Backbone Infrastructure and Secrecy

Peter Galbavy peter.galbavy at knowtion.net
Thu Jul 10 08:26:11 UTC 2003


Michael.Dillon at radianz.com wrote:
> I think London is rather more paranoid. I work in London and just on
> Monday
> I was stopped by police at Tower Hill tube station and searched for
> explosive paraphernalia as part of their programme of random searches.
> When
> I told people about this in the office, several others had stories
> about friends who had been detained or searched within the city for
> one reason or
> another.

Maybe I don't look like a tourist ;-) but this doesn't happen to me ...

OK, so as a fat geek in shorts and a t-shirt I look "mostly harmless".

> I don't believe that it would be as easy as you say for someone to
> open manholes, cut cables (very thick cables of glass and tough
> plastics), then
> run on to the next location. Certainly, in London, anything like this
> would
> be picked up on CCTV and the police would be rapidly dispatched to
> investigate.

Hmm. I have direct evidence (of my own eyes) to the contrary. No one cares.
Luckily, in this case, those who had the manhole covers up were 'borrowing'
some ducting from one side of the road to the other. Does anyone from the
Goodge St. area recall ? I know the one person at least is on the mailing
list :)

> Yes, the single points of failure abound, but getting access to them
> for evil purposes is not as easy as it looks.

Until it happens.

Peter




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