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NSA/U.S. Navy Working to Intercept Fiber Optic Cables
Jeff Robertson writes: "Fiber optic cables have advantage of being difficult to wiretap. As optical amplifiers replace electro-optical regenerators in undersea routes, it gets even harder. Lightwave Magazine has an article
quoting the Washington Post as claiming the
National Security Agency 'is known to be hard at work trying to gain access to fiber optic cables' and the U.S. Navy will spend '$1 billion to retrofit its premier spy submarine, the USS Jimmy Carter' to get access to deep-sea fiber routes.
They also assert that the U.S. government is bailing out Global Crossing to prevent its undersea routes falling into foreign hands."
Does anyone else find it hilarious that the top of the line super advanced submarine is named for Jimmy Carter?
Despite the prevalent opinion on Slashdot (and my own) the government does need the ability to monitor telecommunications. Given proper authority by warrants and what-not, the government should be given every possible tool and ability to protect the nation, within sensible limits, always.
--Kevin
...are belong to us now!
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
after scratching thier heads for a long time and saying "The files are in the cable?"
I can see why we'd spend money making sure we control strategic communications channels. Remember that that cable, like the US interstate system and the Internet's predecessor (ARPAnet), were designed at least partially for military applications in the even of thermonucular warfare. Granted, today it's all just part of the international pr0n industry, but you have to remember that there was a reason the military dished out all that money in the first place.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Why can we bail out dishonest companies like Global Crossing but we can't bail out a respectable and honest firm such as Enron?
Anyone afraid of major backbone outages when some big honking spy sub hovers a little too close to the cable?
... they tap all those ocean-floor fiber optic cables. How do they find the useful information within that gigantic stream of data? And what about steganography? Besides, real terrorists seem to prefer hand-written notes. OTOH, maybe they're not interested in the terrorists ...
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
U.S. Navy will spend '$1 billion to retrofit its premier spy submarine, the USS Jimmy Carter' to get access to deep-sea fiber routes.
Every time the trans-Atlantic connections are down they give us this same line about the "sharks who like to chew on cables", and all the while it has been a bunch of Navy SEALs trying to patch an optical wiretap, equipped with a combat knife and a legth of wire?
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
Life imitating fiction, particularly that particular piece of fiction, is becoming passe.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
Oh jeez, I had to read the article to make sure this wasn't some sort of Simpsons joke. I know, I know, Jimmy was a Nuke Engineer on a Sub before he drove the country into double digit inflation and created the misery index while wearing a sweater. But I was shocked that he already had a military ship named after him. Anyone know what the rules are for that? Is it a military thing or a Congressional?
I thought this was interesting:
They also assert that the U.S. government is bailing out Global Crossing to prevent its undersea routes falling into foreign hands.
The Global Crossing bankruptcy is as large as Enron but the Press hasn't hyped it as much. There have been many conspiracy theories as to why. This might be the real reason and not because the DNC Nation Chairman turned $100,000 into $18 million. The press might be protecting National Security because the Government has told them to shut up over the bankruptcy. Rumor was that the communist Chinese were itching to get their hands on it just like the Panama Canal. Anyone remember how communist Chinese got that? (Well at least both entry points).
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
"The NSA is spying, and trying to get better at it."
Well, duh. That's what the NSA does. Good article on a GREAT book about the NSA. Heard the author speaking on NPR a while ago, which drove me to pick up the book. Excellent, excellent book.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
But I don't think it's new news. Those agencies have been actively (and presumably successfully) tapping fiber optic cables since the late eighties or so. Blind Man's Bluff details the difficulties in running the taps and the techniques used to overcome them. Interesting read, whether you're for or against.
No relation to Happy Monkey
the House Subcommittee on International Economic Policy heard testimony from the Director of the Center for Security Policy, Frank J. Gaffney, who complained about the Clinton administration's trade policy: "The People's Republic of China received sophisticated micro-bathymetry equipment, 6,000-meter-capable video, and side-scan sonar systems from the United States.
That there were no criminal charges for the way the DNC sold this country down the river for campaign contributions is amazing. We do not take China seriously and that is an error.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
It's ironic that the article talks about terrorists using these things, so they need to tap fiber. Hasn't it become clear from the news of the last week or so that the FBI, CIA, etc. have plenty of information, they just don't know how to use it?
Why not just intercept the cable before it goes under water? Seems a lot easier... or teach a dolphin to intercept the communications...
bling bling
-- OMFG = Oh My Floatse Goatse
I saw at a local junk shop around 10 years ago a fiber tap. It is a clamp the holds the fiber and bends the fiber at the same time with a pickup. The pickup just looks at the leaked light at the bend.
