7 ms·

Nooooooo! He was my next door neighbor a few years ago, and I knew him as a person before I realized that I knew him as a hero. His dogs were fiercely protecti

Nooooooo! He was my next door neighbor a few years ago, and I knew him as a person before I realized that I knew him as a hero. His dogs were fiercely protective of his house, which is perfectly understandable. One day I saw a "sewer cleaning" van behind his house, and I have a hard time believing that's what it really was: https://honeypot.net/2025/03/12/rip-mark-klein.html https://honeypot.net/2025/03/12/rip-mark-klein.html

itisit 2y ago
The money shot! I did not realize sewer cleaning required so much onsite IT. Are those rack units running computational fluid dynamics models to figure out how to unclog elaborate networks of pipes?
- spaceribs 2y ago
  I'd like to believe it was an inspection van: https://nationalplant.com/services/digital-tv-inspection/ https://nationalplant.com/services/digital-tv-inspection/ I'd like to believe that, but I don't.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    That very well could be what it was. If it had been anything other than: 1. Spotless. 2. Parked right behind Klein's (and by extension, my) house. 3. Skittish, such that they closed the door right after I took the picture and drove off less than a minute later without pulling any gear up out of a manhole or something. then that's probably what I'd chalk it up to. I am absolutely not 100% convinced it was, say, an undercover NSA van. And yet, that's exactly what I thought it was from the moment I saw the gear racks and monitors inside.
    - Boogie_Man 2y ago
      Somebody give the number on the van a call and post results
      - lukan 2y ago
        If it would be a spy van, it would be a real number (likely for the real company). Otherwise way too easy to spot.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - rkagerer 2y ago
        I called and asked them if they were NSA. Very nice lady explained "No, trust me, we're definitely just NPS" (j/k). https://www.linkedin.com/posts/national-plant-services-inc_environmental-ca-emergencyresponse-activity-6883832924010024960-oYTE https://www.linkedin.com/posts/national-plant-services-inc_e...
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - bunabhucan 2y ago
      We have a manhole outside our house and it was inspected like this. I work with GIS for electric and gas companies. I used to keep small ear protectors in the Burley so me and the kids could go up and ask "diggermen" about holes in the road. Xcel used directional drilling for a plastic gas main down our street and then did sewer intrusion inspections after. A neighbor had their sewer line pierced. It's a hazard because it isn't detectible until the sewer line blocks and then the blade thingy the plumber uses can sever the plastic gas service lateral in the sewer line. There is a gas overflow valve (like a ball bearing that too much flow can push in to block the pipe) back at the service tee fitting on the main. If that doesn't work then you could have a gas explosion in the sewer or house. It happens and it is bad. Clients give presentations on these projects at conferences (e.g. use GIS to combine the sewer and gas topology to identify where the crossings are.) That truck isn't for inspecting your sewer, it's for inspecting every junction on that sewer line, 8 hours per day, every day. They will have a map and linear reference showing where every other underground utility (fiber/gas/electricity) intersects it and be recording and cross referencing it in case it needs to be produced in court at a later date. People are conflating do-you-need-a-$30k-sewer-line "plumber inspection" with this service. This kind of inspection is more like the "assuming tort liability" role that the companies like sitewise serve. Even with the robot done and packed, the operator in the truck was working for a bit, making copies of the videos and tagging them and stuff. If your gas main piercing a sewer causes explosions the settlements can be in the tens of millions. BigUtility uses trenchless directional drilling to poke a drill horizontally down the street and then laterally to each house saving millions of dollars in open trench costs. The gotcha is that they can't see where they are digging and thus can burn, electrocute, explode or kill taxpayers. The inspections help with sewer maintenance / cleaning but the big money/concern is on the liability for cross bored gas lines. The robot (the one I saw outside my house) was over $10k and kitting out the whole truck with a crane and the monitors and reels was $90k. They hosed the robot down completely with high pressure water from the truck once it came back out and checked it over for damage. That and the fact that the van guys typically don't go in the sewer is why the van is clean. It's an "expensive equipment" van, not a plumbers van. For comparison the fiber optic inspection a