Infrastructure

Have you ever been sitting at a traffic light, looked out the window and seen one of those little yellow/orange flags that say something to the effect "Caution: buried fiber optic cable" and wondered who would be affected if it were cut?  With the recent arrival of new terrorism threats, I wonder how much is being done to protect our infrastructure of networks, power grid, water, etc.

If you've ever done any long distance driving in your day, I'm sure you've seen those largely unprotected stretches of major power lines, and even some of those signs indicating buried cable.  And with resources on the web such as as the Sprint Fiber Optic Network Map being available you can see that it wouldn't take much to cause a major hit on the infrastructure, which would have a major effect on the economy.  Even a few hours of downtime causes a fair amount of economic damage.  Check out this report on what happened when the fiber was accidentally cut on the Sprint network.  Purposely causing a power cascade failure could be even more catastrophic.  Here's an old report from 2003 regarding the danger of a power grid attack.  Also check out these maps of the U.S. Infrastructure overlay.

While I'm a believer that "Information wants to be free", I'm also conflicted with the idea that some of this information should require login access and that I've also pointed out this information as being available, considering that I've gathered the above information within the last 10 minutes alone.

I mean, take a couple of people, throw on some orange vests, give them a backhoe, and they LOOK official, don't they?