Slashdot Mirror
Rand Report Says Geospatial Data Not Big Threat
scupper writes "An article in Federal Computer Week came out Monday that announced The Rand Corporation has published a report (sponsored by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency) concerning the threat that publicly available geospatial data on US Government web sites might pose in the hands of terrorists that 'found that less than one percent of the 629 federal data sets they studied appeared to have notable value to would-be attackers', according to the report titled: Mapping the Risks:Assessing the Homeland Security Implications of Publicly Available Geospatial Information. A curious 'finding' from page xxv of the summary not mentioned in the article states: 'However, we cannot conclude that publicly accessible federal geospatial information provides no special benefit to the attacker. Neither can we conclude that it would benefit the attacker.' The release of this report reminded me strangly of the Washington Post news story about a George Mason University graduate student, whose dissertation mapped critical fiber optic network infrastructure."
Nick Berg's Head (779033)
--
Watch me be decapitated! [freecache.org]
Now that's just cold.
What is their definition of a data set? A data set for the NSA/CIA/FBI may have attributes for military locations, population density, etc.
Now, if they get their hands on a data set by the Parks Commisioner, indicating locations of forests with attributes relating to the trees, I highly doubt that would be threatening.
So a 1% possibility that a data set may be useful to terrorists is subjective, as it depends on their objective.
In the right hands, any data set can potentialy enhance the ability of terrorists. And of course, don't forget. Private companies are the ones that sell most of the data to the government (see US Census for example). Why bother going after government publication of data and not control to whom a company sells the data?
As for the fiber optic map... It was useful not because you can cut cables (redundancy does exist), but because you know the ends of cables are to where corporations are (that is why the dissertation did get credit in the first place). Also, you know that where the biggest bandwidth cable go to is a prime target, as it promises a network depended coproration/entity that could be damaged by loss of communications.
I remember when the story about mapping the fibreoptic infrastructure broke.
I also remember several months later, massive power grid failures in the US and UK among others, all within a reasonably short timeframe.
I thought even back then, while the two aren't directly related, that there was a possibility that someone had figured out the electrical grid chokepoints sufficiently to do a test run of sorts, to see if it worked or not, possibly inspired by the fibreoptic story.
My point is this - if you were a terrorist and wanted to hit hard again, why not follow standard military doctrine and cut off the enemy's power grid first? After all, we do it, so why wouldn't they do it as well? In all the confusion, that's when you conduct your real strike.
Thankfully, since the information is public, we too can look for potential chokepoints and demand of governments that they fix them or mitigate the risk by building in redundancy. If we don't keep this information public, we will not be able to hold governments accountable when they don't make the effort and the system fails when it's most needed. And if you can no longer hold your government accountable when they screw up, because you don't have access to the information you need to do it, then you are no longer in control, and they are ruling you, not governing on behalf of you.
Visceral Psyche Films
What an organization researches is very different than bias towards the establishment. RAND advocates relaxing drug policy, especially for marijuana. They were the original group who said (and with evidence) that Vietnam was a bad idea. They said this even before we got involved in any significant way. Finally, RAND recommends a moderate Islamic state for middle eastern states we "liberate," which doesn't jive with the religious right's plans. Just because RAND researches for the military doesn't mean it's obligated to make things sound good to warmongers and Republicans (are they different?). RAND is damn objective for the politically sensitive work they perform.
Any information is really only valuable when you have enough creativity and common sense to make something of it. People aren't trained to think "outside of the box", but given enough time and motivation, things will happen.
I'm not saying that we should keep all of this info under lock and key(among dozens of other safeguards), but we should at least make a few more independent analysies(sp?) of the threat the data poses.
The thing that I think would be alot more interesting is to take the layouts of some of these buildings; turn them into maps for some FPS games (UT2k4 is my fav) and figure out the best way to attack/defend them. (I've been wanting to do this for my college campus for awhile now.... let players spawn in their dorm rooms... consider it preparation for the giant paintball war we're planning for halloween)
yeah, just my 2 cents..
"Operating systems suck: you're better off using only the BIOS" --trainsaw.com