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Communications Crime The Internet Technology

Vandalism In Arizona Shuts Down Internet and Phone Service 133

Posted by Soulskill from the can't-stop-the-signal-unless-you-have-wiresnips dept.
schwit1 sends news that vandalism on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona knocked out internet and telephone service for hours across much of the state's northern region. ATMs, credit card functionality, and emergency services were all affected. Officers are trying to determine who cut through a pipe containing a fiber-optic cable on the outskirts of the city, leading to the outage on Wednesday, which hit northern Phoenix and large parts of the north of Arizona. ... The four-inch-thick pipe, which carries a CenturyLink cable, was found sliced through in an area where it is exposed to the elements as it crosses a desert wash about a quarter of a mile from a residential area, Holmes said. Police said the investigation is in its early stages, but that the pipe may have been vandalized by thieves looking to steal metal.
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Vandalism In Arizona Shuts Down Internet and Phone Service More

Vandalism In Arizona Shuts Down Internet and Phone Service

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  • Queue it up (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "Act of terrorism!"

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Exactly and the penalty should be 17 rounds of 9mm in the head at point blank.

      • Exactly and the penalty should be 17 rounds of 9mm in the head at point blank.

        Well, they were looking for metal.

      • it's people like you that think it's okay for public cops to kill someone for selling loose ciggs
      • Or 9 rounds of 17mm. Since we're being silly, and all.

  • stealing sheet metal? nah! (Score:3, Funny)

    by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @06:44PM (#49150989)
    More likely it was just someone that AT&T pissed off. Just ask AT&T for a list of all the people they have screwed and you'll have an abundance of suspects.

    • They probably thought the pipe had copper wire in it. There are lots of copper thieves.

      • They probably thought the pipe had copper wire in it. There are lots of copper thieves.

        Definitely, AT&T customers, then...

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Not sure if AT&T will hand out a list of all their customers...

      • What? You think they consider that some sort of privacy issue? Actually, they do just the opposite. They print out their customer lists and bind them into thick books. Then they "hand out" those customer lists with addresses and phone numbers to telemarketers and other nuisance callers. Want off that published customer list? OK, but it will cost you. Just another way for AT&T to screw their customers.
    • AT&T complete list of customers? Yeah, that will REALLY narrow it down!

  • Am surprised this isn't more common... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27, 2015 @06:47PM (#49151009)

    Where I live, metal thefts are fairly commonplace, although requiring recycles to keep ID records has helped. If there isn't a guard at a construction site, it won't be surprising for any copper to disappear, as well as A/C condenser units smashed open with the compressor gone.

    Of course, the thieves that were looking for fiber really don't know/care what they cut... they just realize they are not getting a gob of meth for it.

  • That doesn't even make sense. There have got to be a bunch of easier ways to steal metal than going out of your way to find the exposed pipe that just happens to contain out a bunch of important fibre.

    These police are complete fucking idiots if they think this was the motive. It's quite obvious the objective wasn't theft, it was just to cause damage.

    • happens all the time, even around you (Score:5, Informative)

      by swschrad ( 312009 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @06:56PM (#49151063) Homepage Journal

      meth heads have all the concentration and none of the frontal lobe action, they even try to steal live high-tension lines. which are aluminum around a steel core, nothing there but electrocution, folks.

      my sleepy little weekly has a copper theft just about every other week when it's not cold enough to kill outside. cut open a container, clamp the wire to a bumper, and GO! that's even easier than breaking into a vacant house and cutting all the wire and plumbing out, although the little darlings probably are stripping that 24 gauge for days before they can sell it as bare wire.

    • Fibre look like copper to the ignorant

      • Good chance the thieves found out the pipe didn't contain any copper the moment they cut it through. This is supported by the observation that, according to TFS, the pipe was just cut at one place, and nothing had been removed.

    • These police are complete fucking idiots if they think this was the motive. It's quite obvious the objective wasn't theft, it was just to cause damage.

      Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity/greed.

    • Re:Thieves looking to steal metal? lolwut? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Grishnakh ( 216268 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @06:59PM (#49151075)

      No, it was most likely metal thieves. There's tons and tons of them in Phoenix, since that city is chock full of meth-heads and illegal aliens, both of whom steal any metal they can get their hands on so they can take them to the metal recyclers in South Phoenix and get a few bucks. They've had all kinds of problems with metal theft there for a long time; not only are new-home construction sites frequently burgled of their wire and copper pipe, they've even resorted to stealing catalytic converters from vehicles in parking lots (using a portable reciprocating saw).

