Many readers are reporting that another undersea fiber optic cable has been cut, apparently caused by another wayward anchor. It looks like Iran has completely lost Internet connectivity."
Yes, it does seem suspicious, especially since it's Iran--a country that's in the news a lot lately, and with whom communication may be rather important.
If this is followed by reports of various despicable actions in Iran which cannot be verified due to the lack of communication, then it would be even more suspicious.
If this is followed by reports of various despicable actions in Iran which cannot be verified due to the lack of communication, then it would be even more suspicious.
Meanwhile a U.S. effort to bring aid to the Kurds has been proven successful. "Operation Dredge Massive Underwater Machete" has stated that its peaceful goals have been accomplished and will slowly pass the rest of Iran's coast in a return to its base in India.
We all know that colorblind people can see colors correctly underwater while those who have correct vision cannot.
First scuba: "Hey dude! I found the cables!"
Second scuba: "Cool. Now cut the red one. No, not that one, the other one. No not this one!"
First scuba: "Hey man! Sorry, I'm colorblind.."
Second scuba: "Sh.t! That's 2 dude. We were simply supposed to cut the good one... Now gimme those scissors. There you go."
We all know that ironyblind people can see irony correctly underwater while those who have correct perception cannot.
I've never heard that before. My understanding is that ironyblindness is due to an absence or shortage of irony receptor cells in the brain. I don't see how that could give someone better comprehension underwater.
OTOH, I have heard that irony blind people are worse at spotting camouflaged humor. I presume that's because they percieve things DIFFERENTLY than the non-ironyblind person who created the camouflage.
Color Blind... you don't want it, nor the benefits of it.
My dad has it, and he See's everything in grays ( well that's the color he calls it ), he can spot the difference in the color black from 4 different producers. my dad work for the government back in the 60's and 70's and he was consistently seeing things. his job was to point out "problems in photographs" so if an image was out of balance, he would just circle it and hand it up the chain of command.
Some of the more interesting assignments my dad disclosed to me. 1) military cloth review and rejection for top brass ( 3 and 4 star level ) 2) Paint color review ( hundred of gallons at time ) 3) standardise the color of military traffic lights on domestic bases, so many colors of red variations and green, he got it down to 2 of each and let someone else pick it out. 4) camo netting review at heights exceeding 10,000 feet plus a lot of stuff that I'm not sure about but I saw on the table as a kid
on of my fathers biggest problems were carpet's, your regular gray carpet might have 800+ threads that were woven to make it, just imagine walking along a carpet, having something that looked like a slice in the carpet ( or a bug ), only to realise that it's just a bad color thread. another problem were berger kings and McDonald's. until the late 80's there were certain ones my dad would eat at, since to him all the plastic chairs and tables ( at the respective franchise ) coloring was similar and color association was rather strong with him, so bad experiences with certain colors would extend into his personal life.
he never had a chance to become a pilot, but when he worked for the military he always (come hell or high water) from take-off to landing was in the co-pilot chair. how he pulled that stunt was a secret that I have never asked, but he got away with it.
the color of scotch always made him ill until i found out about the first time he got drunk ( color association ).
my dad had amazing wood skills when it came to selecting wood for his carvings, wood would just be right and the grain would always just be perfect for what he wanted to do.
Concrete ageing, that's something my father was a perfectionist at, he could look at a concrete job that was recently poured, tell it's age and by shit luck ( or some magic ) tell if it was cured correctly.
people with this disorder are different, but none the less, thier skills at other things are sometimes exceeding.
One in Marseilles, one in Suez. Not the same ruddy deal. The new break is on the FLAG cable - in yest another place: 56 kms from Dubai on a segment between the UAE and Oman.
You seem to be a knee-jerk skeptic, who's "Nothing to see here, move along" displays not - as you presume - intelligence, but rather a susceptibility to Jedi mind-tricks.
If the US wanted to tap the cable, they'd just use the submarine USS Jimmy Carter, which was retrofitted a few years back to perform exactly these sort of operations. They'd do it without any detected loss of connectivity.
