Slashdot Mirror
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!"
My dad cut through a cell phone line about a month ago with his bulldozer (he lives on a farm) when we was clearing some soil for his rhubarb. About 30 minutes later a helicopter was circling overhead. Soon there after he met with a FBI agent who showed up on scene. The Verizon workers showed up after that and about 12 hours later the line was patched. This wasnt a fiber line, just a normal cell line, but they took it pretty seriously. We havent gotten a bill in the mail yet, but we are expecting one any day.
Oh, and I have to wonder a little: there's very little infrastructure terrorism, instead there's much more information terrorism at work. (i.e. the Pentagon hack that lost us the plans to the next air superiority fighter).
The government does a half-assed job securing its own computers, but they'll lock down what's between the computers... that's like having a convoy that's well protected, then having that same convoy deliver without any security detail.
There are no perfect answers, only the right questions. More questions at http://foresightandhindsight.blogspot.com/
I worked with a civil engineer who was on the Washington Metro construction for a while. One day the unearthed a concrete ductbank that wasn't on any maps, etc. SOP was that, if it's not accounted for, cut it, so they did.
Within 5 minutes the Secret Service was down in the hole, had stopped work and kicked everybody out of the tunnel - apparently, the ductbank housed the "nuclear hotline" and losing contact with the other side could have been interpreted as a prelude to an attack.
Puckered assholes all around, that day.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Really! Just mark it as a 4" natural gas line. Any backhoe operator worth his salt knows that cooked backhoe guy isn't a pretty sight.
There is a lot of cable in the ground even for civil use that isn't really on the plans. But the government and it's agencies really have a thing for not documenting anything for whatever reason.
I work in a building that was commissioned by the Atomic Energy Commission for the Manhattan Project. It should've been torn down a long time ago but it was more expensive to do that than to renovate it. Right now we're inheriting the 2nd floor of the building where they have been empty since the end of the Cold War (I recently found a stash of unopened era software) but nobody has any plans to the original layout (they went missing somewhere in the 50's) so the DoE did a (nuclear and structural) survey of the site and mapped it out. However the contractors started working and found a room with a lead door, 15" concrete walls, a chair and a small observation window. Needed to do a whole new nuclear survey and remap the whole thing by an internal team. The architect recreated his plans with the new data and found out that there is a bunch of space missing on the (currently empty) 3rd floor. We're not yet renovating there but for some or another reason the decision was made from higher up to leave the 3rd floor untouched until we really need that space.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
The reality is more likely laziness and ego, of believing they are above the law. They just couldn't be bothered doing the appropriate paper work and now as a result are spending tens of thousands of dollars repairing no longer secret cables, which have now been identified as bring emphatically secret by the cables being hidden and subject to high risk of being accidentally dug up. Of course as a contractor you could sue the government for any delays caused by the government delaying access while they repair the undeclared cable.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Hell, just put the fiber in a 4" gas line! Valves become a little problem, but you could have some cast with a bypass for the fiber to pass through.
Part of the problem is they are moving lines. In this case half of the job was digging for construction and the other half was digging up and moving known utilities out of the way of the construction. So if you show them where your "gas lines" are at, they are likely to try to move some of them to get them out of their way. And then they are statistically a lot more likely to be discovered for what they are than if they just don't tell you and hope you don't try to move a line on top of one of theirs or dig a tunnel through it.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Not really, these computer systems are no where near the internet. They are secured by strict access restrictions (physical security) and the lack of interconnection to places without that.
In short, and to keep with your military convoy scenario, you can't really think of this convoy as a regular supply convoy behind the lines. Think of it as the one the president is in when touring the camps and the others are just running supplies to relatively safe camps. These systems serviced by the secrete fiber are something completely different then the main systems you keep hearing about with the breaches. Those systems use publicly accessible and most likely publicly documented lines.
For the important stuff they also do a lot more to protect it.
For example, fiber backbones around here are quite the setup. They bury the cable itself at least 4 ft down. It's an armored cable that is designed to be completely undamaged by being run over by a caterpillar on asphalt and nearly impossible to break by stretching. (kevlar cord backbone, PVC spar with six fiber tubes, corrugated steel armor, antivarmint/self-sealing resin, and 1/8" very tough PVC jacket). One foot above that they bury a wide red streamer that's very elastic and hard to cut. If your backhoe gets to that first it's really hard to miss because you'll stretch it out of the ground like a rubber band. And all the dirt they use to fill in the trench is stained red. I don't know how effective the red stain ends up being, but it may be something that a backhoe operator would be much more likely to notice during his work than you or I.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I worked installing street lights and traffic lights as well as all the underground material that connects them right on top of some government lines. In one case I was on top of coral, limestone and sandstone covered by side walks and under the over hangs of numerous businesses. We had little short shovels and picks and had to dig 4x4ft. holes nine feet deep through that rock every hundred feet or so for many miles. Striking the buried cable, even with a hand tool, would have resulted in financial disaster. Little things like the US Air Force depended on those lines. It is also a big issue near the Florida Keys as boat anchors tend disrupt cables that relate to national defence.