plumber might use is more like $2k and you can rent them. Depending on the job they can inflate a balloon at the next manhole upstream or even pump/route the sewer through a temp pipe on the street surface (looks like a big fire hose) from the previous manhole to the one after where the van is. That needs 3 crews plus flaggers for traffic. They use a radio to coordinate with the other crews. With the line blocked for inspection the robot typically just has a film of that nasty sewer grease on it. They told me the door stays open even in winter because the crane operator / tether wrangler guy is right by an open sewer which is a fall and methane hazard. The job isn't quick - there might be 300 feet / 100m of line to the robot near the next manhole. Unless they were just looking at one service main, if they were able to leave they must have been winding up already. The more important question is: is there a sewer manhole where they parked? If we can surveil people with drones from miles away, what technology are the FBI using that requires guys physically in a van outside a house? If you were going to park outside, why would you use a method that usually blocks the street? I dug up a pic. If you look carefully you can see two tethers, one for the 4 wheel metal sled that moves it and a thicker one for the camera and lights on the "head" part. The crew used the controls to move the head around until it was looking at my kids and they could see themselves on the second screen (one screen faced out the door.) The kids thought it was cool: https://i.imgur.com/2ltz8bj.png https://i.imgur.com/2ltz8bj.png Story about a fatal explosion caused by horizontal directional drilling piercing a gas main: https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/13/us/missouri-gas-explosion/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/13/us/missouri-gas-explosion/ind... I can't find any conference papers but the industry term to google is "crossbore" and this blog post has some pictures of gas service laterals piercing sewers: https://blog.envirosight.com/sewer-school-preventing-cross-bores https://blog.envirosight.com/sewer-school-preventing-cross-b... ESRI page on using GIS to identify the potential crossbores and assign them 90 day inspection windows to try to detect it before the sewer backs up: https://community.esri.com/t5/gas-and-pipeline-blog/arcgis-for-cross-bore-management/ba-p/1567941 https://community.esri.com/t5/gas-and-pipeline-blog/arcgis-f...
    - therealcamino 2y ago
      Here's the thing, there's never going to be convincing evidence for you to decide that it wasn't what your hunch said it was. That's the nature of suspicion. You could Google "national plant services van" on image search and find similar vans, and that the company is owned by is the Carylon Corporation, with revenue of $300m/year -- but that couldn't convince you that a government agency (it wouldn't be the NSA unless they're violating the law) didn't borrow it or copy it. You could read that their services include "Digital CCTV inspection. Laser profiling. Sonar pipeline inspection." but that couldn't convince you that the monitor+joystick and other equipment is needed for sewer inspection, because you already believe it is for surveillance. (The irony being that the kind of mass surveillance Mark Klein exposed, or Snowden exposed, means there's absolutely no need to park a truck outside someone's house. You can track who they're communicating with already, and you can subvert their own devices to listen in, instead of parking a van out front for their neighbors to notice.) You could look at who has the contract to inspect sewers in your town -- it's public record. But you could still choose to believe that the federal government did the same check, and went out and got an identical truck so as to be less suspicious (although in this thread half the people are saying "that's too clean/fancy/technological to be a sewer inspection van!" so if they did it would have backfired.) Was he under surveillance? Who knows. Does this truck prove anything either way? No. Everybody is going to leave this thread with whatever hunch they came in with.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
    I am willing to believe it was innocuous. The guy already spilled the beans and has been blackballed from government access. Does he require clandestine surveillance any more? Easy enough to get “national security” reasons why all of his devices need to be tapped. More intimidating to have visible GMen watching him for life.
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      For some reason this reminded me of Ernest Hemingway. In the later parts of his life, he began to believe he was being followed and tracked by the FBI, and these delusions eventually gave way to various other issues. Or perhaps it could be the other way around, but there is a catch here. In either case this led to him being somewhat brutally treated with electroconvulsive therapy, repeatedly, to little effect beyond damaging his mind. A quote from on that was, "What is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure, but we lost the patient." He would kill himself not long thereafter. The interesting thing is that the FBI was following and tracking him, and simply stayed silent as this all played out.
