Third Undersea Cable Cut

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."

Comments

Third cut?

[Eevee]

Once is accident.

Twice is coincidence.

Thrice is enemy action.

Re:Third cut?

[KublaiKhan]

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.

Re:Third cut?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last night while sitting in my chair
I pinged a host that wasn't there
It wasn't there again today
The host resolved to NSA.

Re:Third cut?

[bigdavex]

A communications disruption can mean only one thing - invasion.

Re:Third cut?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes funny. does not slashdot realize we have had a sub that can do just that for decades?

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

keep laughing guys and gals why the spies among us earn their salary. :-P

Re:Third cut?

[eldavojohn]

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.

Re:Third cut?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

The cable is actually number four - if I count correctly.

Target Iran - or a trading delay for the Gulf countries. Any how. No Accident.

Re:Third cut?

[gbjbaanb]

and Four Times is shrimp getting to like the taste of plastic coating.

Re:Third cut?

[VoiceOfDoom]

That is pure genius

Re:Third cut?

[orclevegam]

yes funny. does not slashdot realize we have had a sub that can do just that for decades? This was about cutting a cable not tapping it. And apparently you don't need a special sub for that, a plain old boat anchor works just fine. Still, it is very suspicious that all three of the undersea cables have been cut within such a short time period. Considering that Egypt was already talking about rationing bandwidth they've got to be shitting themselves now.

Re:Third cut?

[riseoftheindividual]

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.

Re:Third cut?

[djones101]

I yearn to have mod points simply to mod you up for that gem.

Re:Third cut?

[hesaigo999ca]

That would be if we all assume it was our guys (Americans/Canadians) that did it, however a small third world country trying to pierce through oppression or a rebel group like al quedea might only have the means to drag an anchor on the bottom of the ocean...i still think it strange though they were all cut within a short period of time, no coincidences for me!

Re:Third cut?

[littlerubberfeet]

There was a point in time when ships were the communication lines carrying western influences into Muslim countries. As for tapping lines: why bother with a physical tap? I'm sure Cisco has a back-door arrangement with the NSA. Besides, all the major peering points (except those that handle internal traffic in large countries like China and Russia) are western controlled.

Re:Third cut?

[ILuvRamen]

well at least now we know redundency is a foreign concept to them. If there's ever a war, all we have to do is slice some cables and the entire...what like middle east and part of asia or something loses their ability to launch cyber attacks and communicate? Not very bright over there, are they? Even worse, don't foreign companies own the fiber cables and they're just leasing them? Forget slicing them, they could say "we don't like your country anymore" and disconnect them and apparently they have no backup connections at all. They're taking one small step for stupid network design and one giant leap for stupidity in general.

Re:Third cut?

[Bent Mind]

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.

So, a "Flag official, who declined to be named" reports that a major portion of the Gulf region's communications are being rerouted through the US and UK.

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.

Re:Third cut?

[Freeside1]

How do you say 'Firesale' in Farsi?

Re:Third cut?

[rucs_hack]

Sorry to muss your tin hat, but its no accident that all this is happening just after someone made the monumentally stupid decision that boats should anchor in the same area as the cables.

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 not as if this could really stop Iran or anyone conducting war, there are these little things called satellites.

Yes it would disrupt business, but um, what good would that do the US Government? None in the short term, and in the long term the cable would be fixed.

Re:Third cut?

[Poltras]

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?

[_Sharp'r_]

Around January 18th, news reports are that several city's power grids have been recently attacked via the internet.

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?

[GnomeThinker]

So, a "Flag official, who declined to be named" reports that a major portion of the Gulf region's communications are being rerouted through the US and UK. 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.

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 don't let them sniff every packet that crosses the continent.

Re:Third cut?

[Anonymous Coward]

At least now we know they cant buy parts for their nuclear weapons online anymore.

Re:Third cut?

[monkeyboythom]

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.

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?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

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.

Re:Third cut?

[hardburn]

Whatever it is, it probably literally translates to "bad movie".

Re:Third cut?

[MsGeek]

Brilliant. You made me LOL. Thanks.

Re:Third cut?

[calebt3]

What is that from again? It's been so long.

Re:Third cut?

[Divebus]

Iran wants to limit Internet access to its citizens anyway. Well, there you go.

Re:Third cut?