      There's been lots of cases of metal thieves trying to steal electric wire from high-voltage installations and being killed in the process.

      • Re:Thieves looking to steal metal? lolwut? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @07:12PM (#49151163)

        A friend of mine was trying to 'help out' some down on their luck folks and they said 'thank you' by ripping all of the copper out of her rental house. She replaced it all with PVC and they came back and ripped out the walls again expecting there to be copper in there.

        Tweekers have an incredibly high level of motivation and a relatively low level of guilt for the things they are willing to do for money

        • Yep, tweekers are pretty much a lost cause.

          It's not just copper piping they can steal; they'll also steal electrical wiring. Nothing's too small or low-value for them.

          Also, I don't think you can replace copper with PVC; you can use some other stuff, like PEX, but PVC isn't used for high-pressure supply piping as far as I know, at least not inside walls. I have seen it used for irrigation systems though. I think the problem is that you can't use PVC for hot water supply lines.

          • I think the problem is that you can't use PVC for hot water supply lines.

            That's where you use CPVC [wikipedia.org]. It's stronger than straight PVC as well as resistant to higher temperatures. My old house was plumbed in CPVC.

            It's generally a tan color as opposed to white for PVC. The GP probably either didn't know or care about the 'minor' difference - it's still PVC. ;)

          • Good point, I just remember seeing something that wasn't metal peeking through the holes in the drywall

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jonwil ( 467024 )

        The answer to fixing this problem is to require scrap metal dealers to be licensed (with strong penalties for anyone who isn't) and to require all transactions to be recorded along with the ID of the seller. Its already done in many jurisdictions for pawn shops (where you need a license to operate one and where sellers have to provide ID when they sell it, why should scrap merchants be any different.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rich0 ( 548339 )

          The answer to fixing this problem is to require scrap metal dealers to be licensed (with strong penalties for anyone who isn't) and to require all transactions to be recorded along with the ID of the seller. Its already done in many jurisdictions for pawn shops (where you need a license to operate one and where sellers have to provide ID when they sell it, why should scrap merchants be any different.

          They should also have a delay before payout, with appointments required for the time to pick up the money. I imagine that even a one week delay would be enough to allow utilities to track down sales of stolen goods, and then the police can be waiting when the guy shows up to collect.

          Stuff like this isn't going to be a problem for anybody legit. Electricians aren't going to trips to the dealer to sell one coil of wire, and be desperate for their $50.

          • That would have helped my friends. They had several dozen used bicycles they were shipping to Africa sitting behind the container they were loading. Some idiot came along and threw them in the back of a truck and took off. The police traced them to a metal recycler which paid the guy like $139 and immediately shredded all bicycles, so by the time the police got there, there was nothing to recover. Sigh. Had another meth head that took a hacksaw to a $30,000 bronze statue to sell as scrap for $100. It's depr

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Rich0 ( 548339 )

              It's depressing that morons are willing to do so much damage for so little gain.

              Here is the thing - they're not morons - they're sociopaths. The morons are the rest of us for not making simple legal changes to prevent this nonsense, largely because the beneficiaries of this theft want it to continue.

      • I have been a Cell Tower tech for about 14 years in AZ, with rural areas we have a lot of outages due to copper theft. It is obvious you are from phoenix if you use the term south phoenix. I'm going to disagree the quote "city is chock full of meth-heads and illegal aliens" I agree we have meth heads and illegal aliens: but the illegals for the most part working the shit jobs the tweekers don't take. Better keep an eye out for whitie and crew for the copper thefts. (This is a IT forum, sorry if your trying
    • One way of stealing is hook up a pickup truck and try and pull long lengths of copper wire out of the conduits

    • That doesn't even make sense. There have got to be a bunch of easier ways to steal metal than going out of your way to find the exposed pipe that just happens to contain out a bunch of important fibre.

      These police are complete fucking idiots if they think this was the motive. It's quite obvious the objective wasn't theft, it was just to cause damage.