Tapping fiber is easy, if you can get to it.
--Blair
WTF! why did they name the US uber sub after Jimmy Carter?????????????? goddamn thats wierd..
and the new steath bomer is gonna be called the Ronald Regan.. its so steath.. _IT_ even forgets where it is!!!!!
.cig
Interesting that it's now being reported as something that's going to happen in the future. A little revisionist history may be at work, or maybe a reporter who hasn't really done his homework.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush
This man's life is dedicated to peace, so they name a war machine after him. I know he was a nuke engineer and that is the reason for the dubbing.
Now that we are in a constant state of war, the USS Jimmy Carter will allow all messages of the enemy du jour to be intercepted [and modified] by the military industrial complex. Great
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Protect the BGP peering relationships! By god, man that Exchange point sailor! Don't drop any packets until you see the whites of their eyes!
Global Crossing's global route table is only the first step, next thing you know the Chinese will be invading PAIX and coked-up narco-columbians will be running rampant at the MAEs!
It's a real drag that the US Government needs to monitor global telecommunications, but there are good reasons behind it. At least what many citizens of the US and myself consider good reasons...
Sure, keeping terrorism, global crime, and child porn under control are part of it, but where does the line get drawn? If the US can tap these lines, what's to say that other countries aren't entitled to do the same? What's to say they aren't already?
I can understand the need for cyberintelligence and early warning, but I feel the need to bring up the issue of privacy in general. There's so little privacy on the 'net already, do we really need big brother watching what we do in even more depth?
Uncle Sam doesn't have the right to read my mail, but if the government is tapped into the global trunk, sniffing every packet, what's to say they won't read my e-mail, catalouge my credit cards, and track my information habits?
There is a line that must be drawn, and it should be drawn before it's too late.
Linux is dead.
LU
The US said they'd pay for the network given that it wasn't in foreign hands. Sounds like a damn good idea if they're talking about transmitting scientific data for the DoD like the article says, doesn't it?
I believe I have seen the light.
In a business climate such as this, where the US will bail out Global Crossing just to ensure that the business won't "fall into foreign hands", I think we, the slashdotters who are out to make a buck or two, should sit up and take attention !
1. Go set up your own underwater fibre cable laying / operating company.
2. Go to the banks and take BILLIONS and BILLIONS of loans.
3. Either by some existing money loosing underwater fiber cable operation, or lay some more cable on the already saturated routes.
4. If your business loose one USD on the operation, cook the book so that it looks like it's making one USD, and so on.
5. In the meantime, make yourself rich by pocketing a portion of the "difference", between the actual accounting, and the one the "cooked book" is showing. The rest of the difference, you can always invite Dick Cheney or whoever is from the Bush adminstration, to join your "Board of Directors", and let them pocket the rest of the loot.
6. Sooner or later, the "cookery" will be exposed. By that time, you would have BILLIONS in reserve, and you will have Dick Cheney and/or others from the Bush adminstration working FOR you, and covering up all your criminal act.
7. Under the guise of "national security", with the reason that your company is "too important to fall into foreign hands", the Bush adminstration will BUY UP YOUR CRUMBLED COMPANY, and they will PAY YOU A HANDSOME PROFIT too !
8. When you done all that, please don't forget www.slashdot.org. Donate some of your loot here, so all of us can continue to enjoy
Thank you very much for your attention.
PS: The above is for educational purpose only. Neither Slashdot nor I will assume any liability on anything, if you are stupid enough to do what I've just written above.
PPS: But of course, if you become richer than God, then, please, share your loot with all of us, thank you!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
All right, let's suppose that the US is tapping these undersea cables. This story is appearing in a publically available source, and, given the feasability of the task, I have no reason to disbelieve it.
Now, what terrorist would possibly use these undersea cables for communications? You can be certain that the bad guys know about the US's capabilities. If I were organizing a multinational terror organization, I'd make sure that my communications didn't get routed via tappable cables. Or use some sort of code, encryption or steganography to hide the message. Easy enough.
So what's the point of monitoring these communications?
Your design to a real part online: Big Blue Saw
in between the cable splice they attach a signal amplifier and a long wave antenna. the long wave antenna broadcasts on a certain long wave frequency so it can be monitored.
I am picturing the submarine at the earths deepest points, sailors at their control consoles: reading their Hotmail.
"Failure of Windows operating systems is extremely rare. If it happens, it is usually due to operating system file c
A while back the Wall Street Journal had an article that supposedly in the mid 1990's the NSA figured out how to tap undersea fiber cables without tipping off the engineers monitoring them. Supposedly they had a submarine that could pluck the cable from the ocean floor. Then somehow they cut it with special mirrors that would retransmit the signal and not alert the engineers that the cable had been cut.
