On 23 February 2010 04:23, James Andrewartha <[email protected]> wrote: > A Perth street map I have has the path of the Dampier-Bunbury gas > pipeline mapped. Now that's a clear target and isn't even readily > visible in real life, but there doesn't seem to be a problem with it > being mapped. So I don't think it's something we need to worry about. > The locations of telephone exchanges are widely available, people use > them to work out how fast their ADSL should be.
I don't think it matters what gets mapped, since someone some where can probably figure out something that would disrupt peoples lives if they put their mind to it. Excluding things from maps will hardly deter someone suitably determined, anyone with half a brain cell planning on doing something nefarious isn't going to rely on maps, they'll do proper surveillance, and maybe even look at aerial imagery. :) People keep pointing out potential targets, but in reality most of these are very low threats as they generally have very low impact, in fact the better the infrastructure is mapped the less accidents are likely to occur from councils digging up phone lines and what not, which will prevent much more inconvenience than any attack would cause. >From an infrastructure point of view the threat is generally economical terrorism, blowing up a phone exchange doesn't have much of an impact, it may inconvenience people but it certainly won't instill fear in the masses. If people are truly worried about this then you need to look at what would cause the most inconvience for the least amount of effort, which would be the power infrastructure. Numerous reports have highlighted in the past that the electricity grids are usually the most vulnerable and would have the most impact if attacked, and there was an interesting report released some time ago from the Pakistan Government concerned about this, they estimated it would cost about US$500 to mount a successful attack. You can do some pretty nasty things to power grids on the cheap and you don't even need to be in the immediate vicinity of the target to do this. Even with the knowledge of what could occur, I don't think there is any justification for not mapping power lines and power stations, most of which is easy to find already by the power companies own websites. In fact by better mapping things it could reduce accidents to the point that nefarious activities are cheaper than dealing with constant damage from back hoes etc. _______________________________________________ Talk-au mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
