Are maps and blueprints on the 'net a security risk?

August 18, 2005 1:59 PM

I often get called to appear on the nightly news whenever they need a guy to talk about computers, the internet or blogging. This time, it's a piece about "how terrorists use the net to organize and plan attacks" to be aired in a series for the week leading up to 9/11. In my segment, I will use my Google-fu to demonstrate how easy or hard it is to dig up maps and blueprints, especially for "sensitive" places. I'm trying to make sure the facts get out there, but I also want to do my bit to counter any scaremongering. My question: Can anyone point to sites or articles that discuss whether or not such publicly-available maps, diagrams and blueprints are a real security risk?
posted by AccordionGuy to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

From the Washington Post in 2003 on a dissertation that was classified
posted by arruns at 2:03 PM on August 18, 2005

No sites or articles, but I do have a short anecdote. I was writing a report for my client, a big high-tech firm. As I was going over a draft of the report, the client told me I had to take out a drawing of the firm's facilities that I had included. My response was, "Have you seen [insert name of local government's GIS site]? It's got aerial photos of your facility." I pulled up the site on the web and in about 5 clicks, showed him the aerials. I could tell that he wasn't please with this by his next question: "Can we get these pictures removed from the website?"

I bet if you talked to a few security sensitive firms, they'd probably be less than enthused about (e.g.) Keyhole and other such stuff.
posted by GarageWine at 2:40 PM on August 18, 2005

Crytome regularly publishes sensitive material without regard for its perceived sensitivity. I'd argue that its continued existence is anecdotal evidence that there is little security gained through obscurity, but that would just be my opinion.
posted by Rothko at 2:41 PM on August 18, 2005

The United States Insititute of Peace did a report that discussed the ways terrorists use the internet. I wasn't sure how speculative and fear mongering it was, and it focused mostly on things like using the internet for fundraising, recruiting, publicity, etc. However there was a section on data mining (page 6 & 7) that might be a good jumping off point for you.
posted by jasper411 at 2:44 PM on August 18, 2005

PS Congrats! Hope the wedding goes great!
posted by jasper411 at 2:46 PM on August 18, 2005

You'll want to look at this MeFi thread, which discusses the story referred to by arruns above (I blogged about it on The Map Room here; self-link), and the related links. More recently, I noticed this story (via Ogle Earth) about Dutch concerns over the use of Google Earth; the story references some similar worries from Australia. There were also concerns about Google Maps's satellite imagery when it came out: FoxTrot had some fun with it (self-link), and see Jeff Veen's post from back then.
posted by mcwetboy at 3:04 PM on August 18, 2005

Bruce Schneier's Crypto-gram newsletter and his book Beyond Fear discuss real-world security tradeoffs pretty cogently.
posted by ldenneau at 3:10 PM on August 18, 2005

Bruce's weblog also has good stuff in it and has talked about this on occassion.
posted by phearlez at 3:16 PM on August 18, 2005

Seconding the Bruce link. Particulary this story he found about finding nuclear power plants.
posted by mnology at 3:21 PM on August 18, 2005

Besides Google Maps (or the like), the biggest HOLY FUCK site I've ever seen is ZabaSearch. Just enter your name and a state you've lived in, ever.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 3:44 PM on August 18, 2005

I can't imagine that my town is the only place where this is true, but in the course of house-hunting, I've found the City of Austin GIS viewer to be very useful, with pictures vastly more detailed than Google maps. In certain modes, it displays reference numbers that I can plug into the Travis County Appraisal District's website to find out who owns whatever parcel I'm looking at.

This isn't analysis--this is just the raw material. There's a lot of it out there!

psst, I hear the terrorists can use the telephone network too!
posted by adamrice at 5:17 PM on August 18, 2005

I don't know if you're interested, because it's Australian, but there's an article here about "security fears" regarding Google Earth
posted by bunglin jones at 7:03 PM on August 18, 2005

Try this out: Interagency OPSEC Support Staff. There's a whole methodology surrounding risks and protection of unclassified but sensitive information.
posted by aberrant at 5:14 AM on August 19, 2005