Intelligence Brief:Third undersea cable reportedly cut between Sri Lanka, Suez

[grapejelly]

Re: Intelligence Brief:Third undersea cable reportedly cut between Sri Lanka, Suez

is there any question that this is almost undoubtedly done by the US government in order to break and then tap the cables?

As you probably know, fiber optic cables cannot be tapped through using induction. They have to physically be intercepted. So the government cut the cables, secretly put them through their tap, and they have all the traffic passing through to Pakistan and other countries...

Gee, this isn't rocket science, folks.

[rj1]

Re: Intelligence Brief:Third undersea cable reportedly cut between Sri Lanka, Suez

is there any question that this is almost undoubtedly done by the US government in order to break and then tap the cables?

Uh, yes, there is.

C'mon guys, this happens regularly enough. It's just everyone is on pins and needles with al-Qaeda and the Iranians and this 24/7 news cycle that stuff gets overamplified out of proportion.

[jtabeb]

Re: Intelligence Brief:Third undersea cable reportedly cut between Sri Lanka, Suez

Where's the USS Jimmy Carter?

Ahh, very good grasshopper.

Now ask yourself how many "slice boxes" or "reader boxes" have been placed on all strategic lines and you will know the meaning of "fear".:eek:

[BiscayneSunrise]

Re: Intelligence Brief:Third undersea cable reportedly cut between Sri Lanka, Suez

If an agency is trying to covertly tap into cables, doesn't it strike anyone as counterintuitive that they would do so in a manner that would cause interruption of service and trigger repair teams to go physically inspect the damage? Not just once, but five times??

[grapejelly]

Re: Intelligence Brief:Third undersea cable reportedly cut between Sri Lanka, Suez

If an agency is trying to covertly tap into cables, doesn't it strike anyone as counterintuitive that they would do so in a manner that would cause interruption of service and trigger repair teams to go physically inspect the damage? Not just once, but five times??

there is no other way to do it.

Fiber must be physically intercepted by cutting the line and splicing it together through some sort of detection device.

I am sure they are cutting it in two places...each away from the other. The technology can find approximately where a cut is...I am told...and the other part is where they would splice the intercepting device.

What you should ask yourself is how this could be anything but the US government? Or is it just a coincidence? :rolleyes:

They have done this before...they believe they have complete dominion over the rest of the world's communications. They roped AT&T and probably other carriers in, even within the US. It's not like this should be any surprise.

[c1ue]

Re: Intelligence Brief:Third undersea cable reportedly cut between Sri Lanka, Suez

Uh, sorry to burst your bubble, but the undersea cables are not a continuous fiber from one end of the ocean to another.

There must be regular repeaters placed somewhere around 45 to 70 km - perhaps more with modern technology.

Thus the way to tap is just to hook into the repeater.

Since you don't need to cut the cable - just replace (or tap) the repeater, there is no reason to chop through the line and take it down.

In fact, the repeaters themselves do occassionally fail - thus why not just wait for such an instance and insert a ringer?

For that matter, it is much easier to tap into the data at the cable ends.

As I mentioned previously, please fasten your tin hats before takeoff...

[Guest]

Re: Intelligence Brief:Third undersea cable reportedly cut between Sri Lanka, Suez

Itulip's serial conspiracy debunker strikes again. I'm a believer. 98% of the time, there is indeed a non-conspiracy answer. Conspiracies are horribly messy to stage - leaks are catastrophic to the original intent. Conspiracies are a 'low reward' strategy due to high risk of failure.

[Verrocchio]

We do not rule out that a deliberate act of sabotage caused the damage

Nothing new here, except that the head of the United Nations agency for information and communcation technologies stated that some experts doubt that the cuts were accidental.

Saboteurs may have cut Mideast telecom cables: UN agency

Feb 18 06:17 PM US/Eastern

Damage to several undersea telecom cables that caused outages across the Middle East and Asia could have been an act of sabotage, the International Telecommunication Union said on Monday.

[Verrocchio]

Re: We do not rule out that a deliberate act of sabotage caused the damage

Cables Cut Again

“The information we have is a bit sketchy, but chances are that it will have been an anchor again,” Jonathan Wright, Interoute’s director of wholesale products, said in a telephone interview. “Close to 90 percent of all the data traffic between Europe and the Middle East is carried on these three cable systems.”

[Nervous Drake]

Re: We do not rule out that a deliberate act of sabotage caused the damage

.

[Verrocchio]

Re: We do not rule out that a deliberate act of sabotage caused the damage

It's amazing how a cable being cut can have such a devastating effect on such a huge geographic area. Maybe they should put up big red flashing signs with humongous neon lit arrows pointing down at the spot where there is such vital cables, so the ships don't put their anchors through them

Um, yes, ND, but the possibility of saboteurs hasn't been eliminated (see posts in older part of thread), so your red flashing signs and neon arrows would make it too, too convenient for the suggested saboteurs to make their cuts!

[Verrocchio]

Cables that were Cut and Repaired Have Now Been Cut Again!

