Guerrilla Warfare or "Vandals" ?

**Team Sergeant** · 04-10-2009, 08:10

Guerrilla Warfare or Vandals

What would be the Vandals motive???

Is this the work of some disaffected or disenfranchised group testing the waters?

TS

Police on Alert After Vandals Cut Phone, Internet Service to 50,000 Calif. Customers
Thursday, April 09, 2009

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Vandals severed a number of fiber optic cables on Thursday, leaving thousands of people in Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties without cell phone, Internet and landline service, police said.

San Jose police said there is evidence that someone removed a manhole cover and severed a number of cables. Police said the incident is being investigated as vandalism.

AT&T says it's aware of a cut in the area and has repair crews out.

Verizon Communications spokesman John Davies says about 50,000 of its landline and Internet customers are without service, mainly in the Morgan Hill and Gilroy areas.

"Our concern is 911. If someone is having an emergency and can't make a phone call, they should go to the nearest firehouse, police station or hospital emergency room," Santa Clara County spokeswoman Joy Alexiou said. "We have people at those areas with radios."

Alexiou said the sheriff's department has doubled patrols since the outage.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,513896,00.html

SF_BHT · 04-10-2009, 08:18

It is California it could be eithor... They have their share of nuts.

Or it could be a test to see if their Intel is good. Now they know that you can shut down this area at this node for X amount of time. Have to look at it from both sides and assess the situation.

**Box** · 04-10-2009, 09:13

...one mans freedom fighter is another mans terrorist.

With the BIZARRE shift if the political heart of our nation, there is no telling what is behind an act like this. It could be an intel probe to test reaction/repair time, it could be a confidence target, or it could just be an abject act of random vandalism. Could be a "bad-guy" or it could be a insanely misguided "hyper-patriot" that thinks he is going to get the government back in line on his own by 'interdicting' communications.
There is no telling with the current wave of not-jobs that have come out of the woodwork since last November.

...things like this only add to the interesting era we now live in. Just my two cents though, it may have just been some aliens playing a belated April fools joke.

Richard · 04-10-2009, 09:28

Maybe somebody was pissed at their ISP or phone company.

The phone service at our ranch in the Sacramento Valley is by Frontier. They only offer dial-up and it's the worst I've ever had to deal with.

Richard's $.02

greenberetTFS · 04-10-2009, 09:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Billy L-bach

...one mans freedom fighter is another mans terrorist.

With the BIZARRE shift if the political heart of our nation, there is no telling what is behind an act like this. It could be an intel probe to test reaction/repair time, it could be a confidence target, or it could just be an abject act of random vandalism. Could be a "bad-guy" or it could be a insanely misguided "hyper-patriot" that thinks he is going to get the government back in line on his own by 'interdicting' communications.
There is no telling with the current wave of not-jobs that have come out of the woodwork since last November.

...things like this only add to the interesting era we now live in. Just my two cents though, it may have just been some aliens playing a belated April fools joke.

I think Billy has a good point here.........

It could very well be aliens.......

GB TFS

**Team Sergeant** · 04-10-2009, 09:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Richard

Maybe somebody was pissed at their ISP or phone company.

The phone service at our ranch in the Sacramento Valley is by Frontier. They only offer dial-up and it's the worst I've ever had to deal with.

Richard's $.02

I thought of that also.

IMO whomever did this had foreknowledge of fiber optic cables otherwise how the hell did they know they were not cutting into an electric or gas line.

This might be the "first" strike. We'll know more if it happens a second time in another place....

Richard · 04-10-2009, 09:43

Quote:

IMO whomever did this had foreknowledge of fiber optic cables otherwise how the hell did they know they were not cutting into an electric or gas line.

FIOs bundles here are in color-coded protective sheathing - same with flexible natural gas lines, electric cables, etc. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to know the difference any more - which is why the rocket scientists seem to have contracted out to North Korea and Iran.

Richard's $.02

SF_BHT · 04-10-2009, 09:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Richard

FIOs bundles here are in color-coded protective sheathing - same with flexible natural gas lines, electric cables, etc. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to know the difference any more - which is why the rocket scientists seem to have contracted out to North Korea and Iran.

Richard's $.02

Yeah but those are the ones that slept in class and are now trying to work up a gppd resume....

SF-TX · 04-10-2009, 10:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Sergeant

I thought of that also.

IMO whomever did this had foreknowledge of fiber optic cables otherwise how the hell did they know they were not cutting into an electric or gas line.

This might be the "first" strike. We'll know more if it happens a second time in another place....

In many locations, the cables and cable vaults are also readily identifiable by signage.

http://www.fibernetworktools.com/cat...ers&StudentNo=

**18C4V** · 04-10-2009, 10:16

Probably a former or current employee of ATT whose a union member of CWA which is in contract negotaions with ATT.

SF-TX · 04-10-2009, 13:52

Others are reporting it as 'sabotage', as opposed to vandalism.

Quote:

Cable Sabotage Cripples Internet for Parts of Silicon Valley
By Kevin Poulsen EmailApril 09, 2009 | 3:58:39 PMCategories: Crime

Deliberate sabotage is being blamed for a sizable internet and telephone service outage Thursday in Silicon Valley.

At 1:30 a.m., someone opened a manhole cover on a railroad right-of-way in San Jose, climbed down and cut four AT&T fiber optic cables. A second AT&T cable, and a Sprint cable, were cut in the same manner two hours later, farther north in San Carlos.

Service for Sprint, Verizon and AT&T customers in the southern San Francisco Bay Area has been lost, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Police departments have put more units on the street, because nobody can call 9-1-1.

A much smaller Comcast outage affecting around 4,500 customers in San Jose began at around 1:00 p.m. Pacific time. Spokesman Andrew Johnson says the company is investigating the cause.

Update: AT&T is offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the vandal.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...-sabotage.html

SF-TX · 04-10-2009, 13:56

There is more detail in the San Francisco Chronicle story:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...VTE6.DTL&tsp=1

Warrior-Mentor · 04-10-2009, 13:56

Perhaps they wanted to stop Ms. Pelosi from requesting campaign contributions... they always call in the middle of dinner...

charlietwo · 04-10-2009, 14:04

Having a knowledge of guerrilla warfare has put a little bit of a tin-foil hat on my head. I always suspect foul play when it comes to stuff like this because it's so easy to gather an enormous amount of intelligence, while creating agitation in the populace.

I say it's a test run. Perhaps they should do some background checks on some of their newer employees?

Richard · 04-10-2009, 14:30

Anybody ever hear the term going postal? Could be just that. AT&T recently laid off a huge chunk of its workforce and CA is having trouble meeting its growing unemployment benefits.

Richard's $.02