- mikeyouse 2y ago
  Interestingly, it seems the 'real' sewer cleaning company uses a bunch of tech to do their inspections, etc.: https://specializedmaintenance.com/services/digital-tv-inspection/ https://specializedmaintenance.com/services/digital-tv-inspe... (Which would make it an excellent van for the 3-letter spooks to copy, so not really persuasive either way)
  - cookiengineer 2y ago
    I wanted to point out that when visiting those sites from Germany (nationalplant.com and the specializedmaintenance.com website) it shows the same unavailable geoblocked message. I wouldn't have recognized it but after opening both links in new tabs on my phone I thought I forgot to open one of the links in this thread and I double-checked it. Are those fake companies both hosted on wordfence or something? What are the odds, huh?
    - johnisgood 2y ago
      Upon clicking the link above, I get: Your access to this site has been limited by the site owner Your access to this service has been limited. (HTTP response code 503)
  - adastra22 2y ago
    That’s just a display monitor and a small computer. Grandpaarent’s photo had two half racks of data center grade AV equipment.
- rkagerer 2y ago
  Conversely, makes me think my IT truck with all its network cables and racks, needs a toilet.
nabakin 2y ago
I don't think I've ever seen the inside of an actual undercover van before. Crazy picture. Do we know anything else about them?
- lukan 2y ago
  I would not jump to conclusions so soon. A) I would question why they would do the effort of still doing surveillance on him B) if they do, they are usually so smart to keep the door closed C) like others have mentioned, sewer cleaning comes with a lot of tech (I assume remote controlled machines)
  - adastra22 2y ago
    One thing for certain: that is absolutely NOT a sewer inspection van. Seriously, you ever worked trades? It is way too clean on the interior and not fitted for working dirty jobs, to say nothing of the visible surveillance workstation.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Velofellow 2y ago
      yes, and that looks pretty much just like some of the vans I've been in the back of for CCTV sewer inspections.
  - throwaway201606 2y ago
    I would think that anyone working in a sewer inspection van would keep the door open because it is highly likely that sewer inspection vans smell like, well, sewer.
    - geraldwhen 2y ago
      If the van is loaded with equipment, or even if it isn’t, theft and robbery are common in most of the US. You can’t leave a van door open and not be extremely vigilant.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
tptacek 2y ago
That's almost definitely just a sewer inspection van; I found videos that company has of "multi-sensor pipeline inspections" with the same van, open, with the same equipment visible, and a bunch of people following a bunch of equipment down into a manhole.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  It probably was! But given the batch of circumstances, I think it's at least plausible that it was more than that.
  - tptacek 2y ago
    I don't think it's very plausible. The subtext of the photo is "that looks comically unlike what you'd inspect from a sewer inspection van". Well, I can tell you pretty much for sure: thats' what the inside of a sewer inspection van from that company looks like. It took just a couple minutes (less than 5) to go look this up and find the video, for what it's worth. Maybe it's an NSA wet team! Wet, because they do sewer inspection work. :)
    - bawolff 2y ago
      If we are going down the conspiracy rabbit hole, i assume spies can purchase real sewer vans with the logo of real sewer companies on it. I agree though that it seems more plausible to just be a real sewer van.
      - tptacek 2y ago
        I think if they're buying a fake sewer inspection van they're probably smart enough to find one that doesn't look to people on the Internet like it's a prop out of the movie Enemy of the State.
        tharkun__ 2y ago
        I hope the owner of the company doesn't read this. They probably like their designs! :) I just went to Google maps to the address written on the van's passenger door and lo and behold, Google did drive down the alley behind and while this is a larger vehicle and not just a van, that's their look (they also have black versions if you look around): https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7851188,-118.211276,3a,67.3y,212.44h,77.95t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s2SZptfe2CCoYt4flQmd82w!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D12.049999999999997%26panoid%3D2SZptfe2CCoYt4flQmd82w%26yaw%3D212.44!7i16384!8i8192!5m1!1e1?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDMxMC4wIKXMDSoJLDEwMjExNDU1SAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7851188,-118.211276,3a,67.3y...
