [is losing || has lost] its manufacturing capacity. I think we are fast becoming a pig fed intravenuously by the rest of the world, and its once powerful muscles won't twitch once the economic metabolism has fallen below the threshold needed to support itself.
Right now, we are living on running up debt.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Obscurity ?!?! We've come all this way and we still haven't learned a thing :( Everyone should know this kind of stuff so if you saw someone messing around you'd know which areas were important and which weren't. Public AWARENESS is the key not ignorance...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Except that, since they've now built their own power base, voting them out of office is going to be a LOT harder than you think. You'll need popular support for that, and getting enough popular support requires either their cooperation or the commission of "questionable" activities.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
All of this information is available for purchase from MapInfo. All you need to do is to order the maps for telecom deployment.
I wonder if the government is going to control who they sell to?
Why does anyone pay attention to the law anymore? Just release the stuff. Let them start storming campuses and throwing professors in federal prisons. Maybe the revolution will come sooner...
The media is taking advantage of peoples ignorance of getting a PhD. The argument they made was publish or perish, but that's not really true.
Publishing is a means giving credence to ones abilities, and especially useful when looking for a job.. but as it seems, he has gotten more than a fair share of media recognition.
In the case of tenure track positions, publishing supposedly reflects one's abilities, and therefore the grant money brought in..
but Mr. G is not a tenure track anything.
and is either blowing steam out of his ass, or the Post is just looking for something to hype.
Except that, since they've now built their own power base, voting them out of office is going to be a LOT harder than you think. You'll need popular support for that, and getting enough popular support requires either their cooperation or the commission of "questionable" activities.
Heh. I never said it would be easy. If anything, I'm convinced that it won't be easy.. because, as you said, you need popular support. And, to re-iteratate my point - most American's just don't care.
Which is why I do what little bit I can to spread the word about these issues, and try to raise the awareness level, among my friends and associates, and the people I interact with.
Hopefully everybody else who cares is doing likewise. Maybe all together, we can make a difference.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Now, who precicely benifits from people being scared.... Cutting fiber may harm the internet, but terrorists would rather kill a bunch of people. In any town of any size, there are things that if blown up/attacked/sabotaged would kill many, many people rather quickly. As far as I know, only a very few (less than four) cities and towns have done anything about it.
The terrorism card is being used to push partisan political views into law, and actually addressing any of the problems isn't the point. The point is to scare people, frighten them, and stampeed them into allowing very bad laws to be passed without a stink. Someone once pointed out that I could be wrong. I'd rather be free and die in a free country because it is free than to turn America into a police state that total protection from terrorism would require. One cannot be free and not be willing to protect freedom. Even if it is the freedom to be stupidly wrong sometimes. (read: be a democrat).
I'm so tired of jerks teling me how stupid I am because I don't support Bush or his policy, and how I don't deserve any rights because I don't support him. Get a grip, ditto-heads. Freedom means I'm allowed to not agree with you, burn the flag, protest, and vote how I want, even if you don't like it.
Read my sig.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Oh brother. The primates on Capital Hill _still_ haven't figured it out. You can't make everything a secret, for fear of someone creating what intelligence people call a "binary."
p s. html
First:
http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/cables.html
More to the point:
http://www.wiltelcommunications.com/map/
Which you can now overlay with:
http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/more_isp_ma
I'll leave it to someone else to create a list of the long haul providers in the US.
Or, you could simply track down the issue of Wired (8.04 or 8.05, I think) that had a map showing the networks of the top dozen or so companies doing long haul work in the US.
EOL
Does anyone rember in the early 90's(april 13 1992) when the Chicago freight tunnel was breached by a piling in the Chicago River?
You can read more about this here Sorry didn't find a free source.
At the time i was working as a researcher for a lan surveying company (No we wern't involved in the accident) and my job was to find these records so accidents like this didn't happen.
Hey, someone made a Sean Conneryizer that translates slashdot into Sean Connery speak! This makesh dupesh intereshting!!
Agreed.
Though, if historical trends hold, the next "Great Depression" may be forthcoming. This administration (like the Republicans of the 1920s) is doing every thing in their power to set it in motion by putting 95% of the wealth in the hands of 10% (or less) of the population.
Both parties are now only shells of respectable pasts. We are becoming a nation goverened by corporate boards via campaign contributions (no longer considered BRIBES). The WTO is the WORST offense as they are trying to give up US sovereignty in terms of trade policy. Americans cannot exercise wage competition against foreign oppressed people who will work for $.10 a day and no bathroom breaks while being supervised by thugs with sub-machine guns.
Yes, America does NEED another party that is RADICALLY different then Republicans and Democrats who are now owned by corporate CEOs. Furthermore our media is becoming ever-more consolidate (just like the Hearst days) into the hands of a very few companies. The recent FCC decision by Powell Jr only worsens the situation.
