Re: Backbone Infrastructure and Secrecy

[Eric Kuhnke <eric () fnordsystems com>]

Barn door, horse is already gone.

I'm willing to stipulate that Sean may be a GIS wizard, and has compiled a very accurate listing of north american 
fiber routes.  However, this is nothing new...

US Transatlantic cable landings (mirrored from John Young's cryptome.org):
http://colofinder.net/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album90

US Transpacific cables:
http://colofinder.net/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album89

I doubt there are armed guards with body armor and AR-15s patrolling the beach in front of Oregon's cable blockhouses.  
I may be wrong.  Photos, anybody?  

I'm sure you could sell the Australian government's equivalent of the NIPC or "Cyber Security Czar" on reasons why 
their nation is vulnerable to public fiber location knowledge.  What would happen if Southern Cross and two or three 
high capacity cables to Singapore were cut simultaneously?

Are we going to throw a burlap sack over 60 Hudson, the Westin Building, One Wilshire, or similar buildings and disavow 
knowledge of their existence?  You can't hide major infrastructure.  With the exception of Afghanistan and a few other 
areas, full color 1 meter resolution satellite imagery is commercially available for any locations between 70N and 70S 
latitude.  (IKONOS, SPIN-2, etc). 

I am curious exactly how accurate Sean's maps are.  Are his fiber routes listed in surveyor quality DGPS measurements, 
or is it more of a "Somewhere along the shoulder of I-94" type accuracy?


At 11:29 AM 7/8/2003 -0400, you wrote:

> NANOG's Sean Gorman is in the news:
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23689-2003Jul7.html
>
> I would find GIS like the one described *very* usefull in finding transport 
> providers. If I could see who has what where, I would know who to go to for 
> quotes. As it stands, most of this information is hard to get ahold of.
>
> Who, besides Sean, has maps like this? The state PUC? If so, is that 
> information available to the public? Do you have to go thorugh a background 
> check and/or sign an NDA? Or is it only the providers themselves that have the 
> maps for this stuff?
>
> -Adam