I used to work in those circles ~15 years ago and the short answer was: Yes.
It turns out that an absurd amount of sensitive/national security information is actually public but it becomes sensitive once it's organized in a way that it becomes "actionable" for attack, compromise, etc. In my particular situation, an acquaintance studying operations+logistics had overlaid communications trunks with transportation hubs and realized many of them were one in the same.
Now that more of this information is available easily and in readily combinable forms should make us re-evaluate all of it and how much gets shared, with who, when, and to what detail.
Btw, this is also a reason you should be skeptical whenever there's a leak and someone claims "none of this data is classified!" While technically true, a piece of non-classified but relatively unknown information might be the missing piece that makes something actionable.
Not necessarily, there's a huge drive at the moment (in the UK at least) encouraging utility companies to make their asset related data open and publicly available. Look up the Energy Networks Association's Open Networks initiative, quite interesting. The same approach is being taken by other European countries.
It is pointless to 'hide' the things which are accessible to anyone, including people who isn't even there physically, eg can look through Google Earth or just browse photos with geo-tags.
Back in the day it could be (and sometimes was) a secret or protected information.
That's somehow naive statement. There is a difference between getting full information just with one query and building complicated fail-prune system for weeks/months to analyze data.
That's somehow naive statement. There is a difference between being visited by the guys in the suits because you were seen with a photo camera near powerlines and not.
I used to work in those circles ~15 years ago and the short answer was: Yes.
It turns out that an absurd amount of sensitive/national security information is actually public but it becomes sensitive once it's organized in a way that it becomes "actionable" for attack, compromise, etc. In my particular situation, an acquaintance studying operations+logistics had overlaid communications trunks with transportation hubs and realized many of them were one in the same.
Now that more of this information is available easily and in readily combinable forms should make us re-evaluate all of it and how much gets shared, with who, when, and to what detail.
Btw, this is also a reason you should be skeptical whenever there's a leak and someone claims "none of this data is classified!" While technically true, a piece of non-classified but relatively unknown information might be the missing piece that makes something actionable.
Not necessarily, there's a huge drive at the moment (in the UK at least) encouraging utility companies to make their asset related data open and publicly available. Look up the Energy Networks Association's Open Networks initiative, quite interesting. The same approach is being taken by other European countries.
It was a major blocker when I was writing my dissertation. It would have been WONDERFUL to have this.
It is pointless to 'hide' the things which are accessible to anyone, including people who isn't even there physically, eg can look through Google Earth or just browse photos with geo-tags.
Back in the day it could be (and sometimes was) a secret or protected information.
That's somehow naive statement. There is a difference between getting full information just with one query and building complicated fail-prune system for weeks/months to analyze data.
That's somehow naive statement. There is a difference between being visited by the guys in the suits because you were seen with a photo camera near powerlines and not.
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