The article was in the paper around a year ago and if you want to look it up you have to shell out $$$ for the online WSJ subscription that may have it archived.
I'm glad to hear that the government is doing something right. I have nothing to hide.
The intelligence gathered will save some innocent lives. Thank you, Uncle Sam.
Just in time, quantum cryptography for the masses.
A swiss company has recently announced a commercial product allowing a fiber optic channel to be secured with quantum cryptography; this would make tapping (without detection) impossible.
Of course, they could get meaner and ban anyone's right to secure outgoing fiber, which I suppose they would.
Despite the prevalent opinion on Slashdot (and my own) the government does need the ability to monitor telecommunications. Given proper authority by warrants and what-not, the government should be given every possible tool and ability to protect the nation, within sensible limits, always.
How about setting those sensible limits at your borders? Respect other country's privacy for once.
Stop being a bunch of international bullies/control freaks. The cold war is over.
It's not so much the problem of intercepting the data, it's doing it so that the sender *and* the receiver have no idea that it's happening...
I don't think this story is a surprise to anyone, though, the surprise for me is that the Navy told everyone they were going to do it. The whole thing would be more effective if no one even knew that they had the capability to do it!
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
Depends on how you look at it.
7 of the last 10 carriers are named after presidents.
Submarines are named after states or cities.
It sounds to me like the original point stands, and your pathetic political statement is discarded.
not too many people listen to longwave between 10KHz & 500KHz, thats WAY down in the basement... i have listened some down there on my R.L. Drake and longwire antenna all i could hear was navigation beacons slowly doing their CW (boring)...
This could be the start of a trend in sub naming. If the NSA named their sub the Jimmy Carter because of carter's service on a sub, maybe they could continue this practice of naming ships after presidential habits. Think of the possibilities?
USS Bill Clinton : The boat never seems to work quite the way everyone wants it too, and its outer hull is exceptionally slick. Easy to Catch, but tough to prove it really did something wrong.
USS Willaim Howard Taft : Big, unwieldy, Just kind of sits there and looks odd.
USS George Bush : Another spy ship along the lines of the Bill Clinton. A mistake in the shipyard causes the orders to say one thing and do another. Open switches close valves, and vice versa. Expected service life is only half that of a normal ship. Recently underwent minor modifications and re-entered service under the Name USS George W. Bush
USS Ronald Regan : Essentially useless as a spy ship as it sufffers continual memory errors. Those who served on the Regan however continue to tout the ship as the greatest ship in the inventory, asking monuments to it be built, and crediting the ship with single handedly winning every war since korea. the rest of the navy just rolls their eyes while waiting for it to be mothballed
USS Gerald Ford : Pressed into service after the scrapping of the USS Richard Nixon (removed from service after being too effective), The Ford has suffered from no less than 18 dry dock accidents, mostly relating to the ship rolling off the pillars used to support it.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
The U.S. Navy has been using submarines for these operations for about 30 years. First it weas the U.S.S. Halibut (SSN-587) to tap the copper wires in the Sea of Okhotsk (Russian waters). Then a wire in the Barent's Sea (another Russian wire). The U.S.S. Parche (SSN-683) eventually took over. The Parche was replaced by the Richard B. Russell (Senator who got the Navy a lot of money). Then the Carter sub, if I'm not mistaken.
Go read "Blind Man's Bluff" by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew. It's about Submarine espionage since World War II.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
This seems a bit much, if I'm reading it correctly...
First off, it's not very hard to encrypt the data, so wholesale monitoring probably wouldn't have helped anyway. But I don't get why his pre-9/11 motivation would look different in light of 9/11. It's one thing to say that you might change your perspective on such matters, but it seems odd to assume a different motivation retroactively. :-P Like I said, maybe I'm just reading it wrong...
Anyway, it's a safe bet that they will figure out some way to access the flow of data (assuming it hasn't happened already). It's their job, after all.
Seams NSA is putting taxpayers money at work.
Jimmy Carter was a wonderful President if your only criterion was to have ethical perfection to balance everyone's disappointment in Richard Nixon.
Unfortunately, despite all of that, his biggest fault was micromanaging. Tales were told of the 16 hour days Jimmy would put in, but spent his time resolving staff disputes by scheduling use of the White House tennis courts himself.
Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan just delegated everything out and worked many less hours and, by those measures was a much more effective manager. [For the record, I didn't think much of Ronald's appointees. And, GHB was right, it was voodoo economics.]
But the quote I remember, that Slashdot should remember, is that:
"Provided by the management for your protection."
