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UnixReview.com
November 2005
Book Review: Networks, Security and Complexity
Reviewed by Peter H. Salus
Networks, Security and Complexity
Sean P. Gorman
Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005
ISBN 1843769522
153 pages
On August 15, 2003, I was in a bookstore in Albany,
California, when my cellphone rang. It was a member
of the EOP (Executive Office of the President)
asking about the previous day's power blackout
in the Northeast. I explained that I was on
vacation in California and only knew what I'd
read in the New York Times. When I was
pressed, I said that it was obvious from the
timing and the pattern that the failure had
occurred in the "Lake Erie bight."
My "educated guess" was right. It originated
in my decade or so of looking at networks:
telephones, gas and oil pipelines, computers,
power grids, airline connections.
Why was the White House so agitated?
Another anecdote. On July 8, 2003, the Washington
Post published an article stating that the U.S.
Government wanted to "suppress" Sean Gorman's
dissertation-in-progress. Richard Clarke, once the
cyberterrorism chief at the White House, said that
it should be burnt.
That dissertation has become Networks,
Security and Complexity.
Clarke (and many others) seem to think that the data
Gorman (and I) use should be secret. That railtracks,
fiber cables, oil and gas pipelines, and other components
of "critical infrastructure" are confidential and that
the methods employed to unveil them are mysterious.
So how private is the "concealed" data? Not very.
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