Yes and No. Its original class design was modified and lengthened by 100 feet to accommodate the "Multi-Mission Platform (MMP), which allows launch and recovery of ROVs and Navy SEAL forces. The MMP may also be used as an underwater splicing chamber for tapping of undersea fiber optic cables." (Wiki)
OTOH, If the US Navy were doing 'tapping' with the Seawolf-Class SSN, no one would ever know about it. US Navy Submarine crews are the best there are and in this string of events, and the US Navy is not having "accidents" while tapping cables. *If* the US Navy is involved with these fiber cable cuts, they are on purpose and not due to errors. Those men truly know what they are doing and are very well trained.
Some people think America is always evil. Others think America can do no evil. A few of us believe that we should take it on a case by case basis. There's no proof here that America did anything. But this is likely more than a coincidence. When was the last time you heard of an underwater cable being cut? Never? Yeah, me neither. Then, boom! 3 or 4 in a few weeks. Not very likely. Now, I haven't ruled out coincidence, but I have shown probable cause to search for another explanation. So, who has the means, the opportunity, and the motivation? The Bush administration. Am I saying I know for sure they did it? Of course not.
Now, are you saying you know for sure they didn't?
In completely unrelated news, a couple of weeks later large portions of mideast anti-western terrorist sponsoring areas had internet access disrupted or cut off in a series of coincidental unobserved "accidents".
If this is the work of our spies, they aren't earning their salary. They're incompetent bastards who should be fired for lacking any type of stealth or subtlety.
How much tech do you really need to cut a cable? It doesn't seem like it would require much in the way of high tech capability. Given that these cables are communication lines carrying western influences into muslim countries, I would say that at this point, we should not rule out militant acts to make a statement about wanting a reduction of western influence.
If this is our spies, this would seem to be a pretty boneheaded execution of tapping lines. But, since they work for the government, we can't rule out boneheadedness. Or just really bizzarre random chance, though that's kind of hard for me personally to swallow at this point.
Actually, if you want to test your surveillance of an enemy's communications networks, deliberately disrupting their communications can be a very worthwhile experiment.
It's notable that Iran is now supposedly cut off entirely. If the Iranian government has any secret communications links, it'll be much easier to tell when they're using them.
This is something that the damned Yankees would do as prelude to invading Iran -- to stop all the bloggers from documenting the invasion and getting the rest of the Arab and Muslim worlds up in arms.
Hey, you wanted a "Conspiracy".
PS. Osama is hanging out on GWB's ranch in Texas - that's why they can't find him.
"Understand the procedure now? Just stop a few of their machines, their telephones, their lawnmowers, throw them into darkness for a few hours, and then sit back and watch the pattern."
"This pattern is always the same?"
"With few variations. They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find.... and it's themselves. All we need do is sit back and watch."
"I take it that this place...this Maple Street...is not unique."
"By no means. Their world is full of Maple Streets, and we'll go from one to the other and let them destroy themselves."
Iran is still on the grid, as is all of the ME. I am still in Dubai (where the 3rd cable has been cut). I received a communication from our ISP (DU/ aka DIC Telecom) telling us about this new cut and that they had to reroute us again. I couldn't notice more slow down in web browsing but bittorrent traffic seems to have been blocked. Could it be a preemptive measure? We live behind a big firewall similar to the one in china here. I would be surprised if they decided not to plead like the Egyptians and just block some of the crap we download to save the bandwidth.
It was widely reported from a variety of whistleblowers at the turn of the millennium that the U.S. was preparing the U.S.S. Jimmy Carter to be able to tap underwater fibre-optic cables. See Bamford's Body of Secrets [amazon.com] for exmaple.
That this operation was carried out on the submarine named after the president who did the most to reduce spying on civilian targets shows just how petty and spiteful the professional privacy violators in the NSA are.
So let's see, three cables in three days...that puts the monster in Manhattan by what, next Thursday, give or take a few isolated fishing vessels between here and there? Better charge up those handicams, kids!