The US govt is gonna bail out global crossing (that i think is based in burmuda so it pays no taxes) as a matter of national security?!? Well with that strategy MS will never get punished.
Third Reich: "For freedom for Europe"
USSR: "For freedom of the workers"
USA: "For freedom"
UK: "For freedom"
A "friend" of mine got out of the Marines in 97 and told me that they were able to tap fiber on land. Is it that hard to transfer this to an underwater environment?
The SSN Parche the boat that the carter is replacing did the exact same thing with copper lines. They would land on the phone line, attatch a recording box, and leave it there, then return after it was full. There is even one of the boxes in the cold war museum in germany (because the USSR finnaly figured out it's line was comprimised and sent divers down the length). Only the US would plant a covert listening device and have in big white stenciled letters "PROPERTY OF THE US GOVENMENT". But back to my point, the fact that the navy is investing into taping phone lines and the carter is designed to do it shouldn't be a shock, new technology same old tricks.
I like replies better than Karma, even if they are flames, because that tells me I got someone thinking.
Attempting to monitor the world's communications is bound to fail at this scale. It is probably already extremely costly from a capture-process-filter-store perspective. The fact is that the world is not just becoming more connected, it is also producing and processing a lot more information/data. As the data production increases and the network effect makes the transfers exponentially larger/faster/denser there is no way that any government can keep up. Every attempt at collecting information and correlating it would necessarily involve some level of centralization. Information centralization will fail as surely as economic centralization (communism) did. Throw in a healthy dose of encryption, obfuscation, peer-to-peer, wireless and spread spectrum and the guys at the NSA are already playing a losing hand.
I don't care what their budget is to capture information; the rest of the world's budget to produce information is larger. This kind of rational is inefficient and obsolete.
Anyway, if you really believe that the NSA and the FBI are going to use all their new powers and increased public tolerance for abuse to catch "terrorists" (I challenge you to define that word without making ideological choices), perhaps you should look up "COINTELPRO" on google. History has a lot to say about what happens when you use fear to make a society give up its rights in order to gain security.
Lest we forget that China built a fiber communication network in afghanistan. That, with the latest intelligence debacle, well
IMHO, if tapping any communication medium will assist in the thwarting of terrorist activity, well we need something.
Noone would have considered this applicable 3 years ago.
Usually, with that size of budget, there are definately some dark ops. No wonder we (as in the U.S.) are developing methods to
Xray people as they wander through airports.
Someone to ask about the plans and what the impact will be is Secretary of the Navy Gordon England.
Understandably, I am sure he would not delve into the detailed tie-in and the way the Govt. is using 9/11 to move projects like thas ahead.
Crossing's Creditors' Committee press releases show how critical it was for the Govt to bail them out. With clients like
K.B. toys to sell their pipe to, it is amazing that they are not rolling in cash.
Stratgetically, there is concern because"For a very low price, someone is going to acquire a set of undersea fiber routes that crisscross the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and connect over 20 nations and perhaps resell or lease the network at a handsome profit to another party that could have its very own undersea communications network and training ground. The bankruptcy court had set April 23 as the deadline to receive proposals to take over the now-bankrupt GX.
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
Somewhere, deep underneath the surface of the ocean in the Pacific Basin...
*snip*
"Oops"
Hmm...Wonder what THAT fiber splicer would charge per hour?
-R
I've seen reports that the NSA managed to tap the Global crossing optic wire between Ireland (&UK) & the USA, the article pointed out that global crossing didnt notice. Cant seem to find any referances online, i must have read it in a magazine or newspaper or something.
I think it was more important for the goverment to prevent the technology from slipping into foriegn hands (i.e. terroists).
I wonder why the fallout of companies such as Enron, Global Crossing, K-Mart comes out after 9/11? Global Crossing is basically taking advantage of the fact that the government has no other option but to bail the corporation out in the name national security.
I agree that the government should be given every possible tool and ability to protect the nation but would like to re-emphasize within sensible limits especially after the FBI has fewer restrictions since they couldn't put together the puzzle pieces to prevent 9/11.
I fail to realize why a billion dollars has to be spent on tapping underwater cables when you can do it on land node on one end. Money being wasted again...what a shock!
-----
One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
If it's on fiber, they already have it! Do a little research into Echelon. Just one example, apparently our friend the Brits have detoured almost every piece of fiber over ther through a US NSA facility.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
In Blind Man's Bluff, the book covers tapping a coax cable in the 70s, by placing a device which detects RF below it, without physically modifying the cable at all. This is a lot different that tapping an optical fiber, but still pretty tricky to do.