taosx 2y ago
This is crazy.. you guys are focused on vans and mini stories when all his sacrifice and that of thousand if not more americans was snuffed. `Congress intervened by passing the FISA Amendments Act which, in part, granted “retroactive immunity” to the telecommunications carriers for their involvement in the NSA spying programs. This massive grant of immunity for past violations of multiple state and federal laws protecting communications privacy was unprecedented.`
- kstrauser 2y ago
  Be the change you want to see. I mentioned the vans and his dogs because Mark wasn't some random picture on the Internet, but the nice guy a couple houses down who talked about the volunteer work he did for harbor seals[0]. He was a real person we liked a lot and I thought others might enjoy hearing about his noisy, overprotective golden retrievers. But yes, he was also a personal hero to me before I met him in real life, and we should absolutely still be talking about the things he uncovered and what happened to them afterward. Please do tell those stories, too. [0]https://goldengatebirdalliance.org/blog-posts/wild-ly-successful-in-alameda-4-6/ https://goldengatebirdalliance.org/blog-posts/wild-ly-succes...
  - jll29 2y ago
    Where are today's technicians that are prostituting themselves for the communications companies around the world that this can still be happening? Man up and remove those splitters, cables, show us the drawings, reports and PPT slides! R.I.P. Mark
    - lukan 2y ago
      I guess not too many want to have to hide in russia.
      - firen777 2y ago
        Judging from the way things are going, what's the difference?
orblivion 2y ago
Flowers By Irene
themcaffee 2y ago
That certainly is just a Sewer TV inspection van! I have a hand in writing some of the software that is run on these and processes the videos that come out of them. They all have rack mounted PCs and a monitor with a joystick to control the crawler that goes in the pipe.
- tptacek 2y ago
  Gotta love this site.
  - burnished 2y ago
    Makes for a treasure trove of impromptu QA's in the comments
    - AceJohnny2 2y ago
      "Did you win the Putnam?" Sorry u/sanj & hat-tip to u/cperciva ;)
  - labster 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - smolder 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - baxtr 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - eduction 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - echoangle 2y ago
      I think they were being serious. In the sense that it’s cool that there’s always someone with personal experience chiming in here.
kens 2y ago
I found a video with an identical National Plant Services sewer inspection van, inspecting a large-diameter sewer line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVXceJ3Yxnw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVXceJ3Yxnw (The photo shows van TV-230 while the video shows van TV-217, so they are different instances of the van.)
- emmelaich 2y ago
  I went to the Carylon website to find a list of their companies and got > Block Reason: Access from your area has been temporarily limited for security reasons. My area is Australia. https://caryloncorp.com/find-a-company/ https://caryloncorp.com/find-a-company/
  - kube-system 2y ago
    It’s not uncommon for site firewalls to be configured this way for business that do not do work internationally.
    - dkga 2y ago
      Yes, but calling it „security“ is a bit of a stretch…
      - sim7c00 2y ago
        it is security... block most of the world is also block most attacks to your infra...
      - kube-system 2y ago
        It's just one slice in the swiss cheese model.
- rkagerer 2y ago
  Please obtain one of each, and do a teardown to confirm ;-)
brk 2y ago
That is a van built by Ares (I might have the spelling slightly wrong). Funny enough I once bought a used one, stripped the sewer inspection equipment out, kept the Oman diesel generator and made it into an actual surveillance van. The inspection robots that came with it were cool. I sold them and the other equipment I pulled out for a good chunk of cash.
nzeid 2y ago
This whole sewer inspection thing must be particularly hilarious to the people performing the inspection. "Yo dude, we're officially spies! hi5"
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
southernplaces7 2y ago
"sewer cleaning van"... This might be apt. The feds and their many tactics..... Flowers By Irene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_HSNMLfhFM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_HSNMLfhFM
HexPhantom 2y ago
That must have been surreal.. knowing him first as just a neighbor, then realizing the weight of what he did