If it is the Cloverfield monster, here's the moral imperative of anyone caught in its landfall zone: SHOOT TO KILL any and all person(s) caught in public with a camcorder but without a steadicam rig...!;-)
<french-accent>
This reclusive giant of the deep, the Great White Backhoe, spends most
of its life in quiet solitude. But, once every seven years, as if called by some
unknown force, these gentle beasts gather in great numbers to feast upon the
cables of the ocean floor.
</french-accent>
The locations where many of the recent cable cuts have occurred (China, Pakistan, Palestine/Egypt, and now Iran) is highly suspicious. I suspect that the U.S. intelligence community is using a sub to tap into the fiberoptic line to capture all of the data. Unlike copper lines, they probably can't splice into glass fiberoptic lines without breaking the circuit for a while.
1) Cut the line somewhere roughly, so it clearly looks like an accident
2) Somewhere else far away, splice into the line using a sub, so the NSA can capture all the data (or even potentially alter it in transit)
3) Let the commercial communication providers fix the obvious break
4) Profit! (at least in terms of intelligence gathering and cyber-war capability
"Hey, Quinn! Check out my new raver's wig!" [He flips a switch and fiber optic cables coming out of his hair start glowing and flowing in multiple colors)
"Stormy, where'd you find the cables for that wig? Tell me you didn't pull them out of the control panels."
"Control panels? Hell no, I'm not stupid! No, I got them outside. There's a whole lot of them out there on the sea floor."
"Outsi-- you idiot! Those are Internet cables! You can't just steal them!"
"But everyone's else is doing it!"
[Hetch appears on the monitor, but the camera reads him as a multi-colored blob.] "Hetch sewed himself a fiber-optic suit!"
A second cable thought to lie alongside it - SEA-ME-WE 4, or the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 cable - was also split.
FLAG is a 28,000km (17,400 mile) long submarine communications cable that links Australia and Japan with Europe via India and the Middle East.
SEA-ME-WE 4 is a submarine cable linking South East Asia to Europe via the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.
The two cable cuts meant that the only cable in service connecting Europe to the Middle East via Egypt was the older Sea-M-We 3 system, according to research firm TeleGeography.
It's amazing that a ship's anchor could have the strength to pull apart two layers of stranded steel armour wires, a layer of copper, kevlar layers, and three polyethylene layers.
It's amazing that a ship's anchor could have the strength to pull apart two layers of stranded steel armour wires, a layer of copper, kevlar layers, and three polyethylene layers.
Have you ever seen an anchor? Sure, it's just a hunk of low-tech metal. But it's a very LARGE hunk of low-tech metal. Connected by a very heavy cable or chain to a ship which weighs many, many tons. Ripping apart a communications cable = not a problem.
please quit pulling numbers out of your ass..
The waters are overall very shallow and have a maximum depth of 90 metres and an average depth of 50 metres.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persian_Gulf#Geography [wikipedia.org]
Third cut? (Score:5, Insightful)
Once is accident.
Twice is coincidence.
Thrice is enemy action.
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Interesting)
If this is followed by reports of various despicable actions in Iran which cannot be verified due to the lack of communication, then it would be even more suspicious.
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Funny)
Sigh...more fairy tales from teh Intarweb...
We all know that colorblind people can see colors correctly underwater while those who have correct vision cannot.
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Insightful)
There, fixed that for ya
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Interesting)
My dad has it, and he See's everything in grays ( well that's the color he calls it ), he can spot the difference in the color black from 4 different producers. my dad work for the government back in the 60's and 70's and he was consistently seeing things. his job was to point out "problems in photographs" so if an image was out of balance, he would just circle it and hand it up the chain of command.
Some of the more interesting assignments my dad disclosed to me.
1) military cloth review and rejection for top brass ( 3 and 4 star level )
2) Paint color review ( hundred of gallons at time )
3) standardise the color of military traffic lights on domestic bases, so many colors of red variations and green, he got it down to 2 of each and let someone else pick it out.
