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Vandals snipped another fiber optic cable line in the San Francisco Bay area this week, the 12th incident of its kind in the region over the past year.
The latest attack occurred in the San Joaquin Valley town of Stockton, disrupting Internet, mobile phone, and 911 service for tens of thousands of AT&T and Verizon customers in three counties east of San Francisco. Service was restored about a day after the Tuesday incident.
The FBI, which is investigating the attacks, has not stated a motive, but it said the attacks usually occur in remote areas where there are no surveillance cameras. The initial attacks on California telecommunications lines began in July 2014. Whoever is responsible appears, for the moment, to be operating with impunity.
It would be funny and appropriate if they kept snipping the cables running to the Wall Street high frequency traders that keep front-running everyone's trades. Also, potentially lucrative if you go long in Depends adult diapers first.
(Score: 4, Informative) by jmorris on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:15AM
It would be funny and appropriate if they kept snipping the cables running to...
Just no. Don't know if you are trying to be funny, don't care. Civilization is fragile and depends on a hell of a lot of infrastructure not being tampered with. These clowns need to be found and put away for a long time as an example. No jokes, no sympathy.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by crutchy on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:35AM
the same could be said of most politicians
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:47AM
Civilization is fragile and depends on a hell of a lot of infrastructure
Really? jmorris spake thus? Whence the free market? Whence the lack of government interference in the infrastructure attacks of free persons? My God, if they succeed, we would not be able to read jmorris's opinions on his lack of ability to express his opinion. Or get his pron.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:31AM
Conservativism, like nearly any ism, is not at all consistent. This story is one of extreme revenge to barbaric extremes (it always is when the words "make an example" is used) for little morris, thus fits with his profile just fine.
(Score: 4, Funny) by penguinoid on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:17AM
These clowns need to be found and put away for a long time as an example. No jokes, no sympathy.
I see what you're trying to communicate here. We need someone with some real fiber to give out a bundle of punishments to cut down on this sort of behavior.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @09:39AM
put away for a long time as an example
Are we still talking about civilization?
(Score: 3, Troll) by curunir_wolf on Tuesday July 21 2015, @12:30PM
I am a crackpot
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AnonTechie on Tuesday July 21 2015, @01:14PM
Reminds me of "The coating of civilization is often so thin that it rubs off with a little alcohol"
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 3, Funny) by tibman on Tuesday July 21 2015, @01:21PM
I can't hear you over all this freedom we're hav.. wait.. no, i can't hear you because someone cut the fiber-optics again.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 21 2015, @02:15PM
ROFLMBO - did you say, "Like the U.S." ? ? ? ?
I know that the U.S. has done a lot of shitty things in it's history - but the U.S. didn't start either one of the world wars. You can make a case that we contributed to the second one, but the first one was all on the whitey-white people across the pond!
But, yes, you are right. Civilization is but a thin veneer. Funny how few people appreciate that fact. Everyone just blindly accepts on faith that nothing can happen to upset our tidy little apple carts. What's with Daesh? They're tipping apple carts left, right, and center!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @04:47PM
Recall in the very recent past,when Soviet enforcement of law and order was removed from Yugoslavia how quickly the "civilized" europeans turned to mass murder and genocide? It was practically overnight. And how quickly Sarajevo went from the beauty of a Olympic host city to a war-torn hell hole of death? That took less than ten years.
The largest technological and cultural contribution made to mankind has come from the Eurasian continent, spread over thousands of years, and that is of war and efficiencies of war.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Tuesday July 21 2015, @06:46PM
I am a crackpot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @10:38PM
Are you fucking kidding me? You want to compare the $200k the Japanese offered in Katrina relief (if requested) to the $730 MILLION [jcie.org] given to the Japanese from the US. That's fucking MILLION. And $77 Million of that was direct from the US government [usembassy.gov] delivered after only ONE month. Right after the disaster the US moved in an aircraft carrier, several amphibious ships, and put 2000 Marines on standby at the behest of the Japanese government.
You really want to negatively compare the US disaster relief response, funding and supplies for any major disaster anywhere in the world, whether it is at home, Hati, the Indian Ocean, any fuckingwhere? There is no country that is quicker in response and no people that dig deeper in their pocket than the US.
Are you THAT hateful, or stupid, or both?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday July 22 2015, @12:49AM
You see that dot it the distance? Nope? Kinda normal, given how far you've missed his/her point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 22 2015, @01:47AM
No, it is pretty spot-on. Though you must figure yours to be the "civilized" response.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday July 22 2015, @03:30PM
External disaster relief and donations was most definitely not what curunir_wolf was talking about.
