Source: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/US/internet_sensitive_info_040812-1.html
Now I’ve been reading Young’s web site for years. While some of the links posted first appear to come close to tinfoil hat conspiracy thinking, they do offer an insight not found with front-page major media news. For example, the New York Times buried a story of security failures at the Olympics in the sports pages. Young even had photos sent to him exposing other security failures at the Democratic Convention in Boston just days before the convetion began. (He’ll probably do the same thing with the Republican convention as well.)
Quite a few links are Federal Register information highlights, illustrating the continuing secrecy of our government. Some of it I really don’t have a problem, but I am surprised more than once as our government continues to run over the edge with respect to the Constitution.
One of the classic series Young runs is his Eyeball Series , using publicly available maps and satellite photos of military installations, prominent landmarks, even the homes of politicians.
Do you support Young’s efforts? In this post-9/11 world is it too much? Should Young be consider a whistleblower in the sense he merely points out things our government would rather not be exposed, even though the information is publicly available anyway?
I don’t have a problem with it. All he’s doing is collating publicly available information. The terrorists have access to the same information. I think it’s a good thing if he can expose flaws in security and force the government to respond to them.
Reminds me of this guy. Although that site doesn’t quite explain the end of the case correctly: it never went to the Supreme Court because the article was printed (I forget the exact details). So the case was moot.
That’s true, but to be fair, he’s putting it all in one place
I think I’m with DtC on this one. My Mom may not realize that all this info is available on the internet but you can bet that terrorists do. Keeping that fact hidden might make my Mom feel better (ignorance is bliss) but it doesn’t make anyone any safer.
My only proviso is that it’s a good idea to notify the authorities who can fix a perceived security breach first, give them a chance to do their jobs - this guy might have been the first person to spot the flaw (doubtful but could be).
If after being notified the authorities take no action then a public statement is in order, it’ll embarrass people and get some action taken.
This sort of pattern has been repeated in my line of work (IT) time and time again. MS notified of flaw, given sample exploit and direction to go for fixing it, no action taken for weeks or months, person goes public, MS gets huffy and then a patch magically appears a day or two later.
Security through obscurity doesn’t really work too well.
I think marley23 pretty much posted the governments views on it. By posting it in one place he is making it easier for the terrorists to find it, and by posting what he views as security failures he may be giving them ideas.
If they have problems with what he is posting, why don’t they just fix the problems instead of trying to take down this guys site? Now that I think about it, taking down the site is probably cheaper.
“We could fix the security issues, but we would have to raise taxes to do it.” :rolleyes:
