One tries hard in the post-9/11 world not to be overly suspicious or paranoid, but as they say, just because one is paranoid doesn't mean he or she isn't being followed. So take the following as you will. Perhaps it is just a spate of unrelated coincidences. For SBE's part, we want the proper federal authorities on the case.
Northern Virginia: A transmitter site was vandalized by the tearing off of an electric meter. Only the meter was pulled, and no other damage was reported.
Orlando, Fla., late October: Late in an afternoon (on a day when President Bush was in town), in daylight hours, at a tower site housing two FMs and an AM station, the stations all lost power and went on generator power. About 30 minutes later, the generator failed, taking all three stations off the air. When the engineers arrived at the tower site, they found that someone had broken the glass on the shunt trip boxes on the outside of the building, tripping the master breaker inside the building and disabling the generator. If this was just random vandalism, why would the perpetrator break the glass first on the main power feed, and then come back 30 minutes later to disable the generator?
Later that same week, the director of engineering of a radio group in Orlando received a call from someone claiming to be with a surveying company, asking for information about a particular tower site and how to get access to it. Upon being told that this required an appointment so that the engineer would be there with him, the caller rang off, saying he would call back. He never did.
Houston, September/October: At least 13 radio and 2 TV stations have had their transmitter buildings invaded at five different sites. One group of break-ins seems to be normal vandalism, though in the later stages, all the breakers were tripped, including tower lights. At one station, a regional EAS source, the fuel line to the generator was cut, spilling an entire tank full of diesel fuel on the ground. Typical entry was via bolt cutters and pry bars.
The other break-ins are more suspicious. At the TV stations, the perpetrators went in through the roof to avoid detection, and equipment was typically stolen, including the alarm systems. An engineer in Houston wondered whether this was an experiment to determine how easy it is to shut down all the broadcast media in a city. In case an evacuation would be called for, it is easy to see how much of a problem that would cause for evacuating citizens.
Dallas, late October: An explosion occurred at a power line transmission tower near Dallas. One leg of the support structure appeared to have been severed in two places. Agents from the FBI, ATF and local police are investigating.
Milwaukee: Two power transmission towers owned by American Transmission Company were toppled, after the base bolts were removed from the 85-foot structures, causing them to tumble and putting 17,000 customers in the dark.
Lane County, Ore.: Ten separate cases of broadcast site break-ins have occurred. Log books were taken.
College Station and Humble, Texas, August and September: Similar incidents (several in each location) at both cellular facilities and broadcast radio transmitter sites.
TAKING A CLOSER LOOK
Houston is easily the most heavily targeted area for transmitter site break-ins. An SBE meeting was held there in October to discuss the matter. Present at the meeting, in addition to representatives from most stations in the market, were representatives from several county Sheriff's offices, agents from the FBI's Counter Terrorism Intelligence Group, Air Marshals and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents. They discussed several of the more unusual efforts.
In one case, at about 12:30 a.m., the perpetrators covered perimeter razor wire and climbed over two fences. They stole remote control computers and trashed the building. They attempted to break into locked cabinets and drawers. They turned all power off at the breakers inside the building. On a second visit, they cut the lock on the fence, broke another lock, stole nothing, but turned the power off.
It was determined at the Texas SBE meeting that, at most locations where the break-ins have occurred, there are some common elements. Most occurred over a weekend or holiday period during early morning hours. In most cases, the exterior locks were cut off and taken away. Exterior lighting was disabled. Maintenance log books were stolen. In many cases, nothing of significance was stolen. At the College Station break-in, cotton gloves were used. In some cases, the transportation means were all-terrain vehicles. Typically, power was turned off at breakers inside the building so that the transmitter was taken off the air.
Some suppositions from the meeting were that the purpose of these incidents (or some of them) was not vandalism, but reconnaissance – to check the response time to alarms, inspect the interior of buildings to determine what is inside, how it works and what might be done with it. The trashing of the buildings is viewed as a cover-up. Equipment racks are opened up possibly to photograph the interior, to plan for the addition of something, or to modify something. What lends credibility to these theories is that in many cases, there are expensive test instruments and tools that were not stolen even though they were in plain sight.
There are specific contact persons in Houston working on this at various agencies, but SBE is interested in compiling information about these events to provide to the FBI and DHS. Please let us know of any instances of transmitter site break-ins or related events at cimlay@sbe.org. We will compile them and send them to the proper federal authorities.
Perhaps related to the above, perhaps not, in late October over a three-day period, a spate of about 40 fraudulent Form 301 applications were filed at FCC. Exploiting a filing vulnerability in the FCC's CDBS system, the applications were filed relative to southern California broadcast stations (mostly TV stations). The FCC's CDBS was not hacked. It was merely exploited, and apparently the vulnerability is now being corrected.
The filing of these applications represented a lot of work, though, and one wonders why all of the effort was spent when it was reasonably quickly discovered and fixed. Again, exploring future opportunities comes to mind as an explanation. Another is that the applications could have been filed in order to mask one station that was targeted. Note that the applications were not detected in time to keep them from being placed on public notice. In any case, keep an eye on the FCC's daily broadcast applications listings in the Daily Digest for further instances of the same thing.
Finally, keep an ear out for crank calls. A southern California chief engineer for three FM stations received a call from someone impersonating the Southern California Frequency Coordination Committee (SCFCC) database administrator in late October, informing the CE that one of the stations' STLs was causing spurious emissions and interference to other users. The CE was asked to shut off the STL immediately. Of course, the SCFCC database administrator (who had been slightly misidentified by the impersonator) was contacted minutes later and knew nothing about the call.
Crank calls, break-ins and fraudulent FCC applications may not be unusual or suspicious in small volume, but the large number and the unusual types of such incidents over a short period of time triggers SBE's post-9/11 antenna. Let's keep on top of these incidents, and let's be careful out there.