[g0bshiTe]

I couldn't help but think the same thing. I didn't bother to RTFA so.
[FUD]Is this the "cyberwar" that has been talked about?[/FUD]

Re:Third cut?

[crmarvin42]

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'm not a tinfoil hat type, I don't see conspiracy where ever I look, but why would it have to be the US?

Re:Third cut?

[calebt3]

Nevermind. Star Wars I

Re:Third cut?

[ironwill96]

Great comment!

Re:Third cut?

[Blakey Rat]

I've heard stories (yes, yes, probably urban legends) that the US Navy was at one point technically able to tap into undersea fiber optic cables using a special chamber mounted on a support submarine. They could get the cable into the chamber, then pump the water out. Then they used a work area which reflected light in just the right way so that they could install their recorder on each cable without interrupt the data going through it.

Probably BS, but it would be technically impressive if true.

Re:Third cut?

[Firehed]

Well neither of them know that, so the not colorblind one was the source of the problem :)

Re:Third cut?

[MicktheMech]

What does Canada have to do with this?

Oh, we're talking about incompetent spies. Then... yeah, it's probably us.

Re:Third cut?

[mea37]

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.

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 someone's up to something. For years we have undersea cables, and I can't speak to the frequency with which they get cut, but now we're to believe that a number of links have been cut in a short period of time, at least a couple of them by the same sort of accident? Anchors must have suddenly gotten a lot more dangerous...

Who's up to what, that's the question. I don't buy that it's a campaign to blind us to what's really happening inside Iran, because most people here would bite the line fed them by the mainstream media whether the links were there or not. (Believe the American media is completely free, unbiased, and all-knowing if you want, but don't expect me to play along...)

The most obvious assumption is that someone is trying to cut the flow of information into Iran, though the motives for that are cloudy to me as well.

A couple wild-ass theories... Because I can :)

Perhaps it's a coutner-attack in cyber warfare. Disrupt an enemy in Iran who is attacking Internet-based assets elsewhere in the world, something to that effect. It's an optimistic take, but possible.

Perhaps the cables aren't the target at all. How much do we know about the locations where the cables were cut? Is the sudden swarm of anchors the result of ships stopping where usually they do not? If so, who owns the ships, and why are they suddenly parking there?

Re:Third cut?

[MonoSynth]

selected text
"search with google"

one result. this post.

you're a hero.

Re:Third cut?

[Firehed]

So the careless boater was aiding the terr'sts? Geddim!

Re:Third cut?

[Bob-taro]

We all know that colorblind people can see colors correctly underwater while those who have correct vision cannot.

I've never heard that before. My understanding is that colorblindness is due to an absence or shortage of color receptor cells in the eye. I don't see how that could give someone better vision underwater.

OTOH, I have heard that color blind people are better at spotting camouflaged objects. I presume that's because they see things DIFFERENTLY than the non-colorblind person who created the camouflage.

Re:Third cut?

[wiredlogic]

It's not terribly difficult to just cut an undersea cable. The difficulty is in doing it surreptitiously. The Vietnamese salvagers did it by hauling the cable onto their ship first. The US is the leader in undersea cable tapping and cutting. They are probably the only ones who have invested the effort to make their attacks look like shark bites.

Re:Third cut?

[Chris Johnson]

The question quickly becomes: is anyone actually retarded enough to think that if you cut off the internotz to Iran, you can secretly bomb them and nobody will notice? Or, not notice in a timely fashion?

Re:Third cut?

[mousse-man]

And Four will be The Lumber Cartel.

At least I have less spam, which is, in itself, not a bad thing.

Re:Third cut?

[sumdumass]

I find this interesting. A kneejerk conspiracy theorist calling a voice of reason a kneejerk rational thinker. Or was it a kneejerk enabler? I dunno.

Either way, how does it feel to be attacked for taking a rash and sane approach to something? Do you think his pressure will break your spirit and force you to toss all common sense out the windows and adopt the America is evil attitude? You don't have to answer that, I was just wondering if I could be rhetorical more then wondering what the answer was. Of course know I suppose I should look up rhetorical so I have an idea about what it means when someone attacks me for not toeing the America is evil line.

Re:Third cut?

[HTH NE1]

You must be new here. The US _is_ the source of all evil, according to Slashdot received wisdom. I'm not sure if this modding as troll contradicts that or just says it isn't the source of all stupidity.

