On Fri, 13 Sep 2002 sgorman1@gmu.edu wrote:
Or you cut the lines coming into the city - i.e Chicago has about 5 diverse routes for fiber into the city. No explosives required and you get the same effect.
The early ideas for the arpanet/internet never said every point would work under all conditions. The premise was if you destroyed (which implies something is in fact destroyed) part of the network, the surviving parts of the network could function. It said nothing about the ability of the part of the network which was destroyed to function. It may be obvious the destroyed portion of the network will not function, but sales people don't always go out of their way to explain the concept. The Paradox of the Secrecy About Secrecy by Paul Baran, August 1964 [...] The overall problem here is highly reminiscent of the atomic energy discussions in the 1945-55 era--only those who were not cleared were able to talk about "classified" atomic weapons. This caused security officers to become highly discomfitured~by the ease with which unclassified clues were being combined to deduce highly accurate versions of material residing in the classified domain. This points up a commonly recurring difference of opinion (or philosophy) between the security officer and the technically trained observer. The more technical training an individual possesses, the less confidence he seems to have of the actual value of secrecy in protecting the spread of new developments in a ripe technology. True security does not always equate to blanket unthinking secrecy. While the security value of effective secrecy can be high, we must be realistic and acknowledge the constraints of living in a free society where effective secrecy in peacetime is almost impossible. Avoiding a touchy subject by falling back on edicts rather than rationality may automatically insure the continued existence of the touchy subject. [...]