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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.
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
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?
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
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.
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)
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
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.
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.
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.
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
Is your identity classified too, AC? ;)
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Sorry, I blinked past the story as posted yesterday.
That's okay - the writeup was much better this time.
..time to classify think geek's internet map!
Terrorist training: "Attack the purple bit..no no the one above the orange spidery bit..
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.
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.
What's more frightening is that this man is so adamant about taking information away from his customers and shareholders. This information has been public domain for several years - long enough for Mr. Gorman to do his research. If some so-called terrorist wanted to do some damage, the information is there. I doubt your ShadowyFigure(TM) will say, "Damn! Now that this is all correlated, I have the perfect spot to plan my attack!" Right. From the terrorist angle, hitting the World Trade Center was a high-profile, symoblic target. It also helped our current situation by inciting mass hysteria, civil liberties problems, and to help our slide into recession, since we're all afraid of going anywhere or spending money because the Terrorists may be hiding somewhere. Nobody knows for sure, mind you, but they're 'out there...'
The public should have every right to know what is in their neighborhoods. "Does all that openness still make sense?" Yup, sure does - as soon as you start hiding facts from the public, you start weakening the country. Our government supposedly couldn't stop the attacks in New York with advance information - now you expect them to police every supposed 'weak point' in the country, while classifying that information?
The less we know, the more hysteria and crap we can be fed.
"If there's hope, it lies in the proles..."
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.
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