I must have missed the press coverage of how the Japanese people who had survived the water and the destruction instantly started bickering and fighting.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 22 2015, @01:32AM
Look at the big picture. You want to take a snapshot, and compare a couple of nations. Snapshots aren't sufficient to evaluate much of anything.
As for New Orleans and Louisiana during Katrina - liberal, incompetent governor, liberal, incompetent mayor. DAYS AFTER the hurricane struck the city, the president of the United States had to ask that liberal, incompetent governor if she needed or wanted help in New Orleans. The governor didn't even mobilize her own National Guard. This is the kind of thing that happens when important positions are given to bumbling fools for feel-good reasons.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:38PM
Kinda sounds like that time that all those submarine fiber optic cables were cut [wikipedia.org] mysteriously around Iran.
Of course, unlike San Francisco, the U.S. is now friends with Iran. You have to wonder why somebody would target a repressive, politically intolerant regime like San Francisco.
(Score: 5, Informative) by sjames on Tuesday July 21 2015, @01:05PM
What in the world does Wall Street and high speed trading have to do with civilization?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @01:38PM
Civilization is fragile and depends on a hell of a lot of infrastructure not being tampered with
Citation needed.
But assuming your correct, you think the solution to the problem is making infrastructure unbreakable, or making civilization less fragile and afraid ?
I remember before the Internet civilisation was civilized, true story.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 21 2015, @02:20PM
"I remember before the Internet civilisation was civilized, true story."
That's why the KKK burned crosses and hung black people in the South.
And, that's why 40,000 Americans died in Vietnam.
And, Pol Pot.
And, Idi Amin.
And, Operation Ajaz.
And - to hell with it. Fill in your own blank spaces.
I once thought that the world was civilized. But, that was while I still lived a sheltered life. Before I quite reached my teens, I began to understand how UNcivlized the world really is. The almost fifty years since haven't improved my opinion any.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday July 21 2015, @03:20PM
Why do you think all those shithole middle eastern countries love to block/filter the Internet so much?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Touché) by penguinoid on Tuesday July 21 2015, @10:50PM
Why do you think all those shithole middle eastern countries love to block/filter the Internet so much?
Because they don't have enough power to take down the sites they don't like at their source?
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday July 21 2015, @06:02PM
What you are describing is culture. Civilization needs cultures to perpetuate, but not all of any culture is civilized.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 21 2015, @02:00PM
Front-running trades is illegal, but the high-frequency traders who do it nowadays use fiber and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and algorithms too complex for the government to begin to pretend to crack down on it. So the Wall Street traders commit millions of crimes per day (because we're talking about transactions that occur in milliseconds or fractions thereof) with total impunity. As such, if the fiber lines to their operations and their operations alone were cut, it would in fact be something done in defense of law and order and civilization.
For me, and perhaps others, it would also be funny because those traders do tend to be quite cock-sure and the look on their faces as all their systems say [CARRIER LOST] would be priceless.
Even more fundamental an infrastructure than fiber cables or roads are the rule of law and financial infrastructure. Wall Street traders and all their ilk who commit crimes with impunity (LIBOR rate fixing, money laundering for Mexican drug cartels, bribery, corruption, take your pick) and steal from you and yours in a thousand ways you don't even see strike at the heart of the civilization that produces those roads and fiber networks. They are tampering with that infrastructure.
You don't like cheek. Fine. The Wall Street banks are the central existential threat to the civilization you're talking about. The government won't move against them because they the banks have completely co-opted that government. They own it. They own it more now than JP Morgan did 120 years ago. They have erased trillions of dollars of wealth of every American while siphoning more wealth to themselves. They have done enormous damage to the future of every single citizen in this country.
Still think they wouldn't deserve somebody snipping the fiber cable to their office?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 21 2015, @02:23PM
Holy crap, dude. No one gets away with talking so bluntly and honestly. You better join a witness protection program!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:38PM
My life they may take, my integrity never.
We should all stop pussy footing around and talk about this clearly. Others are [huffingtonpost.com]. Like Huffington Post or not, it's a media outlet a lot of people read and that's on the front page. I've seen similar sentiments expressed in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. The 1% fear it, but we know it. If things in America (and the entire developed world, frankly) don't turn around abruptly and for the better, severed fiber optic cables will be the very least of the 1%'s problems.