Perot and Nader may have seemed and appeared as crazy election throwing maniacs at the time. However, in retrospect they were dead right. Both Democrats AND Republicans MUST GO!!!!! They are collectively bankrupting the working classes of this nation through globalization and corporatization. Our government must rested from the hands of CEOs and returned to the hands of the people.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
I think not, since they realize they'd be the target of lots of nuclear missiles because they blew up a large of the infastructure and millions are pissed because they can't get any porn.
Plan A: Lets use an infrastructure map to take out internet access in northern California.
plan B: Lets fly two Boeing passenger aircraft into the world trade center.
Don't think these people aren't badass enough to go about creating the infrastructure map, but isn't plan B just that much more obvious? Is there really a shortage of known targets in the US to the point where we need maps of underground wires?
If terrorists want to make terror, they'll find a way. period. If someone feels strongly enough about something, there's no getting in their way. period. Noone is going to be inspired to commit acts of terror by this document, they just might be inclined to target information architecture over human life which IMHO isn't neccesarily a bad thing...
Brian
You're correct. This isn't about terrorism. It's about protecting the governments' ability to eavesdrop.
Think about this:
Companies are composed of people. People form relationships. Via these relationships, information is passed, and discussed - feedback loops are set up. Emergent properties form (some say emergent systems may be intelligent - that the human brain is nothing more than a sentient emergent system). Memes travel. Thoughts are passed. Good (as in "surviving") thought memes travel far, and become mantra. Bad (dieing) thought memes go nowhere.
Now - think about the "six degrees of separation" problem: Figure out a way to map out the relationships (something like Friendster, but doing it outside of the "social" grouping). Those relationships are your network of information travel. You can target wide, or narrow - depending on what you want to pass. Now, go another step further: map out not only relationships - but cause/effect relationships, to see how the dynamic of the network changes, how the feedbacks change with inputs, how the inputs change the feedback paths, which can change the effects, ad nauseum. Major network science here. Now - figure out a meme: a meme that can help a person in the company - or the entire company! Or - a meme that if successful (something like a combo of greed and growth - classical capitalistic memes) within the social groupings - spreads far and wide, given the network. Embeds itself deep - and starts working. Perhaps further memes are inserted, to perform other "tasks" - to cause certain people to do certain things, whether they are aware of it or not. Maybe the company entity grows (if it is a "good" meme) - or maybe it is destroyed (an "Enron" meme chain?)...
Imagine the power an individual or a group could wield with such methods... Such methods are currently in use - on us! - in the form of advertising. However, they aren't as directed. Perhaps my idea is impossible with current tech (maybe such a social network mapping tool would require something like an MPP machine). Maybe there are effects - undesired effects - that can't be worked out - 6DOS working against you - or affecting other companies in bad ways (malformed or not, the memes may spread to other companies that you don't intend to be affected - the networks aren't limited to only the company - people have friends, relatives - and connections exist there).
Ok, I have said enough - this must be posted anon - if such a thing was built, I am sure that person or group would be "disappeared" in some manner. If it actually worked - well, death could be the result (and think about this - what if the emergent systems are intelligent - ie, corporate emergent entities - the mapping of relationships and insertion of memes to affect the actions of the entity would be seen by that entity as a "bad" situation - surgery may be required, much the same as if we sensed our brain doing something "wrong")...
We are but ants in the anthill, unaware of larger intelligences about us...
--- Mentifex
This link, from the FAS & Arvin S. Quist, might be useful background. I'm still plowing thru it.
l
http://www.fas.org/sgp/library/quist2/index.htm
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
Was this information ever given to anybody? Are there any other copies around? We could have it posted on the web up here in Canada. Our government has no problem with that sort of thing.
Being exmilitary, and knowing all about Com-Sec, and OpSec, I say classify it, give him an A++ and hire him full time with the NSA as a consultant and pay him some hefty $$. Sure the info is available there for anyone (as stated in a few other posts) but why make it easier for them? Oersonally, I am against cencorship, and a staunch believer in the BILL of RIGHTS, but sometimes you need to weigh freedom of the press (or speech) to the security of a nation.
Sean's thesis may not be accessible, but other works based on it are:i _econ_ geog.pdf
http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/cyberspace/Maleck
On my desk I have a book published by the local phone company (QWest). In it are listed the exact locations (street adresses) of every potential terrorist target in town here.
A terrorist using this published information can find all of the local government buildings, and large gathering locations of people, such as the local mall.
In the intrests of national security these phone books must be classified, and the locations of shopping malls kept secret.
In Soviet Russia telephone books were kept classified for reasons of national security, so it is not that unreasonable to do so here in the USA. After all we have been adopting most of the Soviet Union's other security policies lately.