Note to self: don't paraphrase Yoda.

Re:Third cut?

[TheGratefulNet]

they should have just hired the COMCAST guys to, uhhh, NAK an RST some of the packets.

that'll fix 'em!

Re:Third cut?

[bigstrat2003]

The Federation would not dare go that far!

Re:Third cut?

[sumdumass]

Well, why couldn't it be Iran? I mean they seem to be playing the victim and manipulating the press lately. They sent their patrol boats to harass our navy ships then cried when we fired warning shots in their direction. They showed a film of old 70's style speed boats and then claimed we knew what they were doing by showing someone inside a cabined fishing boat saying something on a radio. I don't see why this couldn't have been Iran wanting everyone to claim the US was up to something.

Re:Third cut?

[NeutronCowboy]

How's Murphy's law go? Anything that can go wrong, will? Anything that cannot possibly break, will, and at the worst possible time?

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?

[Kompressor]

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.

There, fixed that for ya ;-)

Re:Third cut?

[sm62704]

If this is our spies, this would seem to be a pretty boneheaded execution of tapping lines

And why are we at war in Iraq again? Didn't it have something to do with intelligence reports about weapons of mass destruction that were't actually there?

Incompetence, like competence, starts at the top.

Re:Third cut?

[Captain Splendid]

The question quickly becomes: is anyone actually retarded enough to think that if you cut off the internotz to Iran, you can secretly bomb them and nobody will notice? Or, not notice in a timely fashion?

Of course not. But that's not what you want. What you want is to create a bottleneck everything passes through, and you control the bottleneck.

Re:Third cut?

[Anonymous Coward]

Me note must: Yoda paraphrase do not

Re:Third cut?

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll be taking back your geek card now. We were willing to let you get away with not recognizing a line from Star Wars, it being from a prequel and all, but not even using Google before you ask? Have you no decency?

Re:Third cut?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're trying to make some nukes
Don't bother putting up your dukes
Subs with scissors of nations crossed
Will ensure *** CARRIER LOST ***

Re:Third cut?

[shimage]

Oddly enough, my first impression was that the Iranian government was trying to cut its people off from the outside world (perhaps the firewalls weren't enough?). The biggest threat to a dictatorship is an informed populace (well, in my opinion, anyway). I'm probably way off mark anyway.

Re:Third cut?

[__aannpi2461]

Don't worry, I'm pretty sure this is just a Cloverfield promotion...

Re:Third cut?

[bigpicture]

There are times when things can be accidentally coincidental. But when the probability mathematical odds get really high, then the question should always be: was it deliberate? If it was terrorists there is a high likely hood that there would be a: "look what we did" news cast. But if it were the covert actions of a semi legitimate government, then it would be made to look accidental.

Re:Third cut?

[Zeinfeld]

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.

Its a provocation, it does not have to be stealthy, the whole point is to get the Iranians to declare war on the US. Bush wants to start another war but lacks the political support at home to make the first move, he would be impeached. So instead the administration has been attempting to provoke the Iranians in various ways: arresting their diplomats in Iraq, conducting special operations in Iran, belicose rhetoric 'axis of evil', stationing three supercarriers in the gulf, etc.

The other half has been 'Tokinizing' Iranian activities, attempting to reconstruct the Tonkin Gulf incident, allegations that the Iranians are supplying the insurgency in Iraq, WMD claims and so on.

Re:Third cut?

[bigdavex]

Who the hell thinks this comment is funny?

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now they'll just have to phone/fax Haliburton

Re:Third cut?

[PitaBred]

Who the hell thinks this comment is funny? ...someone who's watched Star Wars? But hey, use it for a soap box, too. I'm all for recycling.

Re:Third cut?

[rubycodez]

here, let me fix that for you:

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.

Re:Third cut?

[provigilman]

http://www.internettrafficreport.com/namerica.htm/

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...

Re:Third cut?

[wiggles]

Somebody get that one into Fortune.

Re:Third cut?

[Mister Whirly]

""A communications disruption can mean only one thing - invasion."
Who the hell thinks this comment is funny? "

Lighten up Francis. It's a quote from Star Wars, Episode 1.

Re:Third cut?

[riseoftheindividual]

That could be, I wouldn't rule that viewpoint out at all. BUT, I also don't rule out a militant group/foreign government who wants to make a point or see things started.