      Or maybe they were smart criminals who had some other crime to perform but wanted the communications of the emergency services to be impaired before they got down to some serious doing of crimes. There may be a bank somewhere in Northern AZ that is still trying to call the police.

    • "just to cause damage."

      Or perhaps, to see how much damage it would cause, and how long it would take for the city to recover.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hawguy ( 1600213 )

      That doesn't even make sense. There have got to be a bunch of easier ways to steal metal than going out of your way to find the exposed pipe that just happens to contain out a bunch of important fibre.

      These police are complete fucking idiots if they think this was the motive. It's quite obvious the objective wasn't theft, it was just to cause damage.

      How do you know if the conduit contains copper wire or fiber until you cut it open?

  • Surely it's obvious... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27, 2015 @06:56PM (#49151061)

    Fibre-seeking llamas!

  • Net Neutrality (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    So much for net neutrality, it did not end well in Arizona.

  • Not Length, Not Girth (Score:4, Funny)

    by pipingguy ( 566974 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @07:17PM (#49151185)
    Four inch DIAMETER pipe. With piping, the hole goes on the inside.

  • In these days when grade school kids are handcuffed for "Acts of Terror", a nice ol' bit of vanilla vandalism makes for a pleasant change of pace.

  • Single point of failure (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wvmarle ( 1070040 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @07:40PM (#49151287)

    So all those important communication lines went trough a single pipe, with no backup, and that pipe was fully exposed to boot? That's just asking for trouble.

    • The alternative is asking for bankruptcy. Running communications lines is about the most expensive part of any telecommunications / power infrastructure. This is one area where doing the minimum possible is the only financially sound move.

      People will complain no end about service interruptions, but will complain even more when their bills or taxes go up as a result of mitigating the disruptions.

      • The alternative is asking for bankruptcy.

        I can just about guarantee you that several buyers of bandwidth in Phoenix had contracts with the people who owned this fiber and those contracts specified multiple redundant paths out of the city.

        Odds are we're looking at backup system failure or contract fraud. Probably the former.

        • Fibre is built only as bandwidth requires it because it is bloody expensive. There were likely multiple fibres but rarely if ever can they be considered true "backups" with the main going down, the backup suffers from instant congestion which with the bandwidth we're talking about is crippling. There are entire countries without this kind of redundancy, let alone a state which is mostly desert.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Bengie ( 1121981 )
        Running fiber is about 40% of the overall cost of a fiber last mile network. Trunks are relatively cheap compared to the last mile network. Customer support is the single most expensive part of an ISP. Keeping customers happy is the best way to keep costs down.

        • Everything is relative. The last mile network is incredibly expensive. Your comment doesn't change the economics of running a fibre one bit.

          Also no the customer support part of running an ISP is only the most expensive part depending on how you do accounting. See customer support is one of the few true Revex costs for an ISP. Ongoing support does not contribute to the ISP's value as a company, it's just a cost of doing business. This cost is dwarfed by the cost of the infrastructure unless you lease all of

      • The alternative is asking for bankruptcy. Running communications lines is about the most expensive part of any telecommunications / power infrastructure. This is one area where doing the minimum possible is the only financially sound move.

        Why are you assuming they'd have to run additional communications lines to gain reliability? All they had to do was put half the lines in one pipe, and the other half in another pipe buried parallel to but (say) 3 feet away. Yes it would've been more expensive, but only

        • Slightly typically works out to be about 50-70% depending on geology. The lionshare of the cost of trenching is the labour with only a small part being engineering, and approvals (this assumes you own the rights to the land or otherwise have approvals to dig, if you don't then disregard this post).

          But really the problem with fibre is rarely ever any of the things you list. Typically it is an excavator which digs up fibre and causes an outage. You don't get fire in underground systems which don't generate he

    • From what I understand it was buried, with the thieves having dug it up. So it wasn't fully exposed.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      Finally! Someone noticed. Half the state dependent on a single fiber out in the middle of nowhere. What the hell?!?

      To make it worse, it sounds like it was all communications. Cell, landline, and internet. Every egg in that one basket.

      Surely there should have been at least a second cable somewhere.

  • and WireThatFails by the wire.

  • Critically needs the ability to detect threats to itself and call authorities while the perps are at least still in the area. And yes, this would include strapping a bomb to a cable.