Altough this was funny, it's too technical for the average slashdotter, hence the lack of moderation. Plus, you didn't mention Linux, Open Sores or RMS, so more reasons why it wasn't moderated.
I remember this being covered in an security special of the BBC World clickonline program shortly after 9/11, they listed different measures that the NSA uses to intercept messages, and said that USS Jimmy Carter had already been modified to wiretap optical, cross-atlantic, datacables, even before 9/11. I wouldn't even bother posting this if I weren't certain of the high standards in journalism that BBC and that program in particular have, that show is highly reliable and professionally done, and I myself have found it credible in the past.
What are they going to do when Quantum Encryption over fiber optics is used? There's absolutely no way they can tap that without alerting the 'enemy'.
Here is a link describing wht the Jimmy Carter is getting- basically a bigger SEAL delivery system, probably with the ability to drop a carried bathysphere or other goodies.
The Jimmy Carter is too high value a ship to just keep out on fiber patrol- independent of her spec-ops function she can pretty much conventionally destroy most navies by herself thanks to that 50-weapon loadout, being quieter running at speed then the Los Angeles subs at dock, and that wide-aperture sonar. So making her a $3 billion dollar satellite feed doesn't make sense.
Therefore they must be planning to hook into the fiber-optic network, and spool off their own fiber line to a discrete uplink several hundred miles away. The upgrade must be to allow for all that equipment.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
A few facts you forgot to mention about the USS Bill Clinton.
It's long, hard, and full of seamen.
(hint: say it outloud)
"Along-known selling point of fiber optics is that..."
Damn, and I thought my spelling was bad.
Well, I forget whether the quote was the same in the book(s) (-- Carlito's Way: A film so good they had to base it on *two* books!), but in the movie, I'm pretty certain he says "Favor gonna kill you faster than a bullet!"
:)
If I'm wrong, apologies. Just feeling pedantic
One very real hazard a sub like the Jimmy Carter might encounter when "inspecting" such a cable could be a live weapon test gone awry.
"Sir! I am tracking two target drones! According to the briefing there should only be one!"
"Never mind, Leftenant. They just deployed two drones to make things a little more interesting."
"Sir, one of the contacts is a little too close to some communications infrastructure listed in this area"
"Leftenant, we're looking at a maritime hazard here, so we'll take that one out first! Ready tubes 1-4, await my firing command!"
I worked on a project with a company in California back in the mid-80s that took advantage of an non-intrusive optical coupler that they had patented. The coupler placed a microbend in the fiber and cound extract or insert light from the fiber. In the extract mode, it was almost impossible to measure the attenuation change in the light and detect the coupling. Of course, doing this underwater is a bit tricky.
I had always assumed that the government made covert use of this technology. Who knows?
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
Yes, Reagan does have a carrier named after him. It's a Nimitz class carrier, CVN 76 (USS Ronald Reagan). It is currently still under construction at Newport News shipyard in Virgina. Expected comissioning in 2003, planned arrival in San Diego in 2004, and the first deployment is figured for sometime in 2005.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
Not a fiber optic expert, so correct me if I'm wrong.
Fiber Optic cables work based on a refraction principle called "total internal reflection." Like when you look up at the surface from under water: You see the entire 180 degrees of surface inside one small circle of light, and everything else is a reflection of the bottom.
The light travels through the fiber optic cable by reflecting back and forth at the boundary between the fiber and the cladding as it travels along the cable.
The upshot of this is that if you bend the cable too much, light starts to escape into the cladding. Bend it just right and make sure that the cladding is transparent to the wavelengths being used and enough light leaves the cable right there to read the signal... All the while appearing to be nothing more than an additional db loss to the endpoints.
So, you do have to cut into the cable assembly but you don't actually have to break the fibers.
Or am I missing something?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Dude, the NSA doesn't need warrants. It does whatever the hell it pleases.
Remember that this country was ruled by J Edgar Hoover for decades, since he as the head of the FBI could crush any US politician, including most Presidents, that didn't comply with his demands.
...okay, first off...what good does it do ANYone besides the enemy to know about how Navy Intelligence gets their intelligence? The release of this information is the height of irresponsibility by the Washington Post. Secondly, the statement about the U.S. declining to join a international group so as to protect their security is meant to do nothing but stir up contention with our allies. Are our own journalists getting their literary rocks off at the country's expense? When terrorists start using our own news sources to create their diabolical plans, I hope they head on over to the Washington Post and give them a proper "thank you".
Cool. I hope they paint on the side of the boat Reagan's famous line, "We are bombing in 10 minutes!" That should get people's attention in port. :)
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Hell, maybe we all have a right to do that :)
"Pick up a pen knife, and some masking tape, line on the left, one roll each..."
