When Your Backhoe Cuts "Black" Fiber...

[Bob Hubbard]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/30/AR2009053002114_pf.html

[SIZE=+2]Metro Dig at Tysons Stirs Underground Intrigue[/SIZE]
High Anxiety Over Top-Security Cable
[SIZE=-1] By Amy Gardner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 31, 2009
[/SIZE]

This part happens all the time: A construction crew putting up an office building in the heart of Tysons Corner a few years ago hit a fiber optic cable no one knew was there.
This part doesn't: Within moments, three black sport-utility vehicles drove up, a half-dozen men in suits jumped out and one said, "You just hit our line."
Whose line, you may ask? The guys in suits didn't say, recalled Aaron Georgelas, whose company, the Georgelas Group, was developing the Greensboro Corporate Center on Spring Hill Road. But Georgelas assumed that he was dealing with the federal government and that the cable in question was "black" wire -- a secure communications line used for some of the nation's most secretive intelligence-gathering operations.
"The construction manager was shocked," Georgelas recalled. "He had never seen a line get cut and people show up within seconds. Usually you've got to figure out whose line it is. To garner that kind of response that quickly was amazing."

 

[Archangel M]

eh...wouldn't be too unusual. Spooks have been wiring up embassies and other locations for years and years.

 

[terryl965]

Say it isn't so?

 

[Carol]

Intelligence operators do need to communicate with one another, even if its something as simple as communication between two offices.

Running a signal "on the glass" is THE most secure medium of telecommunications we have in common usage.

Wireless communications could be intercepted and decoded by the wrong party.

Traditional copper wire means you have electrical signals going across copper wire....which creates an antenna that broadcasts your data. (Granted the signal doesn't go far, but it is still a broadcast).

Glass fibers only transmit light pulses, and the fibers are heavily insulated, so they cannot behave like an antenna.

$300,000 to reroute a fiber line? In an area that's got construction? Dang I wish I had a clearance.

 

[MA-Caver]

Several thoughts on this...

1. Their office had to be AWFULLY close and they've prepared for this type of contingency to show up moments after the line was cut. Knowing that there is a lot of construction going on.

2. The fact they didn't Ident themselves is scary. Phantoms of ultra uber secret government sanctioned agencies that are , as far as the law is concerned... "untouchable" ... from the minds of Stephen King (The Shop) and Dean Koontz and numerous others... they loom large on this story.

3. How stupid are they? To show up within moments (gives away the proximity of their office(s). To fail to even have a cover identity (FBI, NSA, CIA, etc. etc. ). To not even think far enough ahead that perhaps their secure line needs to be protected in say one inch steel pipe surrounded by 4 inches of concrete so that in the event of a construction breech that their line is still secure long enough to have the backhoe operator say woah wait a minnit what's this?
That they didn't choose a more or less conspicuous route to lay their secure lines?

4. WE the taxpayers are going to foot the bill for the whole dang thing.

 

[jks9199]

Look at a map...

You'll notice that the Tysons Corner area is just outside the Washington, DC Beltway. And that, just a bit east of Tyson's Corner is Mclean, VA. Home of the CIA. (And I don't mean the Culinary Institute of America.)

There are lots of other 3-letter agencies with office space in the Tysons Corner area, too. Like the Diplomatic Security Service. And many defense contractors have at least an office there... Several have their headquarters office in the area.

There's lots of secure commo systems running around the area...

It's no surprise someone accidentally cut one...

 

[Archangel M]

I wouldnt allow ANYBODY to know where my secret cables were.

 

[Carol]

Its extremely easy to prepare for that sort of contingency. Watch where the construction equipment is each day in relation to the sunken cable. If/When a Loss Of Signal alarm gets raised on that link, send the geek squad out to where the construction equipment was that morning.

 

[tellner]

Carol, devices that can tap fiber are decades old. I know someone who owns one of the patents. They're more secure than copper or wireless, but not as good as people think.

 

[Ken Morgan]

Very nonchalant. You would think they would send one guy in an old Ford pick up, when they realized it wasn’t a cyber attack. You don’t want/need the attention.