plasticwrap

A Silent Alarm the Police Are Sure to Hear

Two burglars broke ino the Verizon (equivalent of Telecom) Building in White Plains, New York to steal some high-tech computer circuits worth hundreds of thousands on the black market.

They managed to get inside the building and commence work without detection. The problem was that as they removed the curcuits, they were also knocking out the 911 system. 25,000 customers were affected and the police were immediately notified that there could be a problem at the White Plains building.

Suspecting something more akin to a power surge or an errant raccoon, the police cruised by... only to see the two burglars strolling out the front door with two boxes filled with the stolen curcuitry.

(from the nytimes.com website, as usual.)

Of course, it kind of alarmed the Homeland Security people that the 911 system could be taken down so very easily. And I'm sure all those incipent terrorists who read amusing news stories will be as interested in that as I was. The other day the paper mentioned that only about 3% of container traffic is screened. I guess this is common knowledge, but it's certainly making it more common.

At the same time as publishing this kind of info in its stories, a journalist from the paper is about to go to prison for contempt of court for not revealing his sources.

It just seems odd.

Posted by phreq at November 28, 2004 06:13 AM | TrackBack