  • "Police said the investigation is in its early stages, but that the pipe may have been vandalized by thieves looking to steal metal."

    Naw, it was a botched NSA tapping operation gone wrong link [allthingsd.com]

  • Backups and Redundancy (Score:5, Informative)

    by IonOtter ( 629215 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @11:26PM (#49152101) Homepage

    I work for a major telecom.

    These systems *do* have backups and redundancy.

    The moment that cable was cut, the system will have started an automated load-shed and re-route at the OC-48 level and above. You'll see messages from the OC-192 trunks shifting to new routes, jumping to spares, and generally trying to route around the damage.

    The problem, is that these are OC-192 links. The smaller circuits riding them, such as 10-meg ethernet, OC3, DS3 and DS1 do not get shifted around to available trunks unless they happen to be on the 192 that gets shifted. They're essentially along for the ride.

    *IF*...(and that's a very big "if") the smaller circuit is especially critical and vital, then they can TRY to arrange a re-route and stuff it onto one of the alt-routed links. But that takes authorization from people in business suits that fly out to their weekend home in the Hamptons.

    So yes. There are backups. If there weren't, this outage would have been international news, and not just a blurb on Slashdot.

    • Re:Backups and Redundancy (Score:4, Interesting)

      by storkus ( 179708 ) on Saturday February 28, 2015 @02:07AM (#49152471)

      You may work for a major telecom, but obviously not THIS major telecom. This is CenturyLink, formerly Qwest, formerly US Worst: they have a REPUTATION for this sort of thing. Where I work and live, JUST 5 MILES FROM DOWNTOWN PHOENIX and their Arizona corporate headquarters, we can't get ADSL because the copper is too rotted in the ground, we're too far away, and they won't install DSLAMs: we had to get bonded T1's instead. No joke.

      In this case, the fiber cut was right alongside Interstate 17, near Black Canyon City. This isn't the middle of nowhere, as you assert, but in a suburb at the edge of Phoenix metro (these days).

      As for the "backup systems", yeah right: not only was internet out, but so was phone service to the outside world. Let me repeat that again: *NO* service to Phoenix or the outside world! This includes the Navajo Nation to the New Mexico and Utah border. Including the 4 counties involved (Apache, Coconino, Navajo, and Yavapai), that is over half a million people. Cell sites and phones except for a few Verizon ones (probably mountain-top and microwave back-hauled directly from Phoenix) were all down as well.

      In fact, the fact that TFA is from San Francisco and not an Arizona paper proves this isn't just a /. "blurb", as you say. This is a (former) Baby-Bell cutting too many corners, plain and simple. I also happen to know first-hand of a few other places--some owned by Frontier (now), some a Bell system, where there is one lousy connection to the outside world and absolutely *NO* backup! Oh, and it was that way since day one, long before my grandpa was born! SONET rings? What's that?

    • Part of the problem this is not that big news may be that it's about the US, where power outages and the like are the order of the day. Just ask around on /.: how many of you Americans routinely install a UPS in your home? How many have a generator on hand? Now compare this to the non-Americans that live in what we commonly call the "developed world".

      Even emergency services were affected. Something that many Americans find so important that it's always used as a major argument against banning/jamming mobile

    • So yes. There are backups. If there weren't, this outage would have been international news, and not just a blurb on Slashdot.

      I read about it yesterday at bbc.co.uk. But thanks for playing.

  • 1995 deliberate derailment of train (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Probably not related, just throwing this out there:

    Going back to 1995, there was a pretty sophisticated deliberate deraliment of a train, including the bridging of the rails with wire to defeate the automatic rail integrity system (bridged disrupted rails with wire, so that the signals automatically sent down the rails would not detect the broken link)

    Post OKC attach I distincly remenber this incident

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Palo_Verde,_Arizona_derailment

  • The interest was designed to route around Nuclear bombs, but apparently not copper thieves.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by MTEK ( 2826397 )

      Not just copper thieves. We're likely talking meth heads here. Which are sorta like a precursor to zombies, and everyone knows they can be a real PITA.

  • would completely cut off an entire region as large as that, shows that whoever is in charge of engineering this stuff simply doesn't understand how the Internet is supposed to work, and has no motivation to ensure it keeps working.

