Fiber Con

A grad student at George Mason University assembles a map of the country's fiber optic network as his dissertation. Corporate and government security types react with horror, brand the work a terrorist roadmap, and want it suppressed.

But secrecy isn't security. And this isn't even real secrecy, just the general let's-keep-the-public-in-the-dark-and-our-asses-covered impulse often mistaken for something having to do with national security. Fact is, pick any railroad right-of-way and start digging and chances are sooner or later you'll hit someone's very important fiber.

Think redundancy, not secrecy.