4) camo netting review at heights exceeding 10,000 feet
plus a lot of stuff that I'm not sure about but I saw on the table as a kid
on of my fathers biggest problems were carpet's, your regular gray carpet might have 800+ threads that were woven to make it, just imagine walking along a carpet, having something that looked like a slice in the carpet ( or a bug ), only to realise that it's just a bad color thread. another problem were berger kings and McDonald's. until the late 80's there were certain ones my dad would eat at, since to him all the plastic chairs and tables ( at the respective franchise ) coloring was similar and color association was rather strong with him, so bad experiences with certain colors would extend into his personal life.
he never had a chance to become a pilot, but when he worked for the military he always (come hell or high water) from take-off to landing was in the co-pilot chair. how he pulled that stunt was a secret that I have never asked, but he got away with it.
the color of scotch always made him ill until i found out about the first time he got drunk ( color association ).
my dad had amazing wood skills when it came to selecting wood for his carvings, wood would just be right and the grain would always just be perfect for what he wanted to do.
Concrete ageing, that's something my father was a perfectionist at, he could look at a concrete job that was recently poured, tell it's age and by shit luck ( or some magic ) tell if it was cured correctly.
people with this disorder are different, but none the less, thier skills at other things are sometimes exceeding.
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Interesting)
You seem to be a knee-jerk skeptic, who's "Nothing to see here, move along" displays not - as you presume - intelligence, but rather a susceptibility to Jedi mind-tricks.
Parent
Re:How to tap the cable (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:How to tap the cable (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:How to tap the cable (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:How to tap the cable (Score:5, Interesting)
OTOH, If the US Navy were doing 'tapping' with the Seawolf-Class SSN, no one would ever know about it. US Navy Submarine crews are the best there are and in this string of events, and the US Navy is not having "accidents" while tapping cables. *If* the US Navy is involved with these fiber cable cuts, they are on purpose and not due to errors. Those men truly know what they are doing and are very well trained.
I wrote on this same topic (with links) this morning in an different story's thread: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=438002&cid=22263288 [slashdot.org]
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, are you saying you know for sure they didn't?
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Funny)
I pinged a host that wasn't there
It wasn't there again today
The host resolved to NSA.
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Funny)
Don't bother putting up your dukes
Subs with scissors of nations crossed
Will ensure *** CARRIER LOST ***
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Informative)
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today
I wish that man would go away.
Hugh Means (1875 - 1965)
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Interesting)
In completely unrelated news, a couple of weeks later large portions of mideast anti-western terrorist sponsoring areas had internet access disrupted or cut off in a series of coincidental unobserved "accidents".
Hmm.....
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Funny)
Whatever it is, it probably literally translates to "bad movie".
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Informative)
I hope that people who have seen Star Wars think it's funny. I'm sorry if I offended you.
I don't support my country's Middle East policy, for the record.
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:3fK6ZB19WjIJ:msl1.mit.edu/furdlog/docs/cnn/2005-02-18_cnn_optical_taps.pdf+fiber+submarine+cia&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us&client=opera [72.14.205.104]
keep laughing guys and gals why the spies among us earn their salary.
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Insightful)
How much tech do you really need to cut a cable? It doesn't seem like it would require much in the way of high tech capability. Given that these cables are communication lines carrying western influences into muslim countries, I would say that at this point, we should not rule out militant acts to make a statement about wanting a reduction of western influence.
If this is our spies, this would seem to be a pretty boneheaded execution of tapping lines. But, since they work for the government, we can't rule out boneheadedness. Or just really bizzarre random chance, though that's kind of hard for me personally to swallow at this point.
Parent
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's notable that Iran is now supposedly cut off entirely. If the Iranian government has any secret communications links, it'll be much easier to tell when they're using them.
Parent
Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS? (Score:5, Funny)
Wrong on so many levels...
Parent
Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS? (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, you wanted a "Conspiracy".
PS. Osama is hanging out on GWB's ranch in Texas - that's why they can't find him.
Parent
"The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" (Score:5, Insightful)
"This pattern is always the same?"
"With few variations. They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find.... and it's themselves. All we need do is sit back and watch."
"I take it that this place...this Maple Street...is not unique."
"By no means. Their world is full of Maple Streets, and we'll go from one to the other and let them destroy themselves."