This fallacious story is featured all over the the local news today here in DC
The problem is not that the lines aren't mapped--they ARE mapped just like any other utility.
The real problem is that the maps aren't perfect.
Here's the real scoop:
There have been nearly 40 cable cuts in Tysons since the Metro line to Dulles started construction.
There is a government-owned antenna tower on the highest hill in Tysons, too.
The ACTUAL problem is that Tysons Corner is the center of the Eastern USA internet capacity. Sure, MAE-East was here, but it's moved to Ashburn, and those lines still cross through Tysons Corner.
Naturally, government lines are part of the rats nest that the Metro must tunnel through.
Bottom line is: all the lines are mapped but the maps aren't perfect.
The agencies do not bury secret cables. To do so would not only be dangerous, it would be silly.
They're just cables like any other.
In other news, that big hill on Rte. 123 had been restricted to heavy trucks after test cores indicated faulty soil but that restriction has been lifted.
Kriston
This is total nonsense. They're telecommunications cables just like the others. They are mapped. They were accidentally cut. There is so much telecom in Tysons Corner it's expected to happen.
The only thing I have to say about your "security through obscurity" comment is that you are wrong. Even with physical access to such fiber, and if you could conceivably receive the optical signal therein with your MWM fiber receiver (that you took 3 days to splice into the data stream), the encryption on the line stops you dead cold.
The real story is that the construction rojects, in particular Metro rail to Dulles, is causing all kinds of logisticaly headaches and accidental fiber cuts.
There is no real security concern here, even with regards to denial-of-service.
Kriston
During the cold war, we regularly taped into Russia's fiber and copper lines. They did the same to us or so we expected then to have because we could do it to them. The Russians weren't exactly stupid.
We even have/had subs who's entire job was to find under sea cables coming off the coast of Russia and place bell taps on them.
Fiber can be tapped in much the same way except you need to get around or near the actual fiber lines. This means a cut in the sheath surrounding the bundle. I can't find a reference but I do remember a positive pressurized device that would encapsulate a undersea cable allowing the sheathing to be removed and patched without the sea water penetrating. This same device could probably be used to defeat a pressurized line buried in the ground too. Just stick a regulator on the end of a stout hypodermic needle and penetrate the line, wait for the pressure to equalize and then work with relative impunity.
You call the USA, literally.
USA= Underground Service Alert
The number is 811 and you have to call 2 days prior to when you begin your work to cover your ass in court in case you hit any power/gas lines.
I am thinking that they didn't trench this line but use a pressurized piston to push the line/pipe through the ground soil, that is the cheap way to do it these days and it is like sideways drilling. They don't always go perfectly straight at the same elevation, most likely they tried to push this line under a building and came too close to the foundation working area where they are most likely to dig.
4 feet down is gas lines, about 6 feet you start hitting electrical/sewer to put it into perspective.
They send out gas line crews and electric company officals to paint mark where all the lines are located so you do not him them.
Now I work with a Civil Engineer and our main business is road construction, we have hit everything you can think of from Native American graves to fiber lines that run to ammo depot bunkers for security. You would think something this top secret fiber lines would be buried deeper or it would be encased in red cement around the top or sand to give warning you are about to hit it. They usually pour red colored cement(electrical) or sand on top(gas lines), so that when you are digging and start to hit the red stuff it will give you a warning.
My favorite was the mile long tunnel at Fort McCarthur in San Pedros, CA that ran under the hill there. Some of the oldest IBM machines I have ever seen were there collecting dust and huge generators.
In my experience, having operated a back hoe off and on for 10 years, both the "red streamer" and the fill (smallish gravel gets used around here) aren't necessary to tell when you've dug past another ditch. The soil in the ditch you cross is visibly and tactilely different from undisturbed ground. Also, FYI, we hit a fiber line about as big around as my arm (it was marked ~15 feet from where it really was) once and the people who fixed it showed up within the hour - it was not a national security line, just a commercial com line. I know this b/c the gas station that was right there couldn't process credit cards 'till it was fixed.
Don't worry about the mule, just load the wagon.
The GPR isn't as effective in our very rocky clay soil as you believe.
Hogwash. I've experienced it firsthand. I know exactly how effective it is, even in rocky clay soil (North Carolina soil to be exact). I have witnessed this technology be able to locate empty plastic conduit (even verifying that the conduit is empty after hand digging it up). Not only were there no tracing wires, but there were no wires at all, and we could still find it.
I do grasp that there is a lot of buried cable/utilities in this and other metropolitan areas, I work in the industry. My point is, this type of work does not have to result in an issue like this, nor is it an excuse that something "wasn't on the drawings". That is an amateur excuse, and not one that is acceptable in most critical environments.
Your response is silly.
OTOH, if the cabling is kept secret, once someone digs through it, they then have to try to figure out who owns it and whether it is in use, which draws attention to the cable. then the maintenance and security mobs turn up, and draw even more attention. With the amount of ongoing construc like this.tion around the place, it is actually surprising that more black fibre isn't being found