Some Londoners Cut Off As Failed Copper Thieves Take Fiber 184
judgecorp writes "About 37,000 Sky broadband and phone customers lost their connection, as incompetent copper thieves raided BT's infrastructure... and took fibre. Some scrap metal dealers will pay £4 per kg for stolen copper cables, but there is no dark market for fibre, so the thieves didn't make anything — which might be some small consolation to customers, some of whom had to wait for two days for BT to repair the inaccessible cables."
failed copper thieves in the US are deep-fried (Score:3)
Re:failed copper thieves in the US are deep-fried (Score:4, Funny)
repair the inaccessible cables
Well not to the thieves...
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Perhaps inaccessible meant difficult for a fiber splicing guy with his fusion splicing equipment to get to?
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Naa, that explanation is way too complicated for the average slashdotter. And it has the added disadvantage to be very likely true.
Here is a better one that has the added advantage of being an insane conspiracy-theory: This is really a terrorist attack, and the terrorists collapsed the tunnel with explosives!
Just needs an explanation why the usual political scum are not all over this yet. Any takers?
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Standard UK cable theft techniques (Score:5, Informative)
1: tying a rope around the cable, attached to a quad bike.
2: 2 blokes stand at end end of the cable with sharpened spades. They stand on rubber mats.
3: At a signal (walkie talkies or mobile phone), they simultaneously chop through the cable bundle.
4: Someone on the quadbike revs up and rips the cable out of the duct.
The thieves then roll the cable up at their leisure, usually having about 25-30 minutes to finish the deed before the police show up.
It's standard practice to use vans painted up to look like genuine phone company items and for the theives themselves to dress as phone company workers
The phone company (BT OpenEeach) and UK police have implemented procedures to get faster response to cable breaks and for police to attend the area automatically - that is why the thieves have 25-30 minutes instead of the 2-4 hours they previously had. As a result several prolific gangs have been caught, but only 1 in 50 cable thefts results in anyone being apprehended.
SImilar tactics are also used to steal copper from the railway system - and that's despite cables carrying a few hundred volts.
Only the really desperate (and foolish) ones try to steal from HV switchyards. The tactic there is to throw heavy chains over incoming 250kV lines to short them out, but because power distribution systems use rebreakers, those chains generally only last a couple of minutes before they melt.
Penalties for being in a cable theft gang are esentially a slap on the wrist compared to the profits which can be made and even with recent tightening of laws, the penalties for handling stolen comms cables are laughable.
Given that railway cable thefts can (and often do) result in upwards of a half a million people being stranded (often in trains, stalled on lines), there's some traction on calls to make a specific class of offence such as "interference with transport network/endangering transport" (which also includes lasing aircraft) with non--parole terms of at least 10 years.
Re:failed copper thieves in the US are deep-fried (Score:5, Funny)
This story goes well with the story that some drug runners bought the same model pickup as the local power company used, painted the local power company's logo on it, and was driving on private back country roads to avoid the border patrol stations, pretending to be inspecting lines, or whatever, until some rancher noticed that the logo was hand painted and had a spelling error or some such nonsense.
of course, all this is probably fiction designed to scare the outsiders, but it sure makes for good entertainment!
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A quick read of your link suggests that the owner is in trouble more for the generally run down condition of the complex (including uninhabitable buildings) rather than for the death of the copper thief.
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Well, you can sue for anything, and luckily it looks like the court rejected the claim for negligence, so your claim that it results in draconian new laws is perhaps a bit overblown.
New laws? (Score:2)
Citation on the 'draconian new laws' affecting home prices? Your two links don't mention any new laws, the thief's family was rather thoroughly smacked down by the court. Indeed, the closest thing to a dissenting judge was one that agreed with it, but had a 'you were thinking too hard' comment that because the dude was committing a felony(the damage to the transformer raised it to that point), any injuries were on HIS head. The others were saying that a reasonable person wouldn't have broken into the roo
There's a solution you know (Score:3)
Declare the copper thieves terrorists and have them shot.
Re:There's a solution you know (Score:5, Insightful)
Destruction of public infrastructure should be it's own, separate charge, on top of the theft.
