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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.
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.
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.
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
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
It is easy enough for anybody to find out anything that they want about the US, but it is not due to ease of access. It is that we are a hetergenous society. Anybody can move easily here and simply look. This article, and some of people act like this info is difficult to obtain. It isn't. Want to locate fiber optics? Follow the rail system, the high tension power lines, and the highways. The installation involved obtaining ROWs which were almost always easier to follow other ROWs. As to finding out a set of central offices, simply get a job at a rboc or a power company. Once inside the company, the info is freely available.
For those who think this is bad, look at the old soviet union. Even for all their hard security (which seems to be the direction that we are headed), we knew most of their soft spots. So even if we truely implement the same society that Soviet Union had, we would still be a main target. Any time you have fixed assets, it is a target. period.
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!
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)
That and/or check the URL's. That should actually be easier, since they should either match, or not. No fuzzy checking.
And, since the guts of the code could be implemented by a first-term CS undergrad, why *hasn't* this been done?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I remeber the outrage that by taking out one telephone exchange you could sever the east and west coasts of Australia during the olypics. And IIRC taking out another 4 centres would disconnect Australia from the world.
Sorry, I blinked past the story as posted yesterday.
That's okay - the writeup was much better this time.
Spurious assumption. Here's the differences:
On the bright side, the typical Achmed the Attacker seems to be pretty handy with an AK or RPG, but he doesn't appear to be the sharpest implement in Allah's toolbox. But then again, that's what we were saying about India and China a few years before we started outsourcing all of our tech work there.
I still maintain that the best strategy (mid to long term) is to actually start acting like the good guys instead of just blowing shit up all over the planet and then pretending to be amazed that the natives don't understand that it was for their own good. Perhaps if we spent a little less on security and a little more on aid, our kids won't have to reap the legacy of Bush's $500 billion dollar a year and rising defence budget, and all those Men In Black who pop out of the woodwork at times like this can take early retirement and go fishing. Wouldn't that be a nice world?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
http://www.computerworld.com/networkingtopics/netw orking/story/0,10801,75539,00.html
Scale free networks. A network that fits this characteristic can be significantly degraded by removing well-connected nodes.
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?
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.