itisit 2y ago

The money shot! I did not realize sewer cleaning required so much onsite IT. Are those rack units running computational fluid dynamics models to figure out how to unclog elaborate networks of pipes?

spaceribs 2y ago
I'd like to believe it was an inspection van: https://nationalplant.com/services/digital-tv-inspection/ https://nationalplant.com/services/digital-tv-inspection/ I'd like to believe that, but I don't.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  That very well could be what it was. If it had been anything other than: 1. Spotless. 2. Parked right behind Klein's (and by extension, my) house. 3. Skittish, such that they closed the door right after I took the picture and drove off less than a minute later without pulling any gear up out of a manhole or something. then that's probably what I'd chalk it up to. I am absolutely not 100% convinced it was, say, an undercover NSA van. And yet, that's exactly what I thought it was from the moment I saw the gear racks and monitors inside.
  - Boogie_Man 2y ago
    Somebody give the number on the van a call and post results
    - lukan 2y ago
      If it would be a spy van, it would be a real number (likely for the real company). Otherwise way too easy to spot.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - rkagerer 2y ago
      I called and asked them if they were NSA. Very nice lady explained "No, trust me, we're definitely just NPS" (j/k). https://www.linkedin.com/posts/national-plant-services-inc_environmental-ca-emergencyresponse-activity-6883832924010024960-oYTE https://www.linkedin.com/posts/national-plant-services-inc_e...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - bunabhucan 2y ago
    We have a manhole outside our house and it was inspected like this. I work with GIS for electric and gas companies. I used to keep small ear protectors in the Burley so me and the kids could go up and ask "diggermen" about holes in the road. Xcel used directional drilling for a plastic gas main down our street and then did sewer intrusion inspections after. A neighbor had their sewer line pierced. It's a hazard because it isn't detectible until the sewer line blocks and then the blade thingy the plumber uses can sever the plastic gas service lateral in the sewer line. There is a gas overflow valve (like a ball bearing that too much flow can push in to block the pipe) back at the service tee fitting on the main. If that doesn't work then you could have a gas explosion in the sewer or house. It happens and it is bad. Clients give presentations on these projects at conferences (e.g. use GIS to combine the sewer and gas topology to identify where the crossings are.) That truck isn't for inspecting your sewer, it's for inspecting every junction on that sewer line, 8 hours per day, every day. They will have a map and linear reference showing where every other underground utility (fiber/gas/electricity) intersects it and be recording and cross referencing it in case it needs to be produced in court at a later date. People are conflating do-you-need-a-$30k-sewer-line "plumber inspection" with this service. This kind of inspection is more like the "assuming tort liability" role that the companies like sitewise serve. Even with the robot done and packed, the operator in the truck was working for a bit, making copies of the videos and tagging them and stuff. If your gas main piercing a sewer causes explosions the settlements can be in the tens of millions. BigUtility uses trenchless directional drilling to poke a drill horizontally down the street and then laterally to each house saving millions of dollars in open trench costs. The gotcha is that they can't see where they are digging and thus can burn, electrocute, explode or kill taxpayers. The inspections help with sewer maintenance / cleaning but the big money/concern is on the liability for cross bored gas lines. The robot (the one I saw outside my house) was over $10k and kitting out the whole truck with a crane and the monitors and reels was $90k. They hosed the robot down completely with high pressure water from the truck once it came back out and checked it over for damage. That and the fact that the van guys typically don't go in the sewer is why the van is clean. It's an "expensive equipment" van, not a plumbers van. For comparison the fiber optic inspection a plumber might use is more like $2k and you can rent them. Depending on the job they can inflate a balloon at the next manhole upstream or even pump/route the sewer through a temp pipe on the street surface (looks like a big fire hose) from the previous manhole to the one after where the van is. That needs 3 crews plus flaggers for traffic. They use a radio to coordinate with the other crews. With the line blocked for inspection the robot typically just has a film of that nasty sewer grease on it. They told me the door stays open even in winter because the crane operator / tether wrangler guy is right by an open sewer which is a fall and methane hazard. The job isn't quick - there might be 300 feet / 100m of line to the robot near the next manhole. Unless they were just looking at one service main, if they were able to leave they must have been winding up already. The more important question is: is there a sewer manhole where they parked? If we can surveil people with drones from miles away, what technology are the FBI using that requires guys physically in a van outside a house? If you were going to park