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Something akin to removal of appendages like in the 'old' days would seem to be appropriate.
or...
If they really want to live in a place with no infrastructure then exile to a barren island would be a suggestion..
Re:There's a solution you know (Score:4, Funny)
If they really want to live in a place with no infrastructure then exile to a barren island would be a suggestion..
We've tried that before... That island now has its own Fiber Network [nbnco.com.au]... :)
Re:There's a solution you know (Score:4, Informative)
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I think we do in the UK. You're certainly not allowed to touch any cables or equipment that is beyond the demarcation box or master socket. Anyone?
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I don't know about any specifics for the UK, but that generally just falls under it's not yours. Public infrastructure isn't your to touch, just as your neighbors bed isn't yours to sleep in. Taking it is just considered theft, they don't tack on extra charges because you took it from the public (and they arguably should). As an example they do do something like that with police and government employees in the US. In NY Punching a random guy on the street is third degree assault (class A misdemeanor) and pu
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Do you need permission from both owners of the bed, or only just one?
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They should be locked up for a long time in whatever the UK version of "federal pound me in the ass prison" is these days.
Re:There's a solution you know (Score:5, Funny)
Re:There's a solution you know (Score:4, Insightful)
"Her Majesty's Bugger-Me-Arse Bin."
Re:There's a solution you know (Score:4, Insightful)
Destruction of public infrastructure is not only not a separate charge in the UK, there is even a whole party [conservatives.com] that advocates for it!
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You mean power over the Democrats (Score:2)
Wal-Mart contributes to Think Progress [powerlineblog.com] (left wing propaganda group), not the Republicans.
That said, you REALLY think Wal-Mart wanted people offline on Black Friday? They have a website too you know... And the average Wal-Mart customer (just to unfairly typecast) is way more likely to desire not having to travel any distance.
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No, just unlike them on FB.... Pure torture for some of these people!
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Declare the copper thieves terrorists and have them shot.
Firm but fair!
I do seriously think that any crime that is an attack on "infrastructure" should be punished more harshly though, so phone lines/exchange equipment, and also things like train signalling cables which also happens (in the UK anyway).
So high in Fiber, You'll crap rainbows! (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone who has spliced fiber: It's such a PITA, no wonder no one's buying it. I almost feel sorry for the NSA goons who had to splice all that fiber optic cable to create PRISM. A couple of days to restore operation is awesome. Kudos to Sky broadband workers who repaired the cluster fsck.
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out of interest what aspect(s) of it do you find to be a PITA?
Re:So high in Fiber, You'll crap rainbows! (Score:4, Insightful)
PITA? The splicer does most of the work for you.
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I almost feel sorry for the NSA goons who had to splice all that fiber optic cable to create PRISM.
Don't worry. I'm sure they didn't have to do any of the work themselves. The telcos were probably more than happy to do it for three times the usual rate, paid for by the government (the taxpayers being spied on in other words).
"Dark Market"? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have never heard of a "dark market" before. Is this a more "PC" way of saying "Black Market"? I know I recently heard people asserting that "Black Friday" is racist, so is "Black Market" also racist?
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A black market is a market in which transactions can be presumed to be illegitimate. For example a market in stolen organs is a "black market".
A gray market is one which transactions can be presumed to be legal, but are considered undesirable by the original sources of the products. In a "gray market" transaction, the seller has valid title to the goods but is undercutting the manufacturer's attempts to establish different retail prices in different countries.
So, I should think a "dark market" would be one
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I actually looked up the definition for racist (just to make sure that it wasn't different to what I assumed it was). Seeing as you're only feel superior to said person (because you feel you don't have a chip on your shoulder), it's not racist as you don't believe your race is superior to another. Though it would probably bite you in the ass if you described the black person who sues you when they carelessly walked out in front of your car (giving you no time to stop) as a nigger - that'd probably turn it i
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It's called an "African-American Market" these days.
Not in the UK it isn't. "Market of Caribbean Extraction" might be more likely...
Copper Fever (Score:3)
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Yeah, but they'd expect you to be sober, clean, reliable, and show up by 9am five days in a row at a regular job.
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In some ways, "cleaning" the material so it can be sold for top tier scrap is more work than a regular job.
