North Sound 911 Service Repeatedly Targeted
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Chris Halsne KIRO 7 Eyewitness News Investigative Reporter
POSTED: 2:18 PM PST October 31, 2003
UPDATED: 2:48 PM PST October 31, 2003
A KIRO Team 7 Investigation has uncovered disturbing details of a
plot to disrupt all telephone, computer and cell service to the
North Sound.
Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne proves our most precious
infrastructures are still vulnerable to attack.
The FBI won't tell you this, but we will: For the past two years,
federal investigators have been trying to catch a criminal who
has repeatedly tapped into a major fiber optics cable north of
Seattle.
This person hasn't been randomly chopping entire bundles of
cables, but rather he or she is using surgical precision to black
out one particular 911 emergency call center.
Early in the morning of Sept. 3, some criminal strolled into a
Qwest Telecommunications server station with tools in hand and
carefully sliced one strand of wire.
For the next 8 hours and 41 minutes Whatcom County, Bellingham
and northern Snohomish County lost all telecommunications. Even
911 service was disconnected.
"If phone lines go out, somebody could call for help and die as a
result of not being able to receive help. We are very concerned,"
said Bill Eflo, Whatcom County Sheriff.
Operators couldn't help but feel a sense of déjà vu. KIRO Team 7
Investigators have learned that someone intentionally rerouted,
cut or altered 911 service to Whatcom County on three
occasions in two years. Each time the criminal entered the same
Qwest fiber optics "hut" to create the chaos.
"Communications can be vulnerable if you don't safeguard them,"
said Chuck Busick.
Busick is a retired Army Special Ops commander and now a
telecommunications security expert. He says it's naive for the FBI
and Qwest to pretend the series of fiber optics cuts is
"vandalism."
"From a special operations perspective, it's called 'probing the
target.' Trying to find out what their true vulnerabilities are.
Sometimes you hit it the first time, sometimes you don't. So going
in and doing multiple tests to make sure this is, in fact, a good
way to disrupt the communications system is certainly feasible,"
said Busick.
While the FBI scrambles to find a suspect, KIRO Team 7
Investigators went to check out security measures at the Qwest
routing station.
We walked straight through an unlocked gate, a wide-open door,
and then mapped the interior of the building with our hidden
camera. Nobody asked for ID or questioned our motives.
KIRO Team 7 Investigators then headed to Qwest Corporate
Headquarters in downtown Seattle. Ironically, it was lots tougher
getting in there.
Guard: "I hope you're not recording."
Halsne: "Is there a problem recording in this building?"
Guard: "Right now there is, without express approval from
corporate security."
We had an appointment to interview a public relations person but
the hassles continued for 15 minutes.
When we finally sat down, Qwest Public Relations specialist
Michael Dunne stuck to the corporate line that this
four-time-broken-into routing station was secure.
"We have stepped up security significantly for that particular area
and there's various surveillance and electronic equipment we've
added to make that is what really a state of the art security
facility in our network now," said Dunne.
But the sad truth is our hidden videotape proves security remains
lousy.
Whatcom County Sheriff Bill Elfo couldn't be more disgusted.
"We're really concerned about the lack of Quest response to the
problem. We were assured two years ago security precautions
had been taken to prevent that from happening again, obviously
they weren't," said Elfo.
The FBI won't comment about its ongoing investigation into the
cut phone lines. Agents can't even ask the public for help
because doing so might reveal the location of the Qwest building
in question.
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"John Bartley I solved my XP problems w/ Service Pack Linux"
<johnb...@email.com> wrote in message
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> Operators couldn't help but feel a sense of déją vu. KIRO Team 7