We go into Iran right now, that's going to weaken us as a nation(speaking US centric), I don't give a damn what the fiscally ignorant supporters of such action say to the contrary. Unless we were blessed with a magical quick decisive victory that the supporters of the Iraq Invasion were claiming we'd have 5 years ago, we would lose more than we would ever gain out of such an attack. A lot of people in power in other places know this and would love to see us fall on our faces.

Then again, why try to trip the fool who does such a fine job of tripping their self? Hard to read it honestly, bastards and liars on all sides. Trusting any of them is done at your own risk of being led down the merry path.

Re:Third cut?

[Plekto]

That this is targeting a specific region of the world and that we have the technology to tap into these cables, it's quite obvious to me what's going on here(as well as many others).

To install a tap on a circuit, you need to first cut or break into it if it's a fiber-optic cable. Then you go in and "repair" it the tap is still in place.

Not tinfoil hat time, either. Just the U.S. government doing what it does best - tapping into and monitoring our enemies'(and everyone else's) communications. Just one more reason to not use the Net for anything that requires secrecy.

Re:Third cut?

[pugugly]

I love how any criticism of the U.S. is always translated as "The US _is_ the source of all evil".

Because y'know, any criticism of temporary policies always indicates a vast, hidden belief structure.

Sigh - Pug

Re:Third cut?

[ArsonSmith]

Ironyblind? Is that why I had to have my BDUs pressed while in the Army? I guess if they were ironed then the ironyblind couldn't see me coming?

Re:Third cut?

[Obfuscant]

It wasn't there again today
The host resolved to NSA.

Wait a minute, I thought it was Network Solutions (NSI) that was picking up all the domain names.

Re:Third cut?

[Chris Johnson]

I disagree respectfully with you- I think the most likely explanation is that it is an attempt to blind us to what might happen within Iran. It's to stop information getting out, in my opinion.

It's a STUPID move, which is why that explanation seems wrong as you- it can't really work, and we have no proof that it's actually being followed up on in any way. My hope is that it will remain mysterious because other proposed actions (like bombing the hell out of Iran) will not make it through the chain of command of the US Military. I suspect that the screw-up with nuclear weapons earlier was a matter of the civilian command trying to get things to happen without following proper procedure. I think this is more of the same and there's no telling how far it will actually go- perhaps not that far.

Re:Third cut?

[jollyreaper]

A communications disruption can mean only one thing - invasion. Really? I thought it meant they're using Comcast.

Re:Third cut?

[wurp]

Er, coincidence certainly does exist. Three one-in-a-thousand events have a one-in-a-billion chance of occurring together, completely coincidentally.

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?

[Chris Johnson]

But we're not talking about what _I_ want, we're talking about whether the people running the country I'm in are in the process of flipping out and doing something completely stupid. These are not people who give a shit about monitoring things. They ignored the intelligence reports they had. They talk about creating history (or did) but they are not serious people, they don't work at things or lay reasonable plans.

So my question still very much is, "does somebody actually think that if you cut off communications, you can bomb Iran without approval of Congress or the American people, and more than that, do they think they would somehow WIN by such a 'retreat-forward' maneuver?"

Re:Third cut?

[Chris Snook]

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.

Re:Third cut?

[rahvin112]

I always get a laugh out of statements like that. Particularly given that the US and other western nations don't want one of their sources of intelligence compromised. Why do you think Islamic extremeists can keep a web page and forums up rather than having their servers turned off? Maybe because the US thinks it's better to have them talking where they can see and monitor rather than talking privately. I personally believe the US would repair any Internet cables into "terrorist" countries if they were damaged just so they can be used for intelligence gathering and relay. The Internet is an incredibly important tool of intelligence gathering and collection and the only time it would get cut is in the case of a major international war or invasion. I don't see either so I would wager the statement that bad luck comes in three's is probably the important point.

I also think it's important to point out that there are currently a large number of winter storms moving through the middle east right now and lots of ships are likely being diverted to areas they don't normally tread to avoid/weather them.

Re:Third cut?

[Chris Johnson]

I'm with you Zeinfeld- this has rattled me bigtime. It's reminding me of how I followed 9/11 on slashdot because that was where all the reports came together quickest.