Not sure about the HVAC, but in case the copper is regular cable, "cleaning" is very easy: take the cable to a remote location, set it on fire, and after the insulation has burned, take the copper to a scrap metal dealer.
And let the property owner deal with the scorch marks on his land.
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What kind of cable uses flammable insulation these days?
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Where I live (London, Ontario, Canada), scrap metal dealers will not buy wire which has been burned. You have to either manually strip the insulation off or sell it to them with insulation still on and get peanuts for it.
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Criminals operates on a pyramids principle: a few makes insane amount of money, the rest are suckers that don't know better.
I can hear it now: "Look, copper wire is pretty valuable and I hear that fiber can carry tons more channels, so it must be really valuable!"
They Were Lucky (Score:2)
It could have gone much. much worse for them: Not for the squeamish. [thepadrino.com]
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Dayum! I doubt if they even knew what hit them.
Evolution in action.
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Removed as "shocking and disgusting content". I wonder whether this wording is accidental....
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I did exactly the oppposite (Score:5, Funny)
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If they made shopping carts out of copper, it would instantly solve shopping cart blight.
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And you'd have to put down a deposit to use one for shopping.
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And you'd have to put down a deposit to use one for shopping.
Which you do anyways...
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Nowhere I shop does that
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The frogs and fish who just received a new home would like to thank you for the beautification of the bottom of their pond...
Do you actually believe that they didn't just throw your spool away the second they were told it was worthless? You're littering by proxy.
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Then I left an old dishwasher out there. It still ran, just had bought a new one. They took the copper parts they wanted out of it rendering it useless for anybody else, and then nobody else would take it.
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I had the same problem. Intentionally left a ShopVac outside, worked perfectly, cosmetic condition was A+ (sign said, 'works').... Just (maybe) needed a filter (Home Depot). They took the copper coils out of the motor, left the unit behind - useless unit now. That is why I did the 24 pair Cat 3 copper on top of the fiber... hopefully they broke their backs loading the spool on to the pick up truck.
It's hard to specify terms of use for items that you leave on the sidewalk. If you'd like a little more control over how your hand-me-downs get re-used, I recommend something like FreeCycle.org [freecycle.org]. I've had good results there.
Dark market (Score:2)
Not a real surprise (Score:2)
We've had the same problem in Southern Ontario before, where 80k people lost internet access for nearly a day on Rogers, back in the early 2000's. A lot of companies now put "fibre" on their above ground lines to stop them from cutting it, it works, kinda.
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I wonder what it would cost to give out free proximity current detectors by the truckload - make it cheap and easy for thieves to quickly skip over the cables not carrying any current (and thus presumably being fiber). Might increase cable theft rates slightly, but the reduction in fiber damage could well be far more dramatic.
Of course if there's significant "dark" cable lying around in Ontario that would be a non-starter, you have to keep the false negatives down if you hope to avoid pointless fiber damag
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If they would spell it correctly, maybe it would work better.
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If they would spell it correctly, maybe it would work better.
Not everyone uses the English language the way Americans do:
http://grammarist.com/spelling/fiber-fibre/ [grammarist.com]
the hell?? (Score:2)
According to the Guardian, the hapless criminals were after valuable copper cable, but all they managed to find was fibre, which enables faster broadband speeds but is almost impossible to resell.
How do they know that they were copper thieves? How do they know that the thieves weren't actually trying to steal fiber cables? This is like someone stealing a car, and then everyone laughing at them and calling them failed mobile-home thieves. The whole article is one assumption (at least it appears that way because it never provides reasoning) and keeps pointing to how dumb the thieves were.
Queue the NSA theorists...
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The question is - what is the black-market price for fiber? Lots of places in the world rolling out infrastructure on a shoestring budget, I'm sure there's a thriving grey market for fiber in good condition, and a black market feeding into it.
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Copper is easily melted and you can make new cables of whatever specification you need. Fibre, not so much.
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So long as the fiber is basically undamaged it would simply be a matter of determining it's specs and finding a buyer for an X-foot length of fiber. Probably not much demand for it by the yard, but if they were able to steal blocks or miles without damage...
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Possibly utilities in the developing world? It's not like there's a single monolithic "Global Utilities" company.
