Elderly Georgian Woman Cuts Armenian Internet 282
welcher writes "An elderly Georgian woman was scavenging for copper with a spade when she accidentally sliced through an underground cable and cut off internet services to nearly all of neighboring Armenia. The fibre-optic cable near Tiblisi, Georgia, supplies about 90% of Armenia's internet so the woman's unwitting sabotage had catastrophic consequences. Web users in the nation of 3.2 million people were left twiddling their thumbs for up to five hours. Large parts of Georgia and some areas of Azerbaijan were also affected. Dubbed 'the spade-hacker' by local media, the woman is being investigated on suspicion of damaging property. She faces up to three years in prison if charged and convicted."
Redundancy man. (Score:5, Interesting)
If one shallow cable knocks a country out, someone failed pretty hard in the first place.
I don't know an awful lot about backbone type setups, not being in the industry, but I was under the impression that a self healing ring was a fairly common way of dealing with important fiber. That way as long as you don't cut two cables at once, you're golden, and can take your sweet ass time fixing a broken link without a whole bloody country losing internet access.
But of course, redundancy costs money. Hopefully not as much as downtime...
Re:All I see is (Score:2, Interesting)
You mean "prospectors".
Anyway, TFA states that this practice usually involves collecting unused copper wires. I don't really see how that's stealing. Is a bum that picks up used cans from the street also a thief in your book?
I'm not saying that it's an honest and good way to make a living, but sometimes there is no choice. We all need to live. Apparently this woman's need for money is greater than the proper owner's need to dig up the unused copper. No real harm done.
Re:All I see is (Score:1, Interesting)
Why do they call it 'war' instead of what it really is - murder.
Politics baby...
Re:That's a little harsh... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow, that's messed up. Cable is treated the same as plumbing in Minnesota: A basic part of the infrastructure of a building. The company I work for recently moved about 2,000 people into a new building. We chose to re-use the existing cable plant instead of wiring all new.
That's not normally our practice because we have frequently found that the old cable didn't meet our needs, but still. We've always had the option here and in most other states where we've moved people into an existing building.
Sounds to me like the cable pullers must have quietly greased a few palms in California a while back. :-)
Re:All I see is (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sorry, but this is bullshit. Thieves cause an enormous amount of economic damage not just because they devalue the stolen goods (used with unknown history and maybe damaged during the theft), and destroy installations (e.g. your laptop's data) and adjoining property (e.g. locks). Often what they take is even just thrown away because it's too application specific, identifiable, etc. (e.g. computer data)
So this lady just caused hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars of enconomic damage for what? $20 of copper? That has to stripped of insulation, melted down, refined, shipped, and reformed into wire so they can repair the damage? I can sympathize with theft of things like food and money (and perhaps jewelry) to survive. Copper though? Such theives should be shot on sight.
P.S. Quite frankly, this sort of destructive behavior by the poor is why they stay poor. Now the government(s) and businesses affected have to deal with fixing this damage rather than improving the lives of their people.
Re:All I see is (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not current at all. My mom was Wire Chief for a railroad in the 80s and the practice was old then. Thieves would go from pole to pole for a mile long stretch of line and cut the wire loose so that it was laying on the ground, but still intact and passing signals. Then they'd coordinate with walkie-talkies and cut both ends simultaneously, tie one end to a hydraulic spool on the back of a truck, and wind it up as fast as possible while they were starting to drive away. Mom would get an alarm signal that a phone line was down and would send out the Special Agents (yes - railroads have their own armed police force) and line technicians. By the time they arrived, the thieves would be long gone.
And by "thieves", I mean "murderers". If you cheerfully shut down the communications network that keeps trains from colliding, or E911 services from working, or otherwise disrupt life-or-death decisions, then I'm all for a shoot first, ask later response if you get caught.
Re:All I see is (Score:4, Interesting)
You're failing to understand my comment because you don't seem to be able to grasp the simple fact that scavenging is not theft.
In plenty of countries across the globe, collecting and taking abandon materials is not illegal, it is not theft, it is scavenging.
Once you've got that concept in your mind- when you've managed to understand the distinction between the two, and that once again, what is illegal in your country and illegal under your moral standards is not illegal under everyone's and is common place in other countries, then you can begin to understand further the point that if such scavenging is indeed legal in Georgia, and if this woman was indeed simply scavenging, then it is wrong to call her a thief.
In every country in the world some degree of scavenging is acceptable, there are few countries where taking berries from naturally occuring plants for example is not illegal, the boundary is usually drawn at either human produced items, or clearly non-abandoned human produced items.
I'm amazed so many people think their moral standards are shared identically across the globe, it's almost as if you think your view of the world is the One True View (tm) and that anyone else with a different opinion of moral standards is automatically wrong because they are different to you.
So on the contrary to your last sentence, scavenging is actually tolerated or even legal in many poor countries because the governments there recognise it's much better to let the poor make use of abandoned resources and survive off them, than it is for them to expect welfare, or to commit real actual crime to survive instead. To illustrate how stupid your last comment is, here in the UK we've had contractors from large wealthy corporations accidently cut through fibre before, across the globe ships anchors regularly tear through fibre pipes (as regularly as 3 times a week on average believe it or not)- obviously it's something that actually happens far more as a result of large wealthy corporations and not as a result of "poor" people.
But as I say, you wont be able to comprehend this latter point until you grasp the rather simplistic point that scavenging and theft are two different things, and until you realise that not every part of the world is the same as your little part of the world.