(Shamelessly adapted from The Life of Brian)
Get your own free personal location tracker
..gives the US Government the right to snoop on data that I might, for example, be sending over to/via the USA? Thats my freaking business, not theirs!
I appreciate the need for security.. and I personally have nothing to hide.. but I hate the way they seem to feel they are entitled to take the Big Brother stance and snoop on everyones data. Need I even mention Carnivore, or whatever that FBI thing is.
I think its time to look at data encryption..
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
I would have thouht that "USS Richard Nixon" would have been a more sensible name for an espionage boat. Then you could also have the "USS Oliver North" cruising around to act as a decoy.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
"They also assert that the U.S. government is bailing out Global Crossing to prevent its undersea routes falling into foreign hands."
Global Crossing is a Bermuda Based Corporation.
Unless the federal Government is buying Bermuda (Which, quite frankly, I'm OK with...) the undersea routes are already owned by "foreign hands".
Gee, we can't process the information we have. Let's collect some more! Then, next time there's a catastrophe, we can root through all that data and find something relevant and blame it on lack of manpower. And then we can ask for even more money to collect even more data. Gee, isn't life wonderful?
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
terrorist - Someone who does not ware a uniform, does not openly work for a government - but takes part in attacks who's only goal is the distruction of property and killing of non-combatant civilians.
That was easy.
Lets see - IRA, PLO, Hamas, Osama, Kashmiri militants, Columbian drug commies, ELF - yeah they all fit this rather well. Of course there are right wing wackos in the US and Central America that also fit this - as well as total crazies in places like Siera Leon (sp) - terrorists all.
Before you even bother to fire off the reflexive yet vapid response that the US military also fits the bill - I call BS. To even bother to argue this last point is useles, however I did provide you a non-ideological definition of a terrorist as you challenged me to do.
hehe - try and tap THAT.
I worked for two different fiber optics equipment companies (although a large part of the second company had worked for the first previously).
One of the problems I see is that once the optical signal is inside the network, it's encoded in a special manner, diffferent for each equipment (to improve performance, add more error checking, force the carrier to continue to buy from the same vendor). So you can't just listen to it the same way as a phone line. What's in the fiber under the ocean is not as standard as what's on a copper line.
Also, how are you supposed to interpret it? Given a single wavelenght ans OC-192 speeds, it's 10Gb/s (bit, not byte). If you multiply by the maximum number of wavelengths that a fiber can carry (~160), you get 1600Gb/s. It begins to be a bit too much for the kind of computer that we can buy, although the NSA can probably afford it. But then, would they put it on a sub? Or relay the raw information to a ground station?
Other problem: sequential packets are not guaranteed to pass by the same fiber, or even the same carrier. There's probably a good chance that they do, but no guarantee ("We intercepted the following message: "The next target is S...". The rest went somewhere else. If you live in a city starting by S, please don't panic."). Unless they want to spy on privately owned fibers, where they're more sure to get all they want in that fiber...
Had a crash and hit the wrong button on the way down.
I doubt if I have read anything more ludicrous than this.
First nomenclature: it's a nuclear reactor, not a pile. The whole damn thing is filled with pressurized water all the time. High angles of attack won't uncover the core. They might do bad things on the secondary side, though. (That's where the steam to run the propulsion plant is, on the secondary side.)
Another post regarding things nuclear, and submarines, that are unconnected with reality. I can see why it was posted anonymously.
planned arrival in San Diego in 2004,
;-) They're pretty freaking cool though. You see the huge cruise ships right next to downtown and they're longer than the buildings are tall and the Carriers are across the harbor and they're even bigger. My brother has a 36' sailboat and when we go out and sail right by them it's nutty to look up at the mast which looks tall when you're in the open but doesn't even come close to the deck. Amazing that much steel can float.
I'm glad it's not sooner. We have three of these puppies sitting in the Harbor right now and it's looking crowded
Its extreamly easy to tap information from an optic fiber if you can get close enough physical contact with it. You don't even need to compleatly expose it. The tap can be done with out either end of the connection having a clue. Peter.
Also, tapping the repeaters is no problem, and in the Echelon discussion, at least one photo of a US submarine designed explicitly for installing taps on submarine cables and repeaters was publicized.
There is no reason to believe that the submarine cables aren't tapped by every major secret service. And even if they weren't, the points where the cables leave the sea and the major routers, POTS switches and exchange points are tapped.
Also, the paragraph about Global Crossing is bogus or even a Red Herring. Nobody in their right mind would rely on a line not being tapped, especially an international line. Their lines leave the sea to enter Europe or whatever country somewhere, and you can be sure that they are tapped there by the respective country and their allies.
that encryption can only spoof the contents of the message ...
