, SecurityFocus 2003-12-17
Call it the case of the missing White House. Users of Mapquest's free aerial photo database recently noticed that details of several Washington D.C. government buildings were no longer discernable in overhead images of the U.S. capital.
Expand all |
Post comment
"Security through obscurity IS NOT security"
Obscuring the photos doesn't do any good. It does take a highly intelligent person to figure out what the white house looks like, and where it belongs on the arial photograph. Just take a regular map, superimpose it over the arial, then draw in the missing building. Where is the security in that?
If anything, obscurring the buildings only leads to drawing more attention to the buildings. Then there is the issue of archives. You can't eliminate the archives of photos, and as such, no amount of future obscurity will eliminate the fact that you can just recall an older photo, but then again, why bother? The only thing in the photo obscurity that I see as usefull, is in the whitehouse photos, where the pool, and what appears to be tennis cours, were replaced with trees. These are places that are hidden from plain view, and the arial photos expose them. But again, it doesn't really provide an attacker with any new insight that would help them out.
[ reply ]
Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/articles/7671/24239#24239