outside, why would you use a method that usually blocks the street? I dug up a pic. If you look carefully you can see two tethers, one for the 4 wheel metal sled that moves it and a thicker one for the camera and lights on the "head" part. The crew used the controls to move the head around until it was looking at my kids and they could see themselves on the second screen (one screen faced out the door.) The kids thought it was cool: https://i.imgur.com/2ltz8bj.png https://i.imgur.com/2ltz8bj.png Story about a fatal explosion caused by horizontal directional drilling piercing a gas main: https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/13/us/missouri-gas-explosion/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/13/us/missouri-gas-explosion/ind... I can't find any conference papers but the industry term to google is "crossbore" and this blog post has some pictures of gas service laterals piercing sewers: https://blog.envirosight.com/sewer-school-preventing-cross-bores https://blog.envirosight.com/sewer-school-preventing-cross-b... ESRI page on using GIS to identify the potential crossbores and assign them 90 day inspection windows to try to detect it before the sewer backs up: https://community.esri.com/t5/gas-and-pipeline-blog/arcgis-for-cross-bore-management/ba-p/1567941 https://community.esri.com/t5/gas-and-pipeline-blog/arcgis-f...
  - therealcamino 2y ago
    Here's the thing, there's never going to be convincing evidence for you to decide that it wasn't what your hunch said it was. That's the nature of suspicion. You could Google "national plant services van" on image search and find similar vans, and that the company is owned by is the Carylon Corporation, with revenue of $300m/year -- but that couldn't convince you that a government agency (it wouldn't be the NSA unless they're violating the law) didn't borrow it or copy it. You could read that their services include "Digital CCTV inspection. Laser profiling. Sonar pipeline inspection." but that couldn't convince you that the monitor+joystick and other equipment is needed for sewer inspection, because you already believe it is for surveillance. (The irony being that the kind of mass surveillance Mark Klein exposed, or Snowden exposed, means there's absolutely no need to park a truck outside someone's house. You can track who they're communicating with already, and you can subvert their own devices to listen in, instead of parking a van out front for their neighbors to notice.) You could look at who has the contract to inspect sewers in your town -- it's public record. But you could still choose to believe that the federal government did the same check, and went out and got an identical truck so as to be less suspicious (although in this thread half the people are saying "that's too clean/fancy/technological to be a sewer inspection van!" so if they did it would have backfired.) Was he under surveillance? Who knows. Does this truck prove anything either way? No. Everybody is going to leave this thread with whatever hunch they came in with.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
  I am willing to believe it was innocuous. The guy already spilled the beans and has been blackballed from government access. Does he require clandestine surveillance any more? Easy enough to get “national security” reasons why all of his devices need to be tapped. More intimidating to have visible GMen watching him for life.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    For some reason this reminded me of Ernest Hemingway. In the later parts of his life, he began to believe he was being followed and tracked by the FBI, and these delusions eventually gave way to various other issues. Or perhaps it could be the other way around, but there is a catch here. In either case this led to him being somewhat brutally treated with electroconvulsive therapy, repeatedly, to little effect beyond damaging his mind. A quote from on that was, "What is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure, but we lost the patient." He would kill himself not long thereafter. The interesting thing is that the FBI was following and tracking him, and simply stayed silent as this all played out.
mikeyouse 2y ago
Interestingly, it seems the 'real' sewer cleaning company uses a bunch of tech to do their inspections, etc.: https://specializedmaintenance.com/services/digital-tv-inspection/ https://specializedmaintenance.com/services/digital-tv-inspe... (Which would make it an excellent van for the 3-letter spooks to copy, so not really persuasive either way)
- cookiengineer 2y ago
  I wanted to point out that when visiting those sites from Germany (nationalplant.com and the specializedmaintenance.com website) it shows the same unavailable geoblocked message. I wouldn't have recognized it but after opening both links in new tabs on my phone I thought I forgot to open one of the links in this thread and I double-checked it. Are those fake companies both hosted on wordfence or something? What are the odds, huh?
  - johnisgood 2y ago
    Upon clicking the link above, I get: Your access to this site has been limited by the site owner Your access to this service has been limited. (HTTP response code 503)
- adastra22 2y ago
  That’s just a display monitor and a small computer. Grandpaarent’s photo had two half racks of data center grade AV equipment.
rkagerer 2y ago
Conversely, makes me think my IT truck with all its network cables and racks, needs a toilet.

