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

[c1ue]

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

ASH,

It is true that real time monitoring would be difficult with the mass of data involved and the remote location.

However, you don't need to necessarily record nor transmit everything.

With a sufficiently powerful computer (or more like, bank of computers), you can bring Echelon to the mountain, so to speak.

The vehicle performing the tapping thus would only have to send 'interesting' bits out - I'm sure this could cut down the necessary transmission mechanisms considerably.

And with a nuclear powered sub...electricity not a problem. Deep seawater is cold: heat venting not a problem.



For that matter, why even bother with transmitting from the tapping vehicle?

If the government has a certain amount of paid for bandwidth, you could use the fiber optic cable itself to pass on info. Just tap in, process, then forward back into the datastream the subset of data that needs to be examined further.

That's the problem I have with conspiracy theories concerning undersea cable breaks - what would be needed to execute the conspiracy theorist's posited goals is really not all that complicated.

If the government can put together a system which decrypts and automatically categorizes cell phone communications around the world (Echelon), why then should an undersea cable tapping be so much clumsier? For that matter, even outside agencies (with inside help) have been able to insert malicious functionality into national cellular systems (see Greek cell phone hack).

And then of course, there's the whole ship anchor thing. Since the cable locations aren't roped off with buoys or marked specifically on the map, all you need is some ship dragging an anchor or a trawl net in the wrong spot.

[ASH]

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

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

I have only heard little bits

With a sufficiently powerful computer (or more like, bank of computers), you can bring Echelon to the mountain, so to speak.

Ah so. Thanks, guys. I hadn't considered that they might be able to locate the data reduction gear at the site of a tap. I guess a sub would just about do it... but then wouldn't you need a fleet of such subs to cover multiple cables, and allow for rotations?

[c1ue]

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

You might not even need a sub.

After all, treasure hunters are using RPVs to dig crap out from 1000's of feet of water.

How about stringing a line from the undersea cable to a 'fishing trawler'.

Not rocket science...

[rj1]

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

[lakedaemonian]

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

I'm thinking 4 possible causes:

1.) Clear, but deniable, pressure from the US directed at a party or parties in Gulf/Europe to achieve some endstate.....what is the current status of non-US Dollar denominated commodity trading in the region?

2.) As Ash suggested, it could be a coordinated effort to flush useful intelligence data onto a better surveilled conduit either temporarily or permanently....other means such as satellite coms would be far easier to compromise, WITHOUT risk of compromising oneself, than undersea fibre.

3.) As C1ue suggested, move Echelon to the mountain.....when the USS Parche tapped Soviet lines it had to return often for data collection....would it be possible, as these lines are commercial...that if enough computing horsepower was installed in a tap on fibre that it could collect & analyze in situ.....and dump bursts of encrypted and disseminated data back into the data stream to be collected by a network user working in partnership with the "intelligent tap"to then be passed onto intelligence customers outside the network? I'm no network engineer and am only speculating.....but I also think that with all these publically disclosed interruptions it is unlikely......I also think there would be other, FAR cheaper means of collecting and analyzing those data pipes by compromising the network infrastructure manufacturer/installation contractor/operator companies themselves.

4.) ??????? Maybe the fibre-optic line manufacturer/installer stuffed up.....maybe it's a megaladon

I do strongly suspect it MIGHT be an example of 21st century network warfare, and I am NOT a conspiracy theorist.

Just my 0.02c

[rj1]

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

I do strongly suspect it MIGHT be an example of 21st century network warfare, and I am NOT a conspiracy theorist.

Well duh. Of course it is! Blockbuster is trying to shut down Netflix!

[Charpenel]

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



Google patents Water-Based Data Center

Abstract A system includes a floating platform-mounted computer data center comprising a plurality of computing units, a sea-based electrical generator in electrical connection with the plurality of computing units, and one or more sea-water cooling units for providing cooling to the plurality of computing units.



Link

[rj1]

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

Google patents Water-Based Data Center


AbstractA system includes a floating platform-mounted computer data center comprising a plurality of computing units, a sea-based electrical generator in electrical connection with the plurality of computing units, and one or more sea-water cooling units for providing cooling to the plurality of computing units.



Link

I wonder if that's a tax evasion.

[don]

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

Why would Mumbai be such a valuable listening post for the N.S.A.? To understand the answer, and indeed to follow the central argument of the book about just why and how United States government eavesdropping has become so pervasive and invasive, one has to know that a vast majority of the world’s communications are now transmitted over *fiber-optic cables. In 1988 they carried only 2 percent of international traffic, but by 2000 they carried 80 percent. When micro*wave transmissions and communications satellites were the medium, messages were relatively easy for the N.S.A. to intercept, en masse and through the open air. But to catch the ever-growing flood of digital data in the bundled strands of fiber that crisscross the planet — voice calls, e-mail, faxes, videos and so much more — you have to tap into the cables directly. Or, better still, you can set up a monitoring operation at the switch, where many different cables come together. Once you have a facility to split off the signals without interrupting them, you’re plugged in to a mother lode of megabytes — millions going by every few seconds. Mumbai, as it happens, has the central switch for much of Asia and virtually all the cables of the Middle East.

For the moment, at least, the most important switches of all are in the United States, which is still the center of the digital communications universe. Today, even phone calls between neighbors on the far side of the world are broken up into packets that may wind up crossing American territory, albeit at the speed of light, before they get down the block in, say, Baghdad. Before 9/11, the N.S.A. tried with only very limited success to tap into the United States switches. But in the weeks after the attacks on New York and Washington, Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then the head of the N.S.A., , “succeeded in gaining the cooperation of nearly all of the nation’s telecommunications giants,” according to Bamford. Could those switches and cables being tapped in the United States be called wires? Yes indeed. And was this being done without warrants? Yes, again. But “warrantless wiretapping” — that phrase connoting scandalous disrespect for American laws and freedoms — doesn’t begin to describe the staggering volume of raw information the cables put at the N.S.A.’s disposal.


The process is the opposite of what “wiretapping” used to mean in the popular imagination: alligator clips on a single wire that got you exactly the phone line you wanted to monitor. The N.S.A.’s approach in effect intercepted just about all communications, then used sophisticated computers and software to sift through the material. And, as with conventional warfare, these big-ticket spying operations were contracted to private companies that put former government employees on their payrolls — what Bamford calls “the *surveillance-industrial complex.”

Review of:
THE SHADOW FACTORY
The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America
by James Bamford

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/bo...html?ref=books

[Forrest]

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

Hmmm...never thought of the security/surveillance people as a potentially big player economically, but obviously that may be incorrect.

Consequently, how does one research and invest in what is obviously a growth industry?

Are there people out there competing to give the best black ops service available at the lowest cost?

[c1ue]

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

Forrest,

The difficulty in trying to invest in such systems as what the NSA uses is that it really isn't a huge amount of money in industry-wide terms.

Even though the US government doesn't really have its own fabrication facilities anymore, it isn't difficult to create banks of computers using commercial equipment, or to make very specialized components using such technology as FPGAs.

The biggest concern in all of this is security; since the fabrication facilities are almost all outside the US, and furthermore that the security clearance levels within the semiconductor industry is extremely low, how then can the government be certain that technology developed by the US military and intelligence services is not copied and/or corrupted in the wide loop between design and return to US shores?

There have been efforts underway for some time now to try and assess this risk. Although the scale of data is monstrous, on the other hand it only takes about 200 engineers to reverse process anything. Not a big expense from a national security standpoint.

So, if you want to try and invest, you can buy into SAIC or some such. But risk is considerable!