Such as the fact that this project has been underway for over a year (the article is dated last year, and states
and the bit that I was looking for
I can't imagine that number has changed too much in the past year.
since when I have tapped it before just do a slight bend and a good light reciever
to this proposal is largely negative, even though it merely involves passive monitoring of communications, and probably won't directly kill anyone. Whereas the same military, when a stor comes along here about a new piece of hardware intended precisely to kill larger numbers of people more quickly, is subject to slobbering adulation from the same people.
Data travels as beams of light in optical fiber, which makes it hard to intercept. Did they consider intercepting signals as soon as they're converted into electrical signals under the sea? Signals as any others has to be amplified so they can reach their destination without losing their amplitude and so they have to go from optical to electrical and then back to optical.
That's kind of stupid. Why not just piggyback the signal onto another fiber?
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
If you remember your 80's history - the plan was to tap Moscow's offshore comline (unencrypted) - and the via a which ran from North of Norway, to Iceland, to the US - decrypt it. Of course this was all before a spy gave the game away - after we'd spent a couple of hundred million.
It's bad enough that 9/11 had to happen, but only now are we seeing the repurcussions the attacks through knee-jerk reations by those in power. Even if 9/11 didn't happen the NSA/FBI/CIA/etc. would (probably already) have line tapped international fiber lines, but without 9/11 it would have been harder for them to justify their actions.
to paraphrase a quote that I heard/read:
when people are willing to sacrifice their rights & freedoms for an illusion of security, they deserve to have neither.
Again, just my two cents.
If you take bare fibre, in the dark, it glows! Now I don't know too much about the field, but it would seem that the glow is the data. If they can pick data off of blinkenlights, surely the glow can be reconstructed?
Or do I just have really, really, bad fibre?
-twb
Meaning much less extraneous noise when the sub's trying to watch for leakage.
Yet again the yanks think the world (sea) belongs to them
Global Crossing deep sea cables are running in internal waters.... USA wire tapping cables in international waters... What would happen if a state like Libya (who has a lot of money) buys Global Crossing ? What is the value of US search warrant in that case ?
to intercept the transmission on the bottom of the seabed?
Surely they'd be able to just put something in place at each end of the cable, carnivorous style since most of the countries that the cables come out of the water on are bound by security treaties anyway, ie NZ, Oz.
It's not like terrorists are going to be sitting on the seabed on each side of the pacific emailing each other with such "fibre tapping" technologies.
There must be something else going on here... probably tampering with data to serve US interests similar to the debarcle with Echelon and France. The US government does not do ANYTHING unless there's a profit in it.
Yes it's a really big surprise that the US and of course the NSA would do something like this. The NSA and the overall US ignorance scares me. Keep the f... away from my comms I say atleast.
There is no reason for US to do these taps. Fighting terrorism? Oh c'mon maybe the US should stop being terrorists themselves. 11th of september is a good reason? US had it coming, everyone knows that. Oh well except for all those anti-terrorism ignorant hypers that live over there. God I laugh when I see all the fake nationalism in the US. Since the teen uproar during the vietnam war was it? When have the US EVER cared about others problems if it has NOT server US endevours? You could in someway say that the teen uproar actually did too since the US did some extremely bad things in nam. If the US can tap all communications, invade countries, carpet bomb half of it and so forth just because a couple thousand americans died. I wonder what vietnam and so forth should do to US after having a couple thousand women and children raped, mutilated and killed.
If you ask me it seems appropriate to drop a couple thousand bombs around US. Try to hit some schools etc so kids etc are taken out. Seems sensible doesn't it?
PS: There is no reason for flame nor stating any wrong since I'm right, k thx =). Have a good day.
This there flamewar simply comes down to one thing...
Evry thing always happens to the most rightous people in the world (americans) ad if something happens to them they have the holy right to beat the crap out of anybody hwo happens to be near.
(bacis acion movie plot.)
Remember america 'tacticly' bomb a small country from the bronze age back to the stone age. whils trying to get a hold on a few terrorist.
Loads of poor but 'evil' people will soon die of starvation or what not because nothing get's to them. but america gets of by dumping some food in a minefield. (so heart warming) Now realizing they faild in their primary objective, getting terrorists, they located a few other 'evil' countries.
This leaves me with a thought.. Since terrorist usualy move around and live in lots of different countries... When will they start bombing allies who happen have a few terrorists living among them?
so.. er when are you guy's going to stop this here witch-hunt and simply settle for dominion of america and not the World?
T.
...and the long-wave frequency has so much more bandwidth than fiberoptic cable, it just streams right across...
