Things that make me glad to be retiring

paden cash, post: 370382, member: 20 wrote: In my naÌøve innocence I would have imagined that what goes on outside of a secure perimeter, on public R/W, shouldn't require security

I work around a lot of secure sites - the thing about a secure perimeter is that once the threat is at the perimeter its often too late.

Security. I referred to something like that last night at our meeting of the school board. We are organizing what are called site councils for each of our schools. The superintendent is all shook up because he believes he needs to control everything about them and that the board should be onlookers......preferably from a distance. Meanwhile the board is very aggressive about being in charge. At one point he asked why we didn't want him to handle it. My response was, "That would be like putting the coyote in charge of designing the security system for the hen house." He was suddenly at a loss for words.....a very, very rare occasion.

James Fleming, post: 370385, member: 136 wrote: I work around a lot of secure sites - the thing about a secure perimeter is that once the threat is at the perimeter its often too late.

sooo...basically you're saying for them to be "safe" their perimeter actually encroaches onto MY public R/W and rights? The actual plant is a half mile drive from the fence and guard shack. And the perimeter fence and shack is NOT the only fence and vehicle restriction. To actually make it to the plant requires navigating a lot more than fences and shacks.

I'm just not buying the fact that someone feels the necessity to 'monitor' the general population, outside of their boundaries, in the name of "security". If they don't feel safe with people being that 'close'...THEY are too close to public R/W. Security is their problem, not the public's.

Ah, the good ol' days. Takes me back to my days working for a government contractor. There were guard shacks at the plant's exterior entry points to stop every vehicle. Then after traveling a mile or two or six you would arrive at a production line consisting of 15 to 100 individual buildings inside a fenced enclosure with another guard shack at the entry point. Then everyone who was not assigned to that specific production line had to walk into the line office and fill out a sign in sheet before walking or driving anywhere else inside the fenced area. Leaving took the same effort in reverse.

James Fleming, post: 370385, member: 136 wrote: I work around a lot of secure sites - the thing about a secure perimeter is that once the threat is at the perimeter its often too late.

Wrong perimeter then, correct?

I get it. It is not Surveying that makes me tired. It is the people that I have to deal with in order to survey.

lmbrls, post: 370410, member: 6823 wrote: I get it. It is not Surveying that makes me tired. It is the people that I have to deal with in order to survey.

'zakly...

I love surveying. And I'll even go so far as to say I love all the numbskulled property owners that feel the need to grab you and jaw while you're trying to actually survey.

But being identified as some sort of threat while occupying public R/W, by someone that has absolutely no business prying into MY affairs, is where I draw the line....

Although I'm sure a guard shack occupant is really highly trained in the art of threat identification. But a german shepherd wouldn't require health insurance...and could probably make better decisions about "threats"....

Happened to me while doing HWM after Hurricane Rita in Sulphur La.
Performing the vertical geodetic network and was set up on the shoulder of I-10 on a blessed NGS mark when police & security surrounded me and asked for ID, authorizations etc.
The set up was within sight distance of an Chevron industrial site. Chevron made the call.
Finished up and didn't return to that Mark.
I have surveyed secure government sites with had many hoops to pass through to be on the site. Some required 'chaperones . NASA at Michoud and Stennis Space Center. Port of New Orleans. Many school facilities. Michoud does not let any foreign nationals on site. But one of the toughest was a survey and we needed to be on the Folgers Coffee facility owned by Proctor & Gamble who had the Tylenol incident years before.
BTW don't make any wise cracks about their "satanic" company logo while going through clearance. Definitely had NO sense on humor about it.

paden cash, post: 370389, member: 20 wrote: sooo...basically you're saying for them to be "safe" their perimeter actually encroaches onto MY public R/W and rights? The actual plant is a half mile drive from the fence and guard shack. And the perimeter fence and shack is NOT the only fence and vehicle restriction. To actually make it to the plant requires navigating a lot more than fences and shacks.