Cable Cutting Continues


Undersea Cables Cut; 14 Countries Lose Web -- Updated

By Kim Zetter December 19, 2008 | 2:39:13 PM

Reports from the Mediterranean indicate that two of the undersea cables severed and repaired earlier this year have been cut again, disrupting internet access and phone service between the Middle East, Europe, and parts of Asia. An additional third cable is down in the same region.
The cuts are causing traffic to be re-routed through the United States and elsewhere.
Egypt's communications ministry tells the Associated Press that the outage has almost completely killed internet services throughout Egypt.


For rest of article, click here.

[politicalfootballfan]

Re: Cables that were Cut and Repaired Have Now Been Cut Again!

----nm----

[ASH]

Re: Cables that were Cut and Repaired Have Now Been Cut Again!

Cable Cutting Continues


Undersea Cables Cut; 14 Countries Lose Web -- Updated

By Kim Zetter December 19, 2008 | 2:39:13 PM

Reports from the Mediterranean indicate that two of the undersea cables severed and repaired earlier this year have been cut again, disrupting internet access and phone service between the Middle East, Europe, and parts of Asia. An additional third cable is down in the same region.

(I'm replying to Verrocchio's post mainly because it made it easy to grab the news snippet about the cables having been severed previously; my comments are directed to the general discussion.)

I have no doubt that the traffic on those cables are monitored in some way. I doubt very much that the recent breaks are directly related to that monitoring. I think C1ue is correct about the repeaters (he is certainly correct that repeaters are necessary; I think he is correct that they are the more likely point of attack for a tap). There is, however, a MAJOR PROBLEM with tapping a modern undersea fiberoptic cable, which is getting the data out. During the Cold War, we used to tap undersea cables with recording devices -- we'd drop off a recorder by submarine and pick it up later. Try doing that effectively with the data rates of a modern fiber-optic cable! You can't store it at the site of the tap and come get the recording device later, and the only way to move that much data off the seabed is to have your own high-bandwidth cable running out of the tap and direct to Fort Meade (or whereever). I think we should be looking above the surface of the waves for the point of interception, and either a big data reduction center, or high-capacity line to such a center.

Also, if breakages occur repeatedly on the same cable line, that should tell you that they're probably not the installation of taps. Measure twice; tap once.

Addendum: Since traffic is diverted through other routes when a breakage occurs, maybe there is something to the idea that those lines aren't convenient to tap, and the cables are severed for the purpose of routing high-value traffic through lines that are tapped. The news stories mentioned that some of the diverted traffic gets routed through the US. I suppose if you really want to wear a tin hat on this one, you could posit (a) that we had some way of knowing a particularly choice piece of intelligence would pass through those cables in a certain time frame, and (b) the cables were sabotaged in order to expose that intelligence by routing it through lines to which we have better access. I don't personally like this theory, but I do think it is more likely than the breakages themselves indicating the installation of taps on the seabed.

[D-Mack]

Re: Cables that were Cut and Repaired Have Now Been Cut Again!

(I'm replying to Verrocchio's post mainly because it made it easy to grab the news snippet about the cables having been severed previously; my comments are directed to the general discussion.)

I have no doubt that the traffic on those cables are monitored in some way. I doubt very much that the recent breaks are directly related to that monitoring. I think C1ue is correct about the repeaters (he is certainly correct that repeaters are necessary; I think he is correct that they are the more likely point of attack for a tap). There is, however, a MAJOR PROBLEM with tapping a modern undersea fiberoptic cable, which is getting the data out. During the Cold War, we used to tap undersea cables with recording devices -- we'd drop off a recorder by submarine and pick it up later. Try doing that effectively with the data rates of a modern fiber-optic cable! You can't store it at the site of the tap and come get the recording device later, and the only way to move that much data off the seabed is to have your own high-bandwidth cable running out of the tap and direct to Fort Meade (or whereever). I think we should be looking above the surface of the waves for the point of interception, and either a big data reduction center, or high-capacity line to such a center.

Also, if breakages occur repeatedly on the same cable line, that should tell you that they're probably not the installation of taps. Measure twice; tap once.

Addendum: Since traffic is diverted through other routes when a breakage occurs, maybe there is something to the idea that those lines aren't convenient to tap, and the cables are severed for the purpose of routing high-value traffic through lines that are tapped. The news stories mentioned that some of the diverted traffic gets routed through the US. I suppose if you really want to wear a tin hat on this one, you could posit (a) that we had some way of knowing a particularly choice piece of intelligence would pass through those cables in a certain time frame, and (b) the cables were sabotaged in order to expose that intelligence by routing it through lines to which we have better access. I don't personally like this theory, but I do think it is more likely than the breakages themselves indicating the installation of taps on the seabed.

Is there more info on the USS Jimmy Carter out there?

I have only heard little bits

Even so, the agency has been pushing ahead. At General Dynamics' Electric Boat shipyard in Groton, Conn., the Navy is deep into a five-year, $1 billion retrofit of the USS Jimmy Carter, a nuclear-powered vessel that intelligence experts say will be the premier U.S. spy sub when it hits the seas in 2004. Among its many planned features, says one former official familiar with the project: state-of-the-art technology for undersea fiber-optic taps.

The NSA's Lt. Gen. Hayden and Navy officials decline to comment on the USS Jimmy Carter's mission.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-115877.html