Third Undersea Cable Cut 655
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."
"I shall expect a chemical cure for psychopathic behavior by 10 A.M. tomorrow, or I'll have your guts for spaghetti." -- a comic panel by Cotham
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.
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Third cut? (Score:4, Funny)
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."
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.
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Insightful)
There, fixed that for ya
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.
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Third cut? (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought this was interesting:
"We had another cut today between Dubai and Muscat three hours back. The cable was about 80G capacity, it had telephone, Internet data, everything," one Flag official, who declined to be named, told Zawya Dow Jones.
The cable, known as Falcon, delivers services to countries in the Mediterranean and Gulf region, he added.
"It may take sometime to fix the cut but we are rerouting the traffic to another cable in the U.K. and U.S., the bandwidth utilization will go down," the official said.
It's probably not as fishy as it sounds. I seem to recall a major portion of all Internet traffic at least passes through the US. However, it does make you wonder.
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Of course this adds an interesting twist to the NSA wanting to access the 'tubes' that are running through the USA and the big worry that the anti-terrorism battle will be horribly lost if we
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True, but can't we wait until that actually happens before talking about how suspicious it would be? Doesn't the government actually do enough under-handed things that we can display our cynicism talking about those realities, rather than speculating about what kind of plot we'd dream up if we were the ones being under-handed?
Now, I do think s
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It's not that ship anchors have become more dangerous, it's that humans have become more careless.
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if this is followed by reports of various U.S. supplied deep penetrator bombings of Iranian uranium processing facilities by Israel in Iran which cannot be verified due to the lack of communication, then it would be even more suspicious.
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This is more likely down to one of two things, attempted money saving or pointless bureaucracy.
I say this because I have serious doubt that if the US were going to do it, they'd have done it in secret. I'd go for it being done after some threats, or as part of an actual invasion, and I don't see one anywhere, do you? It's
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.
Re:Third cut? (Score:4, Interesting)
Randomness is weird like that. You can never rule it out just on the face that something is highly, highly, improbable. After all, life is the consequence of a series of highly, highly improbable events.
I agree that it is suspicious, but I'd like to see proof before blaming a US invasion on this. Besides, what would really be the point of this? Isolate Iran? They'll be up and running in two weeks again. Threaten them? With what? Lack of porn downloads?
I fail to see how this could be used to coerce Iran. After all, it's not a threat if the other party doesn't know it is a threat.....
Re:Third cut? (Score:4, Funny)
Me? I'm betting on Godzilla. He is on his way to Syria to fight Cthulu since Israel's surprise bombing failed.
Re:Third cut? (Score:4, Interesting)
Currently the Florida router is listed at 0 as well...does this mean that the US is going to attack Iran and Florida? No, it just means "s--- happens". Not everything is the result of black helicopters...
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Re:Third cut? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because y'know, any criticism of temporary policies always indicates a vast, hidden belief structure.
Sigh - Pug
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, are you saying you know for sure they didn't?
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Interesting)
Jun 2007, Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua, broken undersea cable
Dec 2006, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Japan, earthquake damages cable
Jun 2005, Pakistan loses internet connectivity due to a broken undersea cable.
Jun 2004, Hong Kong and Vietnam see internet service disruption due to broken undersea fiber
Nov 2003, UK sees connectivity trouble due to broken transatlantic cable
Nov 2001, Singapore...same
Feb 2001, China....same
Really, the 2 of the 3 cables that were cut were only noteworth because BOTH were damaged. The FLAG and SeaWeMe-4 cable outages have forced European traffic to go WEST to get to most of Asia. Had only one been lost, it would not have been nearly as noteworthy. Cables go out all the time. The fact that two outages coincide ain't really enough to make it a conspiracy. Call me when the bombs are being dropped.
Re:Third cut? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not arguing that this particular event is coincidental, but you're being just as blind as your tone implies others are if you think events never coincide just by chance. The important thing is to have some idea of just how unlikely it is for obviously related events to coincide. (In this case, fantastically unlikely.)
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Interesting)
You can say "There are conspiracies behind this, and I'm going to figure them all out", and you never will, and if you do, no one will care. That's one approach.
You can say "There are no conspiracies, the world is simple, there are just co-incidences around, that's all", and if you do, you'll toodle through life with a sense that you know everything that can be known, and what you don't know is unknowable. That's another approach.
The hardest approach is, "There are conspiracies behind this, I can see that they exist in some nebulous form, but I will neither drive myself crazy trying to get to the bottom of it nor will I pretend that the world is the simple thing that my television tells me that it is, I will simply be content to know that these forces are moving with purpose in the world somewhere beyond my sight."
That is the approach that lets you see deeper into the nature of the world without getting obsessed with the trivialities of whose behind it all.
Get what I'm saying?
Re:How to tap the cable (Score:5, Insightful)
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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]
Re:How to tap the cable (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:How to tap the cable (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Funny)
Don't bother putting up your dukes
Subs with scissors of nations crossed
Will ensure *** CARRIER LOST ***
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The host resolved to NSA.
