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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!"
That's what they want you to believe, the original posters have all been deleted.
There are reasons why it's important that public records are kept.
If they wanted to keep people from knowing where or what exactly it was, they could simply have marked it as something it wasn't.. and beyond that, they could encrypt what goes on that fiber.
They aren't without options; and ultimately they're currently fighting the system, and putting our tax dollars to work in ways that could be prevented.
It's understandable that they want to keep secrets secret, but isn't covering it up going to draw more attention than fudging the paperwork?
There are no perfect answers, only the right questions. More questions at http://foresightandhindsight.blogspot.com/
And who do you make the check out to when you do cut it? Or would a 'Hey, how the hell can we know when we cut a top secret fiber? How we supposed to know it's there if it's top secret and we don't have clearance???' defense work in court when the other guy's lawyers come at you for damages?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Having seen lines ran in pressurized pipes (pressure drop... alarms) and break location by reflection it doesn't shock me at all to see this; being spooks you would think they would use easements or dig deeper than usual
to secure such things, but like most work I bet it was contracted out to the cheapest labor they could trust.
I will say though, not listing the location suggests much; if they are afraid that someone could tap into fiber without detection it most likely means they are already doing so, sometimes the thing you fear the most reveals much about your current state.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
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.
At&t
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
MiB: Pardon me, you seem to have cut our wire. Contractor: Who are you? MiB: Oh us, uh, we're nobody. Contractor: Well, whose wire is this and why hasn't it been documented? MiB: What wire? Contractor: This wire right here! Whose wire is this? MiB: That? That's nobody's Contractor: Ah HA! So it is yours! MiB: What's whose now?
Up the tax payers ass, naturally.
Life is not for the lazy.
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
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
But what IEEE spec covers that? It's IEEE1984, isn't it?
fixed that for you.
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
Way back when I graduated college and started work for a major USA oil company.
The IT department had a neat graphics printer. Oil companies generally have a lot of money resulting in great toys. One of the experienced IT developers said; "Watch, this graphics printer prints the coolest maps!". That map had printed just an interesting six inches on its way to 30". Then security showed up. Confiscated the map. Shut down the terminal and printer. And wrote everyone up. Security said about ten words. Then left. We looked at each other mystified and shrugged.
Oh yes, the oil company could and did hire all sorts of experts. Those security folks likely had serious experience.
Thanks,
The J
Black fiber belongs to the government. Dark fiber belongs to Google. ;)
On another note, fiber optic bundles have a copper core so they can be found by magnetic detectors (and the "blue stake people") to avoid being hit by a backhoe strike. It's more unlikely that the contractor failed to check for the cable than the Federal Government has special backhoe-attracting cable.
E
If I were trying to keep a cable secret, I'd make sure the real cable was clearly recorded on the maps as something totally innocuous and not connected to anything secret at all. If it got cut, it'd get repaired per normal procedure for the kind of cable it's marked as (and I'll have sufficient backups that I don't need to make the repair an attention-grabbing rush job). Then I'd lay a few completely unused but highly suspicious-looking decoy cables, making sure they occasionally got cut and that there was a suitably public trying-to-look-not-public scramble to repair them. That way anybody trying to find my cables was likely to glom onto the ones I was trying to keep hidden, and probably wouldn't even bother looking at "backup equipment monitoring line, sewage pumping station 37, Department of Public Works".
Using the TSA model (shoes, liquids, etc.) the only possible solution is to prohibit backhoe use. Remember, when backhoes are outlawed, only terrorists will have backhoes. Why, right now there could be huge numbers of terrorists in heavy equipment training classes, just planning and waiting for the opportunity to dig up phone, internet, power, water, and gas lines throughout the USA. And without any of the things supplied by those lines, just think of what would happen to the children. You may now commence with the hysteria. Alert the press.
Use black light ??
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
So black dark fiber belongs to The Gooblement?
deleted, or "deleted"?
Maybe both.
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
...as my old boss, a radio engineer, termed it: "backhoe fade."
Happened to one of our transmitter sites. We switched to a microwave STL, which just had to be retired (only about 4 years later), because of a new skyscraper going in. :-/
So, back to the telco lines.....
As for the CLAN cut, I'm guessing this is probably a protocol violation somewhere. In many installations I've seen, even in secured areas, this stuff is encased in concrete.