I'm just not buying the fact that someone feels the necessity to 'monitor' the general population, outside of their boundaries, in the name of "security". If they don't feel safe with people being that 'close'...THEY are too close to public R/W. Security is their problem, not the public's.

Exactly. If they need for a half-mile around their perimeter to be "secure" then they need to acquired the property for that half-mile around their site, and fence it in, and move their security shack to a new entrance. They do not own public right of way, and they do not have a right to police or restrict any of the public the right to utilize that public right of way.

I was stopped and questioned by police while working across the public street from the passport office once! They are pretty serious about that stuff, but I was on someone else's property, again, across the street!!!

I use to do quasi-military telephone work and have been on (and in) many places that were strictly forbidden to outside personnel. At the time ('70s) the nation's telecommunication system relied mostly on buried copper. It's a lot higher-tech nowadays, I'm sure. You can almost admire the military's security because operational areas are well defined and marked, unlike my power plant security. I've never seen an armed military guard draw down on someone outside of a fence..

We were once contracted to provide "racking diagrams" (As builts and cable inspection) of the underground system that ran from the Bell wire center to the Houston Space Center. These MH runs go on for miles, with a vault every 400 to 600 feet. These particular vaults had lids that were welded to their flange and had to be cut for our entrance. In a 4x8x6 ug splice vault we had to have an inspector (me) a union Bell splicer, and an armed U.S.A.F. member of security forces. It got hot and cramped down there with all the gear and equipment required.

We were searched before we entered and after we exited each MH. We were "compelled" to keep conversation focused on only the work at hand. The waiver we signed each day acknowledged the fact that our Security Force "monitor" had the authorization to use deadly force. It was a hot two months in Houston. All the military circuits were soldered instead of crimped making the work tedious. Cable count records (necessary for what we were doing) could only be in the hands of our monitor, we could not touch them with our civilian skinners. It was a pain in the butt to shine a flashlight on a clipboard held by an armed Neanderthal that would not let you get within 18" of his person. If for some reason we had overpowered this individual in the vault, his buddy in the green thing upstairs would shoot us before we could escape...

Found out after we had finished that the military level security was not necessarily for the benefit of NASA, the circuitry was also a direct link to NORAD.

Timberwolf, post: 370430, member: 10599 wrote: I was stopped and questioned by police while working across the public street from the passport office once! They are pretty serious about that stuff, but I was on someone else's property, again, across the street!!!

I have gotten myself cross-wise with several different flavors of police over the years; and I'm not really too keen on some Barney Fife thinking he needs to know what I'm doing. One of the most frequent occurrences happens when someone in a rural area thinks me or my crew is "up to something" and a local deputy is scrambled to check it out. I make sure we have permission to be on private property and we always park legally in public R/W.

When one asks "what are you doing?" my favorite reply is "not much, what have you been doing?" Doesn't sit well sometimes. Another favorite, after telling them we're "surveying", their next question is "what are you surveying?". I usually tell them it's really none of their business, followed by me asking "am I breaking the law?". You would be surprised how many officers and deputies will not directly answer that question.

I've been this way my whole life and it's not getting any better...;-)

paden cash, post: 370432, member: 20 wrote:
I've been this way my whole life and it's not getting any better...;-)

Well, from your wonderful childhood stories, some of us had the hint you have always been something of a rebel.... I haven't dug out whether there's a cause or not for sure... perhaps for personal privacy which has been evaporating for years?

The most seroius security I have ever encountered was on a Purina pet food manufacturing site. It made military security look wimpy. They inspeced EVERYTHING in the truck going IN and OUT of the site. Some of our work was conducted inside buildings, and we were told "There are rooms you are not permitted to enter." We said fine, just point them out and we will avoid them. "We can't tell you which ones they are, but if you enter them you will be removed from the site and never allowed back in!" We laughes and said "Really? - You can't be serious!" We were promptly informed that it was not a laughing matter. One day when we were leaving a guard told us he had seen us taking photographs and he was going to confiscate our camera. We told him to go ahead, and after about 20 minutes of searching for a camera (we didn't have one) he became furious. He had to have our "departure from the site" approved by his superior. I was young then - if this happened now I would have walked off the job and told them to find someone else to treat like a dog.