Wait a minute, I thought it was Network Solutions (NSI) that was picking up all the domain names.
Proposal for special +10 brilliant rating (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Funny)
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.....
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Third cut? (Score:5, Funny)
Whatever it is, it probably literally translates to "bad movie".
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.
Re:Third cut? (Score:4, Informative)
Who the hell thinks this comment is funny? "
Lighten up Francis [youtube.com]. It's a quote from Star Wars, Episode 1.
Re:Third cut? (Score:4, Interesting)
And you can call Bush a psychopath for mimicking a woman on death row begging for her life, but I remind you that Cheney shot a guy in the FACE without consequences- and got an apology from the guy, to boot.
Bush is not behind this. He's a puppet in a flightsuit. Look to Cheney for this one.
And you're absolutely right again, that a further exchange of open warfare (the way things are laid out right now) would cripple the US, just wipe us out. The pattern we're seeing isn't really a plan to win, it's all calculated to score political points at any cost, with a lot of bad assumptions about how things could go.
If this is really happening and leading to the ends I'm suggesting, it's just as well we won't be able to kick everybody around anymore, but I wonder what then will be done about radical Islam. Having the US rendered helpless but then getting thwacked with radical Islam isn't exactly a bargain for the rest of the world. We're not helping- we're making matters worse- but if we go down it'll become a feeding frenzy. Not good.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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that'll fix 'em!
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.
Re:Third cut? (Score:4, Funny)
This isn't the 1960s. The people who worked on the Apollo program are all retired. Somewhere, in a submarine, a guy just said, "LOLZ, think I cut cable!" and his commander replied, "pwned! LOLZ! I'll come take a look at it after I finish this MySpace video."
Re:Third cut? (Score:4, Interesting)
Probably BS, but it would be technically impressive if true.
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Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS? (Score:5, Funny)
Wrong on so many levels...
Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS? (Score:4, Funny)
We only wish,
To catch a fish,
So juicy sweet!
But what has it got in its packetses, GOLLUM! GOLLUM!
Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS? (Score:5, Funny)
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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.
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It is improbable for 3 cables to be cut in such a short time frame, but the manner in which they were cut is entirely plausible and expected.
More importantly, look at what did cause it. Are the lines running under high traffic waters? If so, wh
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"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."
This is getting exciting! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This is getting exciting! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is getting exciting! (Score:5, Funny)
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)
Re:Iran hasn't lost connectivity (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
What does that have to do with anything? You don't need a sophisticated submarine just to break the cables in half. All you need to do that is a ship with an anchor and an approximate idea of where the cables are located.
Tapping a cable is a subtle move, requiring a lot of technical expertise and work. Breaking one isn't.
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I'm not taking or stating my views on any of the conspiracies you mention, just pointing out a flaw in the argument. Which I suppose makes me assume you're a conspirator for looking for a loophole, dunnit?
Of course, what would go into faking a moon landing or
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)
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
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According to a reliable source, it is plausable to hold a section of cable at a certain arc, shave the top layers of the cable off, and then apply the tap. It is also plausable for it to be done without any significant signal loss.
Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into (Score:5, Funny)
Well, it *is* the bottom of the ocean.
Shallow seas (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Shallow seas (Score:5, Informative)
Silence at last! (Score:4, Informative)
All my co-workers phones aren't ringing off the hook with callers trying to subscribe them to worthless trade publications today (very likely a coincidence, but it sounds good anyway). So, now we know how to really stop all those nagging calls from people with really poor english on a noisy connection. Then again, so goes many of the tech support and customer service lines, too.
cut for a purpose (Score:3, Funny)
And all of Iran's computers will overflow.
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!"
Has anyone considered? (Score:4, Interesting)
-CR
While we're at it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, that sounds every bit as ridiculous AT THIS POINT.
Let's wait for a little more information, I'm sure by Monday international news outlets will be giving a more thorough report on what is occurring, though I doubt Fox News ever will...
chances? (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, what are the chances of this?
paranoia (Score:4, Informative)
There's one other possibility: the companies who own the networks are leasing glass from each other and there's really only one cable. For example, Level3 (lvlt) builds a network. Since it expensive to build out, they trade glass with whoever may have dark fiber available (often times telcos). It shows up on the books as theirs, but really it maintained by a telco. Happens all the time in the US.
Just thought of a THIRD reason to do this (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not that hard to arrange, and it would cut them off from any media coverage while nobody could communicate to the media without becoming very visible and easy to arrest
Remember what happened in Bhurma when the monks revolted - they cut the Tubes to the Internets.
Bing - no pics of people revolting - and they could quell it successfully by killing a few people and beating or imprisoning the rest.
It's not always what you think. Sometimes it's different
related to opening of Iranian Oil Bourse? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.energybulletin.net/12125.html [energybulletin.net]
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id...onid=351020103 [presstv.ir]
The US can't let it open, due to the damage it would do to the dollar. If it relies heavily on the Internet, then cutting the cables seems like it would be an effective, covert, non-violent way to go. And a totally disgusting manipulation of the free market, of course...
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]
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.
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.
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Yeah I know you're a troll but I don't care.