Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: c186aj@cory.berkeley.edu (Steve Forrette) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Telco Security? Message-ID: <3545@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 5 Feb 90 14:39:25 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: c186aj@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Steve Forrette) Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 37 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 78, message 1 of 13 In article <3536@accuvax.nwu.edu> John Higdon writes: >My residence CO is just down the street. This building has been there >since the mid-50s and is your typical windowless telco-functional >design. To the side there is a large parking lot. >This last week, they have put a fence around the whole compound with >motorized gates (not parking lot arms, but full gates) at the parking >lot entrances. The appearance of the project would lead one to suspect >Anybody have any clue as to why Pac*Bell would suddenly become paranoid? Perhaps for liability reasons. When that CO burnt down a year or so ago (was it Oak Brook, IL?) they were without service for at least a couple of weeks. I read in Insight that several of the larger businesses served by that CO sued Illinois Bell for interruption/loss of business. Apparently, someone thought that the fire alarm was a falsy and ignored it. I'm not sure who prevailed in the court case, but I would imagine that if a CO got taken out by vandals/special- interest-group-needing-attention and that adequate measures had not been taken, that Pacific Bell could be held liable. As an aside, I remember overhearing a conversation between two Sacramento County Sheriff's Deputies on a scanner where one was complaining that he had need to talk to someone who happened to work inside a CO in relation to some case he was working on. When he knocked or rang the bell or whatever, they said that there was *no* admittance to CO's by unauthorized personnel, and that a police officer was not considered "authorized" by Pacific Bell unless (s)he had a warrant. Needless to say, the cop wasn't too happy about this. I guess Pacific Bell is paranoid about something. Perhaps they are worried about a "ratepayer riot" over their pricing policies? :-) Seriously, considering just how important a single CO is to the tens of thousands of people and businesses it serves, I don't think they can be too careful.