How to Lie with Maps: When Open Source and National Security Collide

"This is not the first time that the world of Open Source and the desire for national security has slammed together. The most notable of these was the release of Phil Zimmerman's PGP software in the mid 1990s. But is this really an issue of national security?

"I have always loved maps. So much so, that I wanted to be a cartographer when I grew up. I even picked the universities I wanted to attend based on their offerings of cartographic programs, minors and majors. In the 1980s, when I was entering university, the science of the art of cartography was changing from a pure hand-based art to one that was more and more based on computer systems, and databases, long held on paper, were being moved to silicon and steel. This was a big deal. It was not enough to have a steady hand and a keen eye; you now had to be a computer technician as well."

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