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Your analogy about failed mobile-home thieves is ridiculous.
I was trying to match the ridiculousness of the assumptions brought on by the story. If a jewelry store was robbed of it's diamonds , and everyone laughed at the guys (not arrested the guys mind you) for not stealing the gold, which can be melted down and that, and then assumed that they were trying to steal gold, is just as ridiculous. Who the fuck cannot tell the difference between gold and diamonds? Who the fuck cannot tell the difference between fiber and copper?
Seeing as how they didn't arrest the
WOOT (Score:3)
Some of my neighborhood thieves have moved to London.
Sounds like whoever stole the broken 20 year-old cassette deck out of the 40 year-old car sitting open in the driveway on flat tires. Must be a gold mine for sure! They even left all the knobs and bolts in the tray in the console with the wrench. Biggest WTF ever.
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I had a thief break into my car and steal the trashbag. It was a plastic Myers (Department store) bag that I was using as a bin, perhaps they thought it contained expensive clothing.
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Was it a good wrench?
Gotta love a thief who leaves you with a profit...
Copper theft: the ultimate broken window fallacy (Score:3)
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Well, accepting a huge damage to somebody else for a moderate personal gain is the very core definition of evil. Copper thieves, investment bankers, cult leaders and politicians all qualify.
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huge damage to somebody else for a moderate personal gain
Except that even compared to just their own damage/"investment" they don't come out ahead. Read grand-parent post:
Plus considering the amount of time it takes to steal the copper, they could have gotten a minimum wage job and made more money
So you really have to wonder, what exactly is driving those idiots...
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Indeed. I think it must be some advanced delusions grandeur, along the lines of them figuring themselves elite high-tech thieves that will make it big. They probably have not even bothered to find out what little money they would have gotten had they been successful.
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Who buys recycled copper? (Score:2)
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Yeah, those guys totally got that truck full of manhole covers from remodeling their basement.
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Nice link, but next time a NSFW warning would be appreciated - not for the pictures of the burnt thieves, that's no biggie, but for the rather risque site logo and ads :/
Thanks :)
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However, usually the copper thieves are smart and use insulated tools to cut the wires. While embedding power line within fiber cable would cook an unprepared fiber thief (who did not expect the fiber cable to have high voltage), it would not do anything for the copper thief (who already though this was a power cable), actually, it would be worse - now the thief would at least get a consolation prize - the embedded power wire.
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it would not do anything for the copper thief (who already though this was a power cable), actually, it would be worse - now the thief would at least get a consolation prize - the embedded power wire.
Yeah... instead they should use steel-clad or kevlar-clad armored cabling; with cut-resistance: inside pressurized conduit, that will set off alarms, and sound like they hit a gas line, if depressurized.
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Or we could, you know, just switch all our telecoms to fibre, so there will never be a theft of it again.
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Copper goes for about $NZ7/kg in New Zealand... you yanks are getting shafted.
If I sold 30kg today, it would get me about $NZ210, or around $US170
Slightly less than the 4 pounds per kg in pommy land though.
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Why would it?
It doesn't need EM shielding.
Strength/durability would be better and more cheaply added by steel.
Other reasons?
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On land, I assume that it's much cheaper to run fiber without a conductor and try to place the amps in locations that have power. Undersea cables, though, don't really have much of a choice.
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metal conductor (Score:2)
On the land lines - often they'll have a metal thread so that they can be detected by metal detectors in an attempt to make them easier to locate and prevent cuts. It'd be a steel wire though, not very valuable.
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It does sound inflated, but I also imagine a recycler catering to cable thieves is potentially equipped to efficiently scrub the cable clean, which is perhaps cheaper than simply melting it down and re-refining it.
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a recycler catering to cable thieves is potentially equipped
Equipped specifically to cater to thieves? I'd think such an outfit would not stay long in business. All police have to ask is "what is this piece of equipment for"? All this business lives by plausible deniability. The recycler doesn't want to know where those copper scraps are coming from, much less specifically buy equipment to handle them...
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Ah, but I'm sure lot's of cable gets legitimately recycled as well. Clearly the cable-scrubbing machine would be to make the process more cost effective.