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Multiple Fiber Cuts In San Francisco Area
georgewilliamherbert writes "Multiple news reports, mailing list posts, blogs, and tweets are pointing out two overnight acts of sabotage in the San Francisco Bay area, with long distance fiber network cables being cut in two locations in the early morning hours. The first cut, around 1:30 AM, affecting landline and cell phone service and 911 calls in the communities of Morgan Hill, Gilroy, and parts of Santa Cruz counties, was on an AT&T fiber alongside Monterey Highway near Blossom Hill Road, in San Jose. A second cut, around 3:30 AM, in San Carlos, affected Sprint fiber and has significantly disrupted services at the 200 Paul datacenter in southern San Francisco. Rumor says that this may be related to a AT&T communications workers contract having just expired — but no evidence has been published yet in the media, and this could be an intentional act of sabotage by someone unrelated to the company's workers."
Say it ain't so!
Talk about people who never left high school mentality behind. Before the local GM plant closed here in Atlanta my friend's mom worked there and he also took up that type of employment. My ex-girlfriend is a UPS driver but not in the union. All can basically come up with the same type of stories. The first rule I learned about buying cars, don't get anything made just before, during, or just after, an agreement is being negotiated. The second thing I learned is, if you have union buddies order the car and they will follow it through the plant for you... don't order the fanciest electronics but don't be surprised at what is under the seat or hidden somewhere.
Sabotaging one's own employer is old hat. Favorite car tricks were bubble gum wads inside of panels. Dries and falls off after leaving the factory producing a nice rattle. Snappy a few clips helps too - but only inside of areas you can't see or get to easily. Getting drunk at work wasn't that difficult, if you got caught you might get in trouble, for about three days... and most of it goes away. As for my UPS friend. Finding dog shit on her car or under the handles is a monthly occurrence. Having her truck break down more than is statistically probable was a nuisance till a friend who knew the guys made it stop. Real damage to her car happened once till the police actually showed up to see it. Then it was down to harmless; if dog shit can count as harmless.
So I put odds on it being someone inside, someone who knows the areas to hit, just what to hit to not cause an all points freak out, but enough to annoy his employer and possibly the guys who get stuck fixing it. Make the office boys work overtime and see how they like it! Yeah that will show them.
Really it will blow your mind.
Please don't think its a majority thing, the fact is most are very good and want a successful company and job, the twits just wreck it all because they are still in that phase of "I'll hold my breath if I don't get my way". The problem is the rest don't do anything about it for fear of being the next target.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
That's no reason not to have a massive multi-path infrastructure within cities.
Personally, I'd love to see cities implement GPONs (Gigabit ethernet Passive Optical Networks) within the cities, even if they kept the same connection for external traffic. Imagine downloading the Ubuntu 9.10 ISO on BitTorrent, finding a seeder in your city, and having the download speed limited by your hard drive write speed!
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
Back in '05 when our local telecommunications company (TELUS) in British Columbia went on strike, some lines were cut and service for a couple thousand customers was lost. Of course, the first thing the company does is blame the union for sabotage.
Turns out it was just some thieves cutting the lines for copper, but that didn't come out until a month after the labour dispute ended.
Most likely the same thing happened here, thieves aren't exactly smart and most union employees would not risk the bad press something like this would generate.
Free means no restrictions, ironic the FSF's GPL forces restrictions, isn't it? What's your definition of free?
Us fiber owners have these neat tools that will tell you exactly where a fiber is damaged. To the foot.
Can all fish swim?
Can't get through to ucsc.edu today.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
It's not multiple cuts. It's just two cuts, done within two hours. The two sites are apparently within an hours' drive.
So it's not some massive conspiracy, just a single person with a saw.
Interestingly enough, while our best-beloved governments are posturing about how they need to enact even more security laws in order to fight terrorism, a single person with a chainsaw is all it takes to deprive a large area of telephone and Internet service, including emergency service.
I wonder if the actual cause will be hushed up?
This kind of thing has been happening a bit, but nothing widely reported.
The local paper in Aberdeen (Scotland) reported a couple of weeks ago that a major outage of Shell's global hosting platform (GI-H) had occurred with more than 1000 servers down.
I overheard some of their (internal) security guys at a pub - so much for security policy, laugh - saying that anger over wide-scale contract terminations related to the big outsourcing deals to T-Systems was the probable cause.
Nothing else in the media.
I did get a confirmation that something big/strange had happened to the Windows hosting environment for a while there, from diverse friends within Shell.