Jim in AZ, post: 370434, member: 249 wrote: .. We said fine, just point them out and we will avoid them. "We can't tell you which ones they are, but if you enter them you will be removed from the site and never allowed back in!"...

Reminds me of sending a set of sanitary sewer outfall plans to the Oklahoma Archeological Survey for review and approval for construction.

They replied and said, "You've got to move your route, it comes too close to significant historical Native American artifact dig sites."

"Cool. Show us where they're at and we'll move it."

"We can't tell you where they're at.."

WTF?

We were finally able to determine a 500' long area they wanted moved "a significant distance in a northeasterly direction". We moved the line 100' (all we could and stay on City property). They approved the plans.

John, post: 370433, member: 791 wrote: ..some of us had the hint you have always been something of a rebel.... I haven't dug out whether there's a cause or not for sure...

..genetics, pure genetics..

For part of one summer working in AK, our group was housed in military barracks on an over-the-horizon missile early warning site. The main technical facility was 3 parabolic meshes, each about the size of a football field tipped up on their sides, and the various buildings to power and control/monitor them.

The main buildings having the mess hall, PX, offices, and most of the housing for the operations personnel were in the middle of the site, and our barracks were in a completely separate part of the site, well away from the microwave screens.

This was an Air Force site that used some super gung-ho Army Ranger types as security. When not on duty, you could often find these guys at the on-site bar having a good time, but when on duty, they were all business. Joking in a way that implied some manner of security breach, no matter how trivial, was a very bad idea. I'm certain that when these guys said their bedtime prayers they ended them with something like "... and please Lord, send an enemy for me to engage tomorrow..."

As part of their regular training, they played their own version of cops & robbers, or Rangers & Russkies, where one or two would attempt to breach the site and others would track them down. More than once when coming back through the gate at the end of the day, one of them would be either on his knees with fingers interlaced behind his head or face down in the dirt or pavement while another was screaming at him and poking him in the back with an A2 (M-15). They got pretty rough with each other. I'm certain that at least part of their purpose in that was to impress upon us civilians that we had better not get caught in an area we were not supposed to be in.

The guards are told to make sure that no one and nothing gets past the perimeter fence. Even if there are other layers of security within, that guard's responsibility is that fence, and if anything gets by, he has failed. That is his only concern. The higher ups want them to be that diligent and providing some manner of guidelines to exercise a level of judgment to assess whether something or someone at the fence is a potential threat is merely a distraction from that diligence. Better to have the guards think of everything and everyone as a potential threat unless specifically authorized to be there at a specified time. It's the same reason why junk yards have pit bulls rather than golden retrievers.

Some of those places are all about rules. I once was escorted to a meeting in the inner compound of a base. As we were leaving, the guard at the inner gate saw us at a hundred fifty feet distance and yelled, "Sergeant Dixon, your badge, sir!" His access badge had gotten turned face side down. Never mind that he knew the guy and saw him enter and leave every day.

OK I will give you my best security story (before I got into surveying)

Working on Naval or Marine Corps. Air base, don't rememeber exactly.

Making long concrete pours, approx. 20' wide and 1200' long. I would come in at night and snap lines and "wet saw" the concrete for transverse joints as soon as I could, before concrete started to cool down and develop uncontrolled cracks.

Late at night on base, stated laying out joints and began cutting. Sawed up to the point were concrete was soft, stopped cutting.

Went ahead to mark more joints with helper and flashlights, all of a sudden Security had M-16 pointed at me and told me to come here.

Only thing was i was across the 20' wide pour and security was on the other side, wanted me to walk straight towards them, and I would have left big impressions in new concrete if I did.

I could walk say 300' back to were conc. was hard enough to support me or walk 600' to the other end, tried shouting, but security could not here.

walked 300' back, with plane engines going, and m-16's pointed right at me.

When i crossed over and got to them (after being placed on the deck) and they checked our ID's everything was ok, but nobody let new security know we were supposed to be out on site all night.