nabakin 2y ago

I don't think I've ever seen the inside of an actual undercover van before. Crazy picture. Do we know anything else about them?

lukan 2y ago
I would not jump to conclusions so soon. A) I would question why they would do the effort of still doing surveillance on him B) if they do, they are usually so smart to keep the door closed C) like others have mentioned, sewer cleaning comes with a lot of tech (I assume remote controlled machines)
- adastra22 2y ago
  One thing for certain: that is absolutely NOT a sewer inspection van. Seriously, you ever worked trades? It is way too clean on the interior and not fitted for working dirty jobs, to say nothing of the visible surveillance workstation.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Velofellow 2y ago
    yes, and that looks pretty much just like some of the vans I've been in the back of for CCTV sewer inspections.
- throwaway201606 2y ago
  I would think that anyone working in a sewer inspection van would keep the door open because it is highly likely that sewer inspection vans smell like, well, sewer.
  - geraldwhen 2y ago
    If the van is loaded with equipment, or even if it isn’t, theft and robbery are common in most of the US. You can’t leave a van door open and not be extremely vigilant.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

tptacek 2y ago

That's almost definitely just a sewer inspection van; I found videos that company has of "multi-sensor pipeline inspections" with the same van, open, with the same equipment visible, and a bunch of people following a bunch of equipment down into a manhole.

kstrauser 2y ago
It probably was! But given the batch of circumstances, I think it's at least plausible that it was more than that.
- tptacek 2y ago
  I don't think it's very plausible. The subtext of the photo is "that looks comically unlike what you'd inspect from a sewer inspection van". Well, I can tell you pretty much for sure: thats' what the inside of a sewer inspection van from that company looks like. It took just a couple minutes (less than 5) to go look this up and find the video, for what it's worth. Maybe it's an NSA wet team! Wet, because they do sewer inspection work. :)
  - bawolff 2y ago
    If we are going down the conspiracy rabbit hole, i assume spies can purchase real sewer vans with the logo of real sewer companies on it. I agree though that it seems more plausible to just be a real sewer van.
    - tptacek 2y ago
      I think if they're buying a fake sewer inspection van they're probably smart enough to find one that doesn't look to people on the Internet like it's a prop out of the movie Enemy of the State.
      - tharkun__ 2y ago
        I hope the owner of the company doesn't read this. They probably like their designs! :) I just went to Google maps to the address written on the van's passenger door and lo and behold, Google did drive down the alley behind and while this is a larger vehicle and not just a van, that's their look (they also have black versions if you look around): https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7851188,-118.211276,3a,67.3y,212.44h,77.95t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s2SZptfe2CCoYt4flQmd82w!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D12.049999999999997%26panoid%3D2SZptfe2CCoYt4flQmd82w%26yaw%3D212.44!7i16384!8i8192!5m1!1e1?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDMxMC4wIKXMDSoJLDEwMjExNDU1SAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7851188,-118.211276,3a,67.3y...

