> While I agree with your point about the danger this poses to the site, this looks to me like exposing vulnerabilities in software. If this guy managed to find the tunnel, who's to say some other "looter" wouldn't have found it, too?

I'm a historian myself.

The historical records isn't just a few meters of files that can be easily accessed at will. We are talking about literally miles upon miles of brittle paper in boxes which are often summarily identified through records management. If you're lucky.

Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of administrative records isn't digitized. We are talking about painstakingly retrieving box after box, one by one, from archival depots and sifting through them in hopes of finding a clue or a trace.

And then you have to cross reference what you've found with other sources - if you're lucky - to ensure that you're on the right track.

From TFA:

> Working on the Paris metro in the 1990s, he travelled daily to the capital and used his spare time to visit military archives in the Château de Vincennes. For 15 years he accumulated descriptions, maps and prisoner interrogations - but to no avail.

That's 15 years of piecing bits and fragments, hoping to catch a lucky break:

> But then in 2009 he chanced on a contemporary map showing not just the tunnel but also a meeting of two paths that had survived till today. With painstaking care, he measured out the angle and distance and arrived at the spot, now just an anonymous bit of woodland.

> At least, according to TFA he's not running around telling people where it is, so this looks kind of like the "responsible disclosure" approach.

I find this questionable based on what the story tells us.

First, in most countries, you can't just get on and dig wherever you fancy. France included. You're legally obligated to declare historical finds to the authorities for later archaeological surveys. All of that comes with licenses and permits to ensure that whatever is unearthed, is unearthed in an ethically sound fashion.

This is what the article writes:

> One night in January last year he led a team that brought a mechanical digger to the spot his father had identified. They dug down four metres, and what they found proved they were indeed at the entrance to the tunnel.

Why did they dig at night in the woodlands? Did he have a permit from the authorities? This isn't something the article discloses at all. It's just assumed he did secure necessary authorizations.

Second, in those 10 months between the first dig in January of 2020 to confirm the location, the publication of the article in Le Monde in November of 2020 and the visit of the BBC journalist in March 2021, were enough for others to find the spot and start digging overnight.

Clearly, others caught wind of the exact location. It means someone has disclosed the location. Maybe someone from the January team? Maybe the Malinowski's themselves in an unguarded moment?

Moreover, the BBC journalist got to visit the exact spot. How did they arrive there? Who did they turn to to request to visit the spot? The authorities? Malinowski? If it was the latter, ask yourself this: is he really to be trusted to only have taken a select few journalists to the exact location? Or did he indulge in other requests as well?

It's not just the article in the BBC and Le Monde. Digging a bit deeper shows that the story was broken in multiple national and regional outlets in France. Can you be certain that they were the only party looking for the tunnel? Remember, they already knew the location back in 2009 after 15 at least 15 years of research.

Again, I can understand the frustration, but this wasn't the way to approach the issue.