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You have got to read this great article from today’s Washington Post on a grad student at George Mason whose dissertation is making a stir. He has mapped out all the communications lines in the country, where they go, and what businesses are connected to them–all with publicly available information.

He can click on a bank in Manhattan and see who has communication lines running into it and where. He can zoom in on Baltimore and find the choke point for trucking warehouses. He can drill into a cable trench between Kansas and Colorado and determine how to create the most havoc with a hedge clipper. Using mathematical formulas, he probes for critical links, trying to answer the question: “If I were Osama bin Laden, where would I want to attack?” In the background, he plays the Beastie Boys.

Every “official” who has looked at the thing has had the same reaction: classify it! Here’s a very sad statement from former White House cyberterrorism chief Richard Clarke: “He should turn it in to his professor, get his grade — and then they both should burn it.”

Maps don’t kill people, terrorists kill people. Right?

Jul 8, 2003 | Comments

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One comment posted

  1. Posted by joanne - 07/08/2003

    There’s another reason why the school should consolidate half its departments in the College of Arts and Sciences, and change its name to George Mason Tech. Maybe then the undergraduate school’s rank will follow GMU Law’s accolades

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