Rise in incidence of antenna and fibre optic sabotage!
Die Lust der Zerstörung ist zugleich eine schaffende Lust
Bakunin, 1842
Following the coordinated sabotage on April 28 of several sections of fibre optic cables of the French Internet network (in particular that of SFR), the French Federation of Telecoms (FFT), which brings together all major operators, immediately made a show of trying to minimize their impact by highlighting the resilience of networks. And all this, despite the fact that millions of inhabitants of Grenoble, Besançon, Reims or Strasbourg, without counting those of the Paris region and tens of thousands of companies, were temporarily deprived of their electronic leashes. It was a crisis communication of the TFF, intended to reassure the good citizens, while not giving bad ideas to those who could be inspired by this attack, since the traps of these sensitive networks are everywhere, and it is of course impossible to put a cop at the foot of each of them.
Two weeks later, once the storm has passed, it is now far from the white-hot spotlight that the President of the FFT has changed his tune somewhat. In a long alarmist interview given to a specialized economic newspaper, La Tribune, on Tuesday May 10th, Arthur Dreyfuss claims with an eloquent title (“It is necessary to make penalties for acts of vandalism more severe”) that he calls for “a strong hardening of the penal sentences so that they are really dissuasive” against the saboteurs, considering that “the stake is not only to protect the operators, but also all the most sensitive and essential activities of the country”. And what better way to support his carceral statement than to lift a corner of the veil on the real extent of sabotage against communication networks, pointing out their number and their “criminal” character this time, especially for state activities “of security or defense”, which are indeed very dependent on all these cables?
After a brief overview of the acts that have recently hit fibre optics to say that … the French Federation of Telecoms is working closely “with the police and justice system” (what a scoop!), it is actually to the burning fate of relay antennas that the President of the FTT chooses to turn in his interview: “Let’s not minimize everything that has happened since 2020. Over the last six months, we see, on average, fifteen mobile sites damaged per month. That number is growing: in 2020, we had seen about 100 cases of intentional damage to towers.” In his regular annual review, the National Coordinator of Intelligence and Counterterrorism (CNRLT), Laurent Nuñez, had certainly also given the figure of a hundred antennas sabotaged for the year of the Great Containment (2020), but he had to raise it by estimating it at nearly a hundred and fifty for the following year (2021)… A figure that would continue to climb irresistibly these past six months, since the current trend would lead us straight to the nearly two hundred antennas attacked for 2022, according to the FFT. That is to say nearly double in two years!
While we have been hearing that growth has been at a low for some time here and there, this is apparently not the case in the promising sector of antenna sabotage! Especially when we know that the attack on one can impact many others (of course ignored by the service calculator) as in Albi in September 2021, when the burning of a TDF tower directly impacted no less than “sixty mobile sites” in the whole Tarn region, according to the same Arthur Dreyfuss in a previous interview with La Tribune. As for the deliberate optic fibre severings, they would follow the same trend, since “there have been 30 per month, on average, over the last six months”, still according to this great offical of the digital caging of the world.
Finally, to the question about the sea serpent 5G and the illuminated who attribute all sorts of spells to it – even though many of the destroyed antennas are in practice not equipped with this technology (especially in rural areas) and the struggle against these structures took off several years ago -, the worried President of the FFT also wants to dot the i’s: “The damaging of antennas began well before the launch of 5G in winter 2020. 5G has been used as a pretext for a number of claims by ultra-left movements. But attacks on networks did not begin with the arrival of this technology.” This shows at least that some people may have some foresight, but above all that the reasons for attacking these targets are certainly broader and deeper than the recent arrival of 5G, and more diverse too. This doesn’t displease the politicians, journalist-cops or the head of the FTT who regularly try to lock all these acts of sabotage within reductive identity and police frames in order to diminish their significance, whereas most of them are and generally remain anonymous.
Faced with them, let’s assume that it will not be the national convention, signed in March 2021 between operators, police, gendarmerie and the DGSI, and implemented since in the departments (44 at the moment) under the auspices of the prefect by including the prosecutors, that will succeed in putting an end to it. It should also be noted that among the range of more concrete measures implemented, the FFT cites “systems of movement detectors, automatic lighting, reinforced fences, experiments with video surveillance” and the burying of “electrical power cables”. Or that Orange announced two months ago its starting to put fireproof paint on its pylons so as not to have to replace them along with its charred cables when they don’t hold up as in Haute-Garonne, and also not to repair them in a hurry thereby ruining the crime scene, but only after a meticulous and systematic intervention by the forensic police.
In short, it is in any case beyond this preventive technical framework that fails to curb the multiplication of attacks against antennas and fibre that the FFT now intends to lobby Parliament to further tighten legislation, while knowing that the State is choosing more and more often to launch its prosecutions under the charge of “damaging of property likely to harm the fundamental interests of the Nation”, which already increases the penalties incurred.
So yes, an open and diffuse struggle against the infrastructures of power seems to have been underway for several years and not only in France (“notably in Great Britain or in the Netherlands”, says Mister Dreyfuss), but it is not so much its quantitative characteristics as its intrinsic qualitative dimensions that are certainly beginning to alert the authorities, as summarized in a recent public invitation to discussion in the Paris region:
“This struggle is not calling for changes in the existing situation for large movements seeking unity, but is proceeding to direct destruction of the infrastructures of power during walks in the moonlight. It does not concentrate on one specific territory to defend, but develops by attacking targets that are everywhere, within everyone’s reach. It does not need self-proclaimed leaders surfing social networks or TV shows, but makes its way autonomously through the actions of individuals who each have their own reasons and perspectives. It ignores organizational specialists or deadlines set in advance by others than oneself, by sabotaging cell phone antennas, television relays and fibre optic cables unexpectedly and diffusely, with means as banal as a pair of wire cutters, flaming tyres or a little well-placed gasoline. It causes not only the temporary interruption of the flow of control and exploitation, but also hundreds of thousands euros’ damage. Because it is uncontrollable and keeps spreading despite sporadic repression; because the State cannot put a cop behind every pylon or cable trap; because any individual can take part with a little imagination and determination; or simply because it attacks sensitive nodes of domination, this multifaceted struggle obviously causes concern to the authorities.”
A struggle against the dispossession of our lives, in a world where everyone is forced to act permanently in hostile territory, but which shows that the possibility of the negative to ambush an ever more colossal enemy, but no less with feet of clay, always remains in force. And perhaps also, as an old anarchist said a long time ago, because the passion for destruction is also a creative passion…
[May 12, 2022]
via: sansnom Translated by Act for freedom now!