Assignment:
In 2004 the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency asked the RAND corporation to conduct a study of the potential threat that open federal geospatial information may pose. They were particularly concerned that terrorist groups would use the data to plan and execute attacks on the US. They found that although a few of the federal publicly accessible data sets could be beneficial to terrorists, most geospatial information is unlikely to meet the needs of terrorists, and in any event similar geospatial information is available from other public sources (like Google Maps and Google Earth).
Read Laura Blumenfeld's article "Dissertation Could Be Security Threat."
In the Forum, describe your position on the argument between the need to make data available for public use, and the need to restrict data to protect the nation. Take a side and defend it.