I think it would be like sending the fiber backbone's data across a 300-baud modem. You'd drop a few bits.
The person to thank for the 1998-2000 boomlet is Linda Tripp. If it weren't for her, there would have been no hearings & impeachment procedings. These procedings kept the Demublicans & Republocrats attacking each other instead of attacking us.
Thus, the economy was allowed to grow.
You and the government. You want security? Install a 4096 RSA gPGP key pair and talk about how you're going to have sex with Bin Laden while watching America fry under your recently purchased soviet nuke which is right now sitting in pieces in your living room at 1234 Microsoft Way, Seattle Washington.
:P
They will never know what the email says with current technology. Even if they can break the code and violate your privacy, there is absolutely no way on earth they can decript ALL the codes, even if they have keys and the means to intercept them all. Looking at encrypted packets on a fiber network it would be impossible to distinguish which packets go toegether in a streaming connection between two computers.
So stop worrying, this is a billion dollar waste of money by the Navy and the NSA would be better off investing in nanotech and quantum computers to put the cork back in the bottle.
My $0.02 is still worth more than your 0.02 even at current exchange rates, so
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Ask yourself which was more useful to the Navy: Someone who served honourably once and is retired (thus a ship could be named after him) or someone who fostered whopping huge arms procurement appropriations? One is useful to a Navy (good sailors are worth having), the other is imperative (a whopping whack of good tech is vital). So don't think that naming things "Ronald Reagan" or after any other military-spending president is a bad choice for the service. They know who got them the goodies.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
This is kind of a dumb debate. Mainly because people already have entrenched views and it boils down to "duz too!" and "duz not!".
For the record: Most countries spy. However, if a people sanction spying by their country on others and accept that their government has a right to do so (ie they as the people should not be stopping their government from doing it), they can scarcely take the moral high ground when it is done in return to them or when their allies (not enemies I say!) discover they are being spied on and become rather upset.
It's one thing to spy quietly and mostly innocuously and try very hard not to let anyone in your country or anywhere else know you are doing it. It is another thing to publicly make available the fact you are setting out to violate other countries' private communications. Especially when some of those countries are: military allies, political allies, and long standing trade partners.
I think the simple rule here is: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And if you happen to think the fact that America owns an extremely temporary (from a historical perspective) hegemony in technology and military force over most of the world and that somehow confers a right to use such power as a club to forward its own agenda and that this is morally correct behaviour, then you should be equally happy when someone one day returns the favour.
I don't really care what side of this fence anyone is on, but it does piss me off when they try to occupy both sides (spying while decrying same, invading and bombing other sovereign nations and supporting death squads and covert ops in other nations while decrying same).
Another phrase comes to mind: Sew the wind, reap the whirlwind.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
(pointing out that one of the ships the previous poster named is not a submarine)
I forget which talk I was at (and of course by whom), but the speaker was formerly involved in the operations of the fiber landing at Sea Girt, NJ (lots of it lands there, apparently). The lines would go down for a few seconds every once in a while, then come back up. They knew a tap was being installed. There was supposedly a ship that would lift the fiber to sea level to do the work, then lower it back down. A buoy was placed to amplify the signal.
This is pretty old news. A submarine seems overly complicated. I suspect the story is FUD.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The cables are snagged and hoisted to the surface at the repair/splice point, IIRC.
There's a Neal Stephenson non-fiction essay about undersea cables and their geopolitical/technical implications around somewhere on the net-- lots of really nice info, rendered in his inimitable style.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
I really dont understand the need to tap these fiber optic lines while they are 20,000 leagues under the sea. Just go to one of the comps on either side and either use your l33t hax0ring skill, or your strong american power to force whatever country owns it to let you sniff.
Sure, then everyone knows your listening, but what are they gonna do, set up an 802.11b network over the Indian Ocean? Ya know maybe with some parabolic dishes and the... No.
-Bill
PC Load Letter, what the fÜck does that mean?!?
-Bill
If Global crossing goes bust, then other compaines will pick up their load and that may just get more of the traffic from Asia to Europe to flow around the other way and not through the US like it does now. Its much easier to tap at MAE-West than it is in some place like off the cost of Inida.
Danny boy...didn't you mean to say the "previous president" and not the "current president"??? At least Bush flew jets in the Guard. Unlike Clinton who dodged the draft and protested against the US in the Soviet Union...
Here's the real Jimmy Carter record of service:
- High unemployment
- High inflation
- High interest rates
- Gave away Panama Canal
- Let Iranians hold US citizens for years
- Decimated the US military budget
I'd like to see a long wave radio with enough bandwidth to re-transmit all the data on a backbone fiber.