I've been waiting for some kind of journalist or something to cite it. But ... nothing.
So, don't be surprised if the news ends up fading. It's too embarrassing for lawsuits or anything else if that can be avoided.
This is tedious work, requires careful attention to detail to properly polish the cut fiber ends and repatch them, and for large fiber bundles takes forever. You can start running data through a fiber once its two ends are repatched - you don't have to get the whole bundle back for that - but the whole process can take 24-48 hours depending on how many fibers are involved and how much space there is to work in the trench or down the manhole. In many cases, there's only enough space for 1 or maybe 2 people to be working at any given time, which makes the repairs take forever...
How long would it take to repair if a few lines were cut, and the manhole cover was rigged so that the person opening would set off a pipe bomb or grenade? O.k. What kinda of union hassles/strikes would happen if that happened once, twice, or a half dozen times?
That's something a more competent uni-bomber could do.
Now assume that the fiber-bomber has planned 4/1/2011 to bring down an entire state or metro area. He basically plants a pipe bomb with a timer for his black out date behind or on the lines coming into as many sections as he can find. Let's declare this a domestic terrorist that has used his two week vacation to do this and has only used house hold products found at walmart for supplies. Let's say he is willing to spend $2K on gas and his various supplies. How much of the internet could our fictional fiber-bomber physically take down and how long would it take to repair it?
That's the kinda of terrorist that gives government folks real nightmares. There is no way to stop that kinda of individual.
Actually, a lot of "You break it, you buy it" policies are a scam. Customer accidents are often covered under business insurance. Even if you do lose an item in your store, why should you make a profit off of an accident?
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
What if the cable was cut a bunch of times?
"Okay, so... 20 meters out from this station aaaaand... that cable is replaced. That should fix it. What? Another cut 10 meters further?"
If someone chopped the hell outta a cable, the only thing you'd be able to tell is the nearest cut to the station, yes?
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Mountain View (and some surrounding areas) have had a power outage, fiber cut and internet outage all within a 24 hour period. The spooks must be setting up some new equipment.
It's really *not* that hard to get to underground conduits and vaults where utility and telecommunications lines run. Anybody who can pry open a manhole or defeat a lock can gain access to these lines, as the type of utility (water, power, gas, telecom) is usually cast into the metal cover itself. Any deranged individual with a screwdriver can access these points and cause a major outage. Even someone knocking down a utility pole or above-ground junction box (both most commonly by accident) can cause a major outage.
Telecom and power runs are particularly vulnerable, as they generally share the same pole, vault, or conduit, as it reduces the digging and pipe laying that needs to be done.
When it comes to fiber and phone lines, the risks are pretty small, as cutting or damaging fiber is easy, and there are no high-voltages to worry about. Phone lines are the same, since the voltage is low enough that a wooden or plastic handled tool is all the protection that is needed from shocks.
The downside of technology is that the more advanced it gets, the more vulnerable it is to failing. The only solution would be to armor fiber runs, but that would not stop a determined nutjob from success and would be extremely expensive.
Might be worth it though in areas where this kind of anarchic behavior is present.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Maybe they were trying to steal copper and didn't realize it was fiber optic cable. Copper theft is at record highs right now.
Of course, thats about as likely as a ship dropping an anchor on an Mediterranean communications cable twice in two months....
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Multiple cuts at the same time definitely suggests some form of planning and coordination in this case. If it was just one I would be tempted to say that it was just some explorers/vandals poking around who poked a bit too hard, in which case they would be lucky that it's only fiber optic and not something that would fuse their bod to their surroundings.
Incidentally that's why I always bring a live wire detector when I go exploring buildings, even if its a factory that's been abandoned for 30 years.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
The worst part is that I was reading for a while before I decided to register a user account, as I didn't see the point.
If only I'd known then what I know now...
Could it be retribution for the fact that AT&T got away with aiding the federal government with the warrantless wiretapping program that violated the Fourth Amendment and which the Obama administration seems determined to protect, continue, and maybe even extend?
No, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm a conspiracy factualist. There is a difference...
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
Ordinarily Joe the Copper Thief would make two cuts in his desired scrap material and take the length in between. If he climbs down a hole and cuts one, finding nothing of value to take and abandoning his plan, he's not going to go over a few blocks and repeat that process an hour later. It's too easy to wander around looking for a car with an iPod Touch or similarly negotiable object in plain view.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
For what's it worth, there was also another fiber cut in Seattle today.