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When Your Backhoe Cuts "Black" Fiber

Posted by timothy on from the careful-with-that-thing dept.

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!"

28 of 385 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wow... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's what they want you to believe, the original posters have all been deleted.

  2. Our tax dollars at work. by Celeste+R · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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/
    1. Re:Our tax dollars at work. by GreenTech11 · · Score: 5, Funny

      They probably "fudge" the paperwork on their important wires, these are just decoys *Puts on tinfoil hat*

      --
      Laughter is the best medicine, except if you have a broken rib.
    2. Re:Our tax dollars at work. by Celeste+R · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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/
    3. Re:Our tax dollars at work. by fuego451 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    4. Re:Our tax dollars at work. by Shadow+of+Eternity · · Score: 5, Funny

      Sewage line then, it's probably full of shit anyway.

      --
      A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
    5. Re:Our tax dollars at work. by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 5, Insightful

      WTF does stealing plans have to do with scaring people?

      The government can use plans being stolen as an excuse to scare their people with the threat of scaring people? :)

    6. Re:Our tax dollars at work. by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 5, Funny

      The Rebel Alliance steals the plans to the Death Star. Darth Vader blows up a planet. People get scared that their planet is next. You don't need to be a Jedi to figure that one out. :P

    7. Re:Our tax dollars at work. by rtb61 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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
    8. Re:Our tax dollars at work. by Beardo+the+Bearded · · Score: 5, Informative

      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".

      --

      ---
      ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
    9. Re:Our tax dollars at work. by Kadin2048 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There are lots of natural gas pipelines under the ground besides the low-pressure ones that end users tap into to run domestic appliances. The higher-pressure transportation pipelines aren't something you touch unless you want to die a spectacular death, so they'd be guaranteed to be left alone by everyone save the gas company. And if you wanted to protect against that, you could create some sort of paper company that owned it and was responsible for maintenance: I've never met a utility company that would touch something once they got an inkling of a way in which it could be made somebody else's problem.

      --
      "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
    10. Re:Our tax dollars at work. by MadnessASAP · · Score: 5, Funny

      Wait... So whose the terrorist here again?

      --
      I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
    11. Re:Our tax dollars at work. by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Ewoks.

    12. Re:Our tax dollars at work. by h4rm0ny · · Score: 5, Funny


      Two. The one you know about, and the one you... don't.

      --

      Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
    13. Re:Our tax dollars at work. by spartacus_prime · · Score: 5, Funny

      And for vitally important stuff they use the Spanish Inquisition.

      --
      If you can read this, it means that I bothered to log in.
  3. My Dad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:My Dad by MichaelSmith · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Was it on his property? How deep was it? If Verizon ran a shallow cable across his land they should be liable. One farmer here in Victoria, Australia sued Telstra (a big telco) because they ran twisted pair inside his boundary. His equipment dug it up and now that land is useless for farming because his produce is full if little bits of copper wire. It took a while but he won the case.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
  4. Re:Two Ends of the Cable by Roskolnikov · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At&t

    --
    Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
  5. Re:Ok... by camperdave · · Score: 5, Funny

    How we supposed to know it's there if it's top secret and we don't have clearance?

    Well, all you have to do is read the cable. It says "Top Secret Cable. Do Not Cut" right on it.

    --
    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  6. I can imagine the conversation by blue+l0g1c · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?

  7. Not a new problem by R2.0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:Not a new problem by LordKronos · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If that is really what the line was for, then nobody would have told you that's what it was for.

  8. Doesn't surprise me by guruevi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  9. Re:Two Ends of the Cable by kv9 · · Score: 5, Funny

    But what IEEE spec covers that? It's IEEE1984, isn't it?

    fixed that for you.

    --
    Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
  10. Re:Ok... by Todd+Fisher · · Score: 5, Funny

    So who you supposed to notify when you dig? You're not. That's the secret part of it.

    If the fiber is secret, nobody's going to tell you where it's at, and nobody's going to 'fess up about the ownership of said fiber. Correct, that's why the serious men who pull up to the site and get busy fixing it don't tell you who they are.

    And who do you make the check out to when you do cut it? The serious men will not ask for payment

    Or would a 'Hey, how the hell can we know when we cut a top secret fiber? Rule #1 of accidentally cutting "black" fiber: Do not talk smack to the serious men.

    How we supposed to know it's there if it's top secret and we don't have clearance??? See Rule #1.

    defense work in court when the other guy's lawyers come at you for damages?There will be nothing to go to court about.

    --


    --I'm not talking about dance lessons. I'm talking about putting a brick through the other guy's windshield.-
  11. Re:Under pressure... by greyhueofdoubt · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  12. Re:Ok... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  13. Completely fallacious and sensationalized nonsense by kriston · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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