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When Your Backhoe Cuts "Black" Fiber
bernieS writes "The Washington Post describes what happens when a construction backhoe accidentally cuts buried fiber so secret that it doesn't appear on public maps — and what happens when the Men in Black SUVs appear out of nowhere. Apparently, the numerous secret fiber and utility lines used by government intelligence agencies are being dug up with increasing frequency with all the increased construction projects in the DC area. It's amazing how quickly they get repaired!"
This is the first things I thought of - mark it as something else.
"Fibre cable x21-45. Carries: CCT footage of parking lots A-F in Sector 7."
Make two physically separate redundant feeds. The other one is marked with something like "Library Interconnect".
Then if either line gets cut at some point, have a couple of guys in a van show up, act like a regular repair crew, and fix the line quickly. Trust me, I've worked as a Civil Engineering Assistant, and they don't care what's in the line, just that there's a line. If you hit something that isn't on the map, they are going to find it and trace it no matter how long it takes. It'll be in a pipe. You can run a 60Hz powerline into the pipe and read the path from the surface. Maybe it's fibre this time -- maybe it's the water main or black water, or WCS -- both at the same time. The point is if you don't file your plans the town will send a poor fucking co-op student out there to mark the fucking thing on the map.
Then - bam - your secret line is on the maps in the Town Hall marked as "unknown line".
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I hate to say it, but no, not really. My podunk base in podunk, minnesota applies the same security and cryptography. For example one of our systems that contains NO secret information, NO C&C abilities, and NO administrative rights requires an *18 character* password that must be changed monthly. One each: letter, upper case letter, number, special character, no words, nothing similar to your last 6 passwords etc. And this is behind our secure two-factor login system and on a secure network. And yet, when the base upgraded to fiber, it was done by 3 guys working out of a rented U-Haul truck. Watched it with my own eyes.
This is just the gov't doing what it does best.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
I'm going to guess that they don't come at you for damages, as that would only make their little "secret" more public.
If you bothered to read the article, you would see they tried to bill one contractor for $300,000.
and on an unrelated side note, ianal.
Well, I AM anal. I read the article before posting.