When Your Backhoe Cuts "Black" Fiber 385
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 (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.
Re:Our tax dollars at work. (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.
Re:Our tax dollars at work. (Score:1, Interesting)
The solution I would use, since they know there's a big dig in that area.. these agencies should have:
1) gotten someone with the clearance to map out these classified lines.
2) Give some foremen etc. working on the dig just a block-by-block set of overlays to show their secret fiber. That way it won't reveal where it's going to or coming from, no actual information leak, but they know line exists in order to move it.
Although... if they can withstand these unplanned outages OK, I suppose running out the SUVs post-cut works *shrug*.
Not a new problem (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.
Re:Our tax dollars at work. (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.
Doesn't surprise me (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.
Re:My Dad (Score:5, Interesting)
Happens in business also (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:Our tax dollars at work. (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.
Re:Our tax dollars at work. (Score:2, Interesting)
Terrorism is totally relative, but it does scare me that someone else can now make the things that has won wars for us in the past, especially with things being at a less than peaceful state worldwide. (N Korea, Iran, etc)
If we can't protect ourselves sufficiently in any sense, doesn't it warrant a word to describe it? Is the lack of protection intellectually always going to be so naive as to assume that it's not going to be used against us?
Re:Our tax dollars at work. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Security Through Obscurity is not security (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re:Happens in business also (Score:3, Interesting)
Nothing so exotic. And this was Dallas TX. We were guys. Guys don't and never did use maps. Just keep on driving.
It was no doubt extremely valuable. A geographical seismic map. Probably of some area they were thinking of leasing. Oil drilling is serious money. Money to drill but much more money comes out of the ground.
Thanks
Re:Our tax dollars at work. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Our tax dollars at work. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Ok... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Ok... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually this is pretty plausible. Best guess-
AT&T built and operates the cable. A branch of the federal government pays AT&T to operate it.
Cable is cut, AT&T fixes it at great expense. AT&T asks customer(feds) to pay for it and they say "no it's your line, you pay for it". AT&T asks construction company to pay and feds quickly pick up the tab to make the matter disappear.
I've never worked in telecom, but I have worked in construction and this is a pretty common scenario when accidents occur.
Been There- Done That (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Completely fallacious and sensationalized nonsense (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.
Re:Security Through Obscurity is not security (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Under pressure... (Score:5, Interesting)
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. [wikipedia.org]
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.
Re:My Dad (Score:5, Interesting)
A buddy of mine cut a copper phone cable a few years back running some drain tile to the drainage ditch along the road. They didn't get the helocopters of FBI but a couple of verizon trucks kept running up and down the road. Finally one of them pulls in the drive and asked is anyone was doing any construction around there. They said no but then remembered putting the drain tile in and offered that.
They ended up using the backhoe to dig up access to the line, the guy used a signal wand to find it. The guy and someone else worked for about 6 hours patching 500 some copper lines back together. His total bill was around $6,000 but he ended up getting it cut in half because they were about a foot outside of the right of way. Unfortunately, they placed the drain tile into the right of way so it would have been cut either way so they split the difference. I guess the bill would have been a little more if Verizon would have had to send it's own backhoe out.
They told a story of a fiber line being cut on the other side of the road (fiber on one side and the older copper on the other) that cost the guy 1 million per day that it was down. I guess whoever cuts the line pays for the lost service too. Hope that give you an idea of how much the bill will be.
Ah, the dreaded.... (Score:3, Interesting)
...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.
Re:Security Through Obscurity is not security (Score:1, Interesting)
The US did this during Operation Ivy Bells. The Navy reasoned the Russians would use an undersea cable from their base in Petropavlovsk to the mainland due to the geography of the region. A sub is sent and sure enough, on the coast is huge sign saying "Don't Anchor - Undersea Cable".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells [wikipedia.org]
Re:Ok... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Cut plenty of things with my backhoe. (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re:Our tax dollars at work. (Score:3, Interesting)
Or run your data line through a gas line. Where you /also/ use the gas.
Re:Ok... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Our tax dollars at work. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Our tax dollars at work. (Score:3, Interesting)
Then when someone dials the call-before-you-dig hotline, they're told there's two communications links and a 36 inch gas pipeline buried there. Guaranteed the contractor will be more concerned about hitting the pipeline than any cables buried right next to it, and stay far away from it.
I blame the contractor on this one. Just because a utility was not listed on whatever plans he/she was reading, doesn't excuse making no real effort to detect that utility in the first place. In truth, many Private Locating Companies use Ground Penetrating Radar [global-gpr.com] which is fully capable of finding just about anything underground. These aren't your usual "ULOCO" guys, and yes, they're more expensive. However, if the alternative is accidentally hitting an expensive/secret/critical comm. line, I'd rather put the money in the budget to begin with (especially if I know I'm working in an area where this type of thing happens frequently).
Just my 2 cents.
Seeing it first hand (Score:1, Interesting)
I actually live and work right in this area and my company has been the victim of severed fiber several times in just the past 2 years. Usually it's phone call after phone call to get someone to even move on it. Once the finally acknowledge there is an issue they can't move on it until they hit a maintenance window of 11PM because they have to take down connectivity for the FAA at Dulles International to resolve it. If anything I'm jealous at that kind of response time they have.
Re:Completely fallacious and sensationalized nonse (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [slashdot.org], 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.
Re:Completely fallacious and sensationalized nonse (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Our tax dollars at work. (Score:3, Interesting)
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