taosx 2y ago

This is crazy.. you guys are focused on vans and mini stories when all his sacrifice and that of thousand if not more americans was snuffed. `Congress intervened by passing the FISA Amendments Act which, in part, granted “retroactive immunity” to the telecommunications carriers for their involvement in the NSA spying programs. This massive grant of immunity for past violations of multiple state and federal laws protecting communications privacy was unprecedented.`

kstrauser 2y ago
Be the change you want to see. I mentioned the vans and his dogs because Mark wasn't some random picture on the Internet, but the nice guy a couple houses down who talked about the volunteer work he did for harbor seals[0]. He was a real person we liked a lot and I thought others might enjoy hearing about his noisy, overprotective golden retrievers. But yes, he was also a personal hero to me before I met him in real life, and we should absolutely still be talking about the things he uncovered and what happened to them afterward. Please do tell those stories, too. [0]https://goldengatebirdalliance.org/blog-posts/wild-ly-successful-in-alameda-4-6/ https://goldengatebirdalliance.org/blog-posts/wild-ly-succes...
- jll29 2y ago
  Where are today's technicians that are prostituting themselves for the communications companies around the world that this can still be happening? Man up and remove those splitters, cables, show us the drawings, reports and PPT slides! R.I.P. Mark
  - lukan 2y ago
    I guess not too many want to have to hide in russia.
    - firen777 2y ago
      Judging from the way things are going, what's the difference?

orblivion 2y ago

Flowers By Irene

themcaffee 2y ago

That certainly is just a Sewer TV inspection van! I have a hand in writing some of the software that is run on these and processes the videos that come out of them. They all have rack mounted PCs and a monitor with a joystick to control the crawler that goes in the pipe.

tptacek 2y ago
Gotta love this site.
- burnished 2y ago
  Makes for a treasure trove of impromptu QA's in the comments
  - AceJohnny2 2y ago
    "Did you win the Putnam?" Sorry u/sanj & hat-tip to u/cperciva ;)
- labster 2y ago
  [flagged]
- smolder 2y ago
  [flagged]
- baxtr 2y ago
  [flagged]
- eduction 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - echoangle 2y ago
    I think they were being serious. In the sense that it’s cool that there’s always someone with personal experience chiming in here.

kens 2y ago

I found a video with an identical National Plant Services sewer inspection van, inspecting a large-diameter sewer line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVXceJ3Yxnw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVXceJ3Yxnw (The photo shows van TV-230 while the video shows van TV-217, so they are different instances of the van.)

emmelaich 2y ago
I went to the Carylon website to find a list of their companies and got > Block Reason: Access from your area has been temporarily limited for security reasons. My area is Australia. https://caryloncorp.com/find-a-company/ https://caryloncorp.com/find-a-company/
- kube-system 2y ago
  It’s not uncommon for site firewalls to be configured this way for business that do not do work internationally.
  - dkga 2y ago
    Yes, but calling it „security“ is a bit of a stretch…
    - sim7c00 2y ago
      it is security... block most of the world is also block most attacks to your infra...
    - kube-system 2y ago
      It's just one slice in the swiss cheese model.
rkagerer 2y ago
Please obtain one of each, and do a teardown to confirm ;-)

brk 2y ago

That is a van built by Ares (I might have the spelling slightly wrong). Funny enough I once bought a used one, stripped the sewer inspection equipment out, kept the Oman diesel generator and made it into an actual surveillance van. The inspection robots that came with it were cool. I sold them and the other equipment I pulled out for a good chunk of cash.

nzeid 2y ago

This whole sewer inspection thing must be particularly hilarious to the people performing the inspection. "Yo dude, we're officially spies! hi5"

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

southernplaces7 2y ago

"sewer cleaning van"... This might be apt. The feds and their many tactics..... Flowers By Irene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_HSNMLfhFM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_HSNMLfhFM

HexPhantom 2y ago

That must have been surreal.. knowing him first as just a neighbor, then realizing the weight of what he did