I have to say, reading the original article, I was reminded about the story about the fully-mobilized North Korean army sitting in trucks with the engines running, ready to invade South Korea at a moment's notice. Good scare story, completely false. If a line gets cut, and it is for anything important, you have a redundant route, so no crisis. You then send a normal maintenance crew out to take care of the one that got cut. If it isn't important, no crisis, so you send out a normal looking maintenance crew. You don't send out a crew of guys in an SUV to blow cover.
Ever considered a life as a Postal Worker in the Midwest? Just look at this light.
I haven't cut anything majorly serious in my time because usually the really serious things scare the boss enough that he'll meet the people who're supposed to come out and detect all the stuff. Makes sure they actually check for the lines and paint where they are instead of finding point A and point B and assuming they run in a straight line.
But I've cut yard electrical lines servicing a garage because people swore it ran in a straight line, and sure enough it zigzaged around a tree, around the corner of their driveway...not enough electricity to cause any serious problems. But annoying.
One job had a major gas line running through the front yard, but they weren't sure if it ran straight with the road or ran diagonal. They also told us it was only six inches deep on first check. So call em back up, tell em to come out and check it again since we're putting in a driveway and need to cut down about 18 inches deep where it was marked. Sure enough they come out and dig and about 2 feet later...still no gas pipe. On this same job I cut through a power line powering the household.....it ran to their garage, then to their house. Was supposed to be couple feet deep and it was barely six inches under the asphalt. It ran diagonal from the pole, then made a perpendicular cross at the driveway...then diagonal again...and when going to the house it ran along the driveway for a bit then diagonal. It's like they plan on making sure you cut the hell out of their lines. When the guy came out for the repair, he was pissed talking about billing us etc etc. Until he was shown that it wasn't deep enough, and then he found out that the wire wasn't even the right gauge for that kind of install and says they need to redo the entire thing to get the house proper power. Said he thinks it would probably kill the appliances in the house (they bought it a few months prior).
Cut through underground drain pipes for people's down spouts that run to the storm sewer.......and their leech pipes to help drain their yards in the poor drainage areas. They put em in 20-30 years ago and they don't have a clue how they ran them, but they'll tell you something to try to help you out anyway. Wouldn't be surprised if they intended you to hit them so you'd have to repair em and make sure they are clear of stuff and working.
Was working at an old school, turned bus/maintenance building. Which used to be where there was something to do with trains...grain silo or something. Found some tracks, but they weren't in the way and they didn't want to pay to remove em. Then we got down deep repairing their bus parking lot which was basically mud underneath, found a bunch of unmarked stuff. Power lines, found a couple of huge underground tanks that had been capped off but never filled. So they had these two massive underground tanks breaking down with no way to access them, and they weren't filled with concrete or stone. So if they had caved in, they would have had some massive problems. Considering it was in a water sensitive area, and those tanks were within 30-50 feet of a good size creek. Give you an idea of the size of these tanks. They were deep enough we sent a guy in on a harness...about 10 feet of rope he wasn't to the bottom. But he said you could easily store a single axle dump truck inside of both of them. So 12-15 feet tall, and 15-20 feet long. And one may have been bigger than that. At this same location we pulled a concrete ball out of the ground that used to be a flag pole base. That concrete ball took two machines to lift into the back of a dump truck with it's tail gate off....and that was after it was jack hammered to make it small enough to fit. Someone went totally crazy with the concrete on that flag pole, unless it was a thousand feet or so tall.
Then you get into locations where it was residential turn commercial. And you see these places where they have sections of their parking lot that's just crumbling and sinking...and does so for years. Then you discover that the guy who was in cha
The guys in the SUV aren't there to fix the line. They're there to make sure you accidentally broke the line. As in you're not deliberately cutting their communications, or made a huge mistake while installing a tap.
As such, they need to arrive quickly and start asking questions quickly.
That way if you're ever lost in a desert, you can just lay it in the ground and wait.
When the backhoe operator cuts it, ask him to rescue you.
Provides a handy counter-example to anyone who wants to point to government as inherently inefficient. Clearly it can be efficient when it wants to be.
Reality has a liberal bias
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.
Irrelevant. As I explained here, there are very effective methods of locating utilities (quite accurately I might add) that are either missing from a map, or are incorrectly drawn on the map. I do agree that this story seems to be quite sensationalized, and still maintain that the contractor did not do his/her due diligence prior to digging.
Sometimes keeping people employed on large projects is a good enough reason for a government job, stimulating the economy and trying to keep unemployment numbers down.
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.