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."

Comments

Early GNAA Post

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck slashdot and IP bans.

In other news...

[Nick Berg's Head]

Government announced that the FBI is no longer issuing a warning to watch out for people with almanacs.
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Re:In other news...

[Nick Berg's Head]

Which puts us in a messy situation... just how do we keep information away from them in a culture based on the free flow of information?

The quick answer is: you don't... you can't... don't try.

The question to ask instead is this: Given that terrorists have full access to information, how do we prevent them from doing anything with it?

This is the same as computer security. Give everybody the source code so that everybody has full information and is on the same level playing field. Okay, now that we all know the full details, how to we prevent people from taking advantage of the situation? In a computer, you have security setup so that a would-be attacker is never given sufficient privelege to take down anything but their own processes.

In the real world, everybody has the same information so how do you prevent people from getting their hands on a sufficient quantity of: uranium, fertilizer, etc. Figure out all the possible attack vectors and work out the best strategy to defend against it. It's a real-life game of chess. You won't prevent all possible attacks (eg: sacrificing a bishop to take your knight) but if you're good you can play sufficiently well to not end up in a checkmate.
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I think it still is a threat

[Sarojin]

but not one that is easily addressed. There's a balance that has to be maintained, and hopefully we're going in the right direction.

Rand?

[Sarojin]

Can we really trust anything that RAND (FAR right think tank) says? They advocate privatizing our EDUCATION system, for chrissakes.

Re:Rand?

[LostCluster]

Not usually... but when they publish information that can be used against the current far-right interest in not pubishing various government data in the name of security, that's a far right group going against the present further-to-the-right position. Kinda indicates where the balance point on this issue seems to be....

Hard to explain

[oob]

it's too hard to explain to uneducated fundamentalists why snarling up internet traffic is a victory for Allah.

As difficult as explaining to the equally uneducated fundamentalist Americans that bombing the fuck out of people then complaining when some of them retaliate is hypocritical?