Of course they won't turn around because the 1% think everything's just dandy. Everyone they know tells them so.
It's going to be a rough couple of decades.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @02:36PM
Why would a wall street trader looking for extremely low latency trades put thier office on the other side of the continent?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @09:13PM
They don't. The colocate in the same datacenters that the markets themselves use. They have fiber back to home office, but they also have microwave redundancies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @03:34PM
What this shows is that our infrastructure is pathetic. How much more of this will it take before we wise up and come up with a sensible design?
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Wednesday July 22 2015, @07:15AM
Totally. Civilization depends on the stock market and high-speed trading.
Just keep the shell game going until everything goes to hell. So, at least until the end of next week.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:30AM
See also our here [soylentnews.org].
It was too late to stop this one because comments had already been made. We wouldn't want to be accused of censoring comments by killing a story.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:52AM
You silly editor, Janrinok!@ If it wasn't for the fact that the level of discourse is much better in this thread, I might be a bit put out. But, probably not. Carry on, mon frere!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by TheRaven on Tuesday July 21 2015, @09:02AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:37AM
I dunno why the word "attack" is used so many times to describe the snipping. If it's just people vandalizing the cables, then wouldn't we call it an attack when someone unauthorized paints up a box at the train yard too?
I just get a bit tired of everything being worded so sensationally. Cutting fiber is different than spraying graffiti, sure, but it isn't necessarily an attack.
My guess is that it's people doing it for sport and enjoying the headlines, wondering when they'll get an official designation like "terrorists" or "communists" from the state or federal government. I guess we can use "attack" after they get re-branded as "home-grown cyber hardware warfare insurgents" though.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:16AM
There's a difference between cutting fibers and painting up a box. Painting up a box doesn't affect the functionality of the box; it's a purely aesthetic issue (one may even argue that sometimes the painted box looks better). Cutting fibers, on the other hand, causes them to no longer work. In other words, it's a denial of service attack. Just a physical one, rather than a purely traffic-based one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @03:49PM
The scale of the damage or what sort of damage is done is irrelevant. We don't know the person's intent, so we can't say it's an attack.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @12:44PM
Yeah, but Cyber Terrorism is the next Bin Laden. See the military industrial complex needs bogeymen in order to sell us as many $5000 hammers as possible.
Seriously, turn on the TV and try to find a CSI-ish show which isn't constantly beating the Cyber-Terrorism drum.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @12:50PM
One possibility that is easily overlooked is a strategy the U.S. military (used?) to use. Damage would be caused to a cable in one location, and a team would use the known disruption in the fiber line to splice into the line at another location in order to intercept data. By the time the original repair is made, the splice is up and running, and nobody is the wiser except the spies.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:59AM
HOWTO Win A Cold War When It Suddenly Grows Hot
http://www.warplife.com/tips/defense/national/c3i/fiber-optic-cable-cut/ [warplife.com]
Long time residents of Portland are being driven out of their homes in part due to this being a popular location for startup companies and in part due to the legality of no-fault evictions.
I have come to agree with the theory that the cable cuts are the work of those who want to drive out the engineers.
I tried to explain fiber optics to my mother. She listened patiently but then called comcast anyway because she pays a lot of money for her TV shows.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by zocalo on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:29AM
I wonder if anyone has thought to see if there are any patterns in the kinds of companies/organizations that are being impacted by these cuts, or check the entire fibre optic run, not just the section that was cut...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:49AM
There are lots of risks for the bad actor...
Unless you're a tla. Or Too Big To Fail. Or...
(Score: 1) by btendrich on Tuesday July 21 2015, @04:24PM
I thought this might be possible too for a while, but if they are testing from both directions (as they should) during an outage, the two sides wouldn't be able to agree on the location of the cut, since each side would be seeing a different cut. Also, the tap should be visible on an otdr trace. In any case, this may be practiced in other countries where we can't exert pressure on the telco, inside the U.S. I'll bet it's easier to exert pressure on th company and just tap it at the endpoint.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Tuesday July 21 2015, @05:32PM
Personally, I think it's far more likely to turn out to be someone(s) upset at the effects the tech industry is having on local house prices, employment prospects and other social issues, or some similar form of axe to grind against the telcos or their customers, but what use is a tech web forum without some tinfoil headwear? :)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by patella.whack on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:55AM
Given SF's history and the recent uproar over rising rents, it seems like these occurrences might be the result of a fairly small organized group of people who want to disrupt the high-tech goings-on in 'their' city. In the current parlance: domestic terrorism. Is it a turf battle? Seems like it. Can anyone here add to this theory?