Parent
Iran hasn't lost connectivity (Score:5, Informative)
Iran hasn't lost connectivity, the specific router that Internet Traffic Report is checking has lost connectivity.
Even the University that hosts the router that ITR is checking is still up: http://www.iust.ac.ir/ [iust.ac.ir]
Re:Iran hasn't lost connectivity (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Iran hasn't lost connectivity (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Putting the puzzle pieces together (Score:5, Insightful)
It was widely reported from a variety of whistleblowers at the turn of the millennium that the U.S. was preparing the U.S.S. Jimmy Carter to be able to tap underwater fibre-optic cables. See Bamford's Body of Secrets [amazon.com] for exmaple.
That this operation was carried out on the submarine named after the president who did the most to reduce spying on civilian targets shows just how petty and spiteful the professional privacy violators in the NSA are.
When will they learn.... Oblig quote (Score:5, Funny)
Fry: What's happening?
Dr. Zoidberg: All 6,000 hulls have been breached!
Fry: Oh, the fools! If only they'd built it with 6,001 hulls! When will they learn?
Cloverfield 2 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cloverfield 2 (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
In related news (Score:5, Funny)
Office productivity throughout the Middle East has risen sharply.
The Great White Backhoe (Score:5, Funny)
This reclusive giant of the deep, the Great White Backhoe, spends most of its life in quiet solitude. But, once every seven years, as if called by some unknown force, these gentle beasts gather in great numbers to feast upon the cables of the ocean floor.
</french-accent>
Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into it (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Cut the line somewhere roughly, so it clearly looks like an accident
2) Somewhere else far away, splice into the line using a sub, so the NSA can capture all the data (or even potentially alter it in transit)
3) Let the commercial communication providers fix the obvious break
4) Profit! (at least in terms of intelligence gathering and cyber-war capability
Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into (Score:5, Funny)
Well, it *is* the bottom of the ocean.
Parent
Sealab (Score:5, Funny)
[He flips a switch and fiber optic cables coming out of his hair start glowing and flowing in multiple colors)
"Stormy, where'd you find the cables for that wig? Tell me you didn't pull them out of the control panels."
"Control panels? Hell no, I'm not stupid! No, I got them outside. There's a whole lot of them out there on the sea floor."
"Outsi-- you idiot! Those are Internet cables! You can't just steal them!"
"But everyone's else is doing it!"
[Hetch appears on the monitor, but the camera reads him as a multi-colored blob.]
"Hetch sewed himself a fiber-optic suit!"
Re:This is getting exciting! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:This is getting exciting! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Can anyone enlighten me? (Score:5, Informative)
Includes a nice picture, and description of each layer.
Here's the picture link directly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Submarine_cable_cross-section_3D_plain.svg [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Re:Can anyone enlighten me? (Score:5, Informative)
The first cable - the Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG) - was cut at 0800 on 30 January, the firm said.
INSIDE A SUBMARINE CABLE
cable infographic
1 Polyethylene cover
2,4 Stranded steel armour wires
3,5 Tar-soaked nylon yarn
6 Polycarbonate insulator
7 Copper sheath
8 Protective core
9 Optical fibres
Not to scale
A second cable thought to lie alongside it - SEA-ME-WE 4, or the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 cable - was also split.
FLAG is a 28,000km (17,400 mile) long submarine communications cable that links Australia and Japan with Europe via India and the Middle East.
SEA-ME-WE 4 is a submarine cable linking South East Asia to Europe via the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.
The two cable cuts meant that the only cable in service connecting Europe to the Middle East via Egypt was the older Sea-M-We 3 system, according to research firm TeleGeography.
It's amazing that a ship's anchor could have the strength to pull apart two layers of stranded steel armour wires, a layer of copper, kevlar layers, and three polyethylene layers.
Parent
Re:Can anyone enlighten me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you ever seen an anchor? Sure, it's just a hunk of low-tech metal. But it's a very LARGE hunk of low-tech metal. Connected by a very heavy cable or chain to a ship which weighs many, many tons. Ripping apart a communications cable = not a problem.
Parent
Re:Shallow seas (Score:5, Informative)
Parent