    Any pipe carrying traffic for that large an area, should have had multiple alternate/redundant paths - miles away, in different pipes, connecting via different peering points. The Internet is not meant to be a hierarchy or a pyramid - its supposed to be a spiderweb.

  • Why cable vision is not having redundant path for its traffic? Moreover when fiber cut has happened NOC (network operational centre) would get a loss of signal in 2 seconds. Then the operator needs to deploy field engineers immediately who could have got the info. Are these measures not taken? Now they have to splice the cable to get back the traffic.

  • Da 411 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28, 2015 @07:17AM (#49152943)

    I work for an agency that was impacted by this and there some oddities in what is being publicly reported vs what actually was experienced.

    The first thing is that this conduit was in a vault with a manhole and it wasn't like this conduit was just sitting out in the open for world+dog to see it.

    The next thing here is that CenturyLink does not have a redundant route up to this area and has not had a redundant path during the US West/Qwest/CenturyLink days. A redundant path is slated to come online in the next several months but will initially only serve part of this area although it would in theory bypass a cut like happened in New River this week.

    I have experienced three cuts like this with CenturyLink in my over 10 years working in this region so at some point one has to ask what a telco like CenturyLink is doing with the money and taxes collected for services.

    In this case the response by CenturyLink for information was severely lacking as it took them several hours to confirm that there was an issue. I'm not talking about calling the general help line here I'm talking about high level managers responsible for major CenturyLink systems here. Now I get that something like this causes chaos but it isn't comforting if high level CenturyLink minion X says something to the effect of 'something is wrong, will let you know when it is fixed, bye'.

    Another interesting thing was that this outage took out more than Internet such as dial-tone (local like PRI based and obviously long distance), 911 services (not widely reported but true), cell carriers, local cable companies, etc.

    It was pretty obvious that ye olde central office locally is just a digital switching point and the brains for these services are elsewhere. I'm not sure if cell carriers like Sprint, cable companies, etc were using the same fiber conduit or cables or if they have their own cables in the impacted conduit but they definitely took a hit as well during the outage.

    Physically there are not backups at this time and quite a few outage maps for CenturyLink showed congestion in Phx, Denver, and Seattle during the cut. I don't know if Denver and Seattle were related to this meaning CenturyLink shuttles traffic up this same route to Vegas, Utah, etc or if these were related to other issues, router meltdowns due to the link being severed, etc.

    Socially this was interesting as it had a large financial impact - no ATM, no POS, etc - and really highlights how dependent we have become for digital connections as the backdrop for everyday life.

    I don't suspect that this was North Korea, Mexican cartels, etc although one municipality did call out their SWAT team initially as maybe they thought this was the big one, Red Dawn or something like that.

    Lastly, I have seen a picture of the cut conduit, again in a vault, and while it is possible that it was metal thieves I'm not sure I buy that as the conduit isn't copper and there are plenty of more lucrative ways to swipe some metal since the length of pipe we are talking about here is fairly small and there is the matter or having the cables in the pipe.

    Maybe really dumb criminals (pipe could contain water, electrical, etc, no way to tell by looking at it), dumb criminals who thought this was copper cable in the conduit, or someone trying to make CenturyLink look bad (not a high bar to jump mind you).

    No bueno all around and the telcos collectively need to get off their butts and put in properly secured infrastructure with, wait for it, multiple physical paths.

    Anonymous here for obvious reasons...

  • Mexican's mad at the Republican's holding up the Presidents amnesty cut the line in protest...
  • Fiber optic cables are glass in a plastic sheath run through a PVC pipe... other than the connectors, I wasn't aware there was any metal involved. Are the morons stealing metal to buy meth really that stupid? (By this way, this is yet another reason why fiber is superior to cable -- used fiber optic cable has very little resale value, but used copper becomes more precious every day.)

  • Inspired by this cry wolfy article [thecommonsenseshow.com] by Illuminati seer Dave Hodges, I devised a simple psychological test for paranoid perception of current events, and it was so popular in my own mind I decided to share it.

    ________

    1. Major area of Northern Arizona recently experienced a complete outage of Internet, land-line phone and some cell phones. The fault was traced to a field where someone had dug up a cable and cut partway through it. Why?

    A: An idiot with a hacksaw intending to steal copper
    B: Covert beta test for

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