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Tuesday July 21 2015, @09:26AM
I'd be looking towards the people who lived in the area before Silicon Valley became a tech center rather than hippies if I was you. I don't really have any love for them but come on. What seems more likely here, calm and timid stoned hippies suddenly deciding to be malicious or the same types of people that tried to harass the google buses not liking the raises in CoL and rent that is allegedly the fault of the SV companies?
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 1) by patella.whack on Tuesday July 21 2015, @06:57PM
Well, Lagg, you raise a lot of questions re: social issues which surely deserve discussing. I'd love to get into the current details of SF politics if you can enlighten me a bit.
But wow, who do you think is behind all these cuttings?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @10:26AM
Stockton is central valley.
It is as far to Stockton as it is to Sacramento, which either means this is someone doing this alongside another job, or is a group of people doing it either to get new taps (For the Utah NSA datacenter perhaps?), trying to provoke an increase in opsec for fiber lines, or setting the foundation for a larger or controlled disruption in the future.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday July 21 2015, @11:26AM
We got the tapping theory, the disruption theory... how about the false flag theory? Or security theater corruption?
So... its practically illegal in the People's State of CA to own a gun, kids should be sitting inside on an xbox or tablet not innawoods... I could see a nice false flag op to make it illegal to walk in public within a mile of buried cables, if that means "everywhere" well so be it, if that was the original purpose. I see the obvious avenue of government abuse, but to what purpose? Sure, goofing around you could say they need to clear the general public out of the countryside because of the UFO landings, but everyone knows that already happens at Area 51. So... why would the government want to basically lock people down and keep them apart? Maybe just senseless FUD, keep the masses scared and the security theater checks rolling in... speaking of which ...
I suppose it could be simple financial corruption. Spin off a "security" company, whine on TV and at politicians until the spinoff gets a billion dollar security theater contract to install trail cams that aren't going to be monitored or maintained, and collect the fat profits. A billion dollar return on investment for a couple trail cams, some shovels, and a lock cutter or two... I could see it. If there's a zillion dollar security theater contract accepted in a couple months to "fix" the problem, then this was likely the cause. Certainly we've seen higher levels of corruption in general, and it sounds like typical security theater.
So that brings us up to four more or less realistic theories.
As for ridiculous theories, if there were a labor dispute the corporate owned media would be screaming from the rooftops about union terrorists and since thats not happening I assume thats even less likely a cause than the UFO invasion theory.
Another ridiculous theory could be over the top vigilante response to poor customer service. But in a place as plagued with gun violence as CA (the only people without guns are the non-criminals, at least in CA), you'd expect more shooting at offices and service trucks, not snipping cables in the middle of nowhere. Typical human response to disrespect from other humans would not be going into the woods, but fighting back at some random symbolic human. So this is ridiculous.
So I think I've listed all six known theories, only four of which are vaguely plausible?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fritsd on Tuesday July 21 2015, @01:30PM
I just made up another conspiracy theory: a practise run.
Maybe some American TLA or commando unit needs to practise "disrupt enemy communications", which would be an act of war to do in any other country than the USA, so how do you do a realistic exercise? Practise on your home turf; if anybody sees or reports the soldiers then the whole commando unit has to dig latrines for a year, otherwise it's "mission accomplished" without bloodshed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:36PM
Are you saying Jade Helm? But it's not Texas! But if it's not Texas, then it must be an attack by the "enemy" territory of Texas (or Utah, but that's not really an exercise, it's history) on California!! Gov. Abbott has taken the initiative! What is next? Will Texutah disrupt the Starbuck's supply chain?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday July 22 2015, @01:03AM
One more, the optimist: Reverse Practice Run: How do you know you have enough infrastructure redundancy to sustain a real attack if you never run a real trial?
They say you can blackout most of the country by attacking half a dozen distribution points, maybe some TLA wants to force upgrades the fiber networks.
One more, the pragmatic: "what do you mean I can't get FTTH, the hub is right there!" "Sorry sir, the existing setup doesn't support adding your connection" "Well, let me call you after some unforseen even changes your upgrade plans"
(Score: 4, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 21 2015, @02:09PM
Isn't it supposed to be fiber OPTIC cable? They can't see the bastard coming? I can understand that they can't see his escape, because the optics have been put out. Why can't they see him coming? His picture should be on every computer in the country!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @03:56PM
It's the Uversebomber.