Freely available and openly editable maps might be one of the things that we take for granted, but are simply an abberation of a brief period of peace and civility; now we'll return to the default hobbesian state of affairs.

See also: beautiful, detailed aerial photos of oil refineries posted by amateur drone photographers to public sites. Submarine cables and oil tankers, carrying the world economy on their shoulders without any protection out there at sea.

Security by obscurity is an illusion. Bad actors, especially state actors, will have no problem getting this data. We should make this data public so it's expected to be public, and then planners will take the risks more seriously.

Bad actors, especially state actors, will have no problem getting this data.

Everything that costs will cost to the degree that it costs. Putting the chocolate milk on the top shelf is enough to encourage children to buy less chocolate milk. The data you're talking about? The place I work at is the one doing the hard boots on the ground labor for aerial data, and from that perspective nothing is easy or free.

One can make great arguments about why people should have access to data notwithstanding all risks, but surely not that security by obscurity is mere illusion.

Easier access does lower the bar for amateurs and increase the risk of damage but these are two separate things.

GP said architects should anticipate bad actors and i'd add a "no matter their size". Putting the chokolate milk high up the shelf helps as long as children are small and dumb. Security by too-high-cost only effects poor, lone and unimaginative actors.

So it's time to release our internal aerial photography, because cost only affects poor actors? Like no, cost is cost to the degree it costs.

Do you think James Bond-style special agents are doing the state actor operations, like in the movies?

It doesn't work like that. The vast majority of the time it's regular stupid people that are doing the heavy lifting (often unwittingly) for state actor operations.

So yes, security by obscurity works. It makes the state actor's job that much harder.

The US Navy posted all over the Gulf of Aden says “ahem?”

Yes, it's a good thing all cables and tankers were relocated to the Gulf of Aden under the follow the protection doctrine.

The Korean gov’t employs small Korean AI companies to build bots thats endlessly scrape the internet and harass websites that post unfavorable content about Korea. They label it as “korean error news,” but the standard boils down to more or less “anything that speaks of Korean in negative light.”

This gives off the same vibes. But this is Korea. They will probably give up in a month or so and move on to whatever else they think will help make them rich overnight.

So, a handful of persons "believe that OpenStreetMap is a creation of Chinese communists" and are removing specific data from OpenStreetMap, and the OP explains why this is stupid but innocuous.

But that's not the first time that a community is tagged "Chinese communists" and attacked as such. Now imagine if some maga/alt-right/whatever leaders asked their followers to attack the "communist" OpenStreetMap by injecting a bit of false data everyday. Could OSM defend itself as easily?

Ask Wikipedia how they are dealing with this shit. Openstreetmap is a rather unlikely target, so it's news.

they aren't because they are long fully captured

> Ask Wikipedia how they are dealing with this shit.

They aren't. Wikipedia has been taken over by special interest groups and political agencies for a long, long time now.

So how are the special interest groups keeping their enemies out?

Exceptional claims require exceptional evidence?

Where is the exceptional claim?

If anything, the preposterous idea that Wikipedia is somehow the only resource immune to shilling and political influence is the exceptional claim.