I don't believe for a second that the US is going to attempt to invade, but I am very, very suspicious that someone in the White House is attempting to make our military bomb Iran to produce chaos within which they can cling to power. This doesn't mean it will succeed- these guys don't plan and their track record for succeeding longterm is terrible- but I think they are trying to strike at Iran without the approval of Congress (or indeed the american people). That is totally not funny on a lot of levels.

First, such an act would be a horrific war crime beyond anything my country has done, which is already a lot.

Second, you're absolutely right that it would be suicidal. My understanding is that the Iranian Sunburn missiles can rather easily take out our supercarriers. Don't we just happen to have three right there in striking range? Is the idea that we get Iran to take out our supercarriers to JUSTIFY the ceaseless war and kick it up a notch? Apart from the war crimes thing, there's a problem if the plan is to destroy our own military to prove we weren't wrong in using it. That's a horrible idea. What if we need to have military force sometime in the future?

Re:Third cut?

[pallmall1]

Shakespeare of the net.

Re:Third cut?

[Qwrk]

Yep, it's what we call "all out"........

Re:Third cut?

[JoeInnes]

Sorry, what? "[...]if the US were going to do it, they'd have done it in secret"? I suppose they'd just be hoping no-one noticed.
 
Doing it "in secret" is impossible when pretty much an entire nation can see what you've done. You just have to make it look like an accident. A heavy metal accident with a chain attached, for example.

Re:Third cut?

[macdaddy]

USS Jimmy Carter replaced the USS Parche

Re:Third cut?

[littlerubberfeet]

It would be amazing...that bit of technology.

It would mean being able to fusion-splice a prism into a glass strand as thick as a hair. Without interrupting the light, in a sealed chamber underwater at a pressure and atmosphere suitable for a fusion splice.

Re:Third cut?

[Chris Johnson]

The supercarriers thing concerns me because if the Iranian's Sunburn missiles are all they're supposed to be, those supercarriers are bait. They could all be destroyed if things got nasty.

I'm trying hard to sort out what's going on (if anything) and being reminded of following 9/11 on Slashdot as that unfolded. So far what I have is:

We've had an incident where a nuclear weapon was flying across the country to a staging area for overseas operations and got stopped at the last minute- it was called a mistake, but mistakes don't really happen with those, it's a suspicious mistake- theory, someone was trying to go outside the usual chain of command.

We've had a lot of talk, especially early on, about how 'we create history, we act and others follow along and write up what happened'.

We have George Bush apparently looking unusually bad just the other day- didn't see that myself. He didn't look good on 9/11 either, he doesn't actually LIKE huge warlike events. obSnark: someone get that man 'My Pet Goat', stat!

And now we have Iran off the Internet, which does not mean it's unable to communicate (hello, satellite, radio, shortwave?) but some people might be dumb enough to think that if 'news' can't get out of Iran nobody will know what goes on there. I am convinced that the White House believes that if Iran is off the internet and no reporters are allowed in it, it's 'off the radar' w.r.t. public and world opinion, and they'll have an opportunity to make up a story to their liking later.

You're absolutely right that this is about provocation rather than intelligent warfare or intelligence-gathering. The question is, what next, if anything? Cheney can't tuck an atom bomb between his legs, flap his arms real hard, fly over Iran and drop it. Anything that happens must depend on a lot of other people implementing it. Right now I'm a little skeptical that anyone in the White House could take any really dramatic action, but I sure want to hear about it if they do.

Any slashdotters in the military noticing anything? Do we have anyone who can send reports from inside Iran if anything happens? Basically we're talking about the possibility of a totally rogue White House operating without Congressional authority. That's unconstitutional and the military should not be playing along with anything like that- and probably are not- but this is potentially a very big deal.

Re:Third cut?

[RodgerDodger]

The first two got cut because an Egyptian port started ordering ships to anchor-at-sea in a new area - one which the cables passed through.

It's not that ship anchors have become more dangerous, it's that humans have become more careless.

Re:Third cut?

[ScrewMaster]

On the other hand, a simple communications blackout would be easier to achieve at the terminus. Just pull the plug on the router and be done with it. That's if Iran wanted to black itself out ... that doesn't mean their can't be foul play at work from someone else.

Re:Third cut?

[jc42]

Not tinfoil hat time, either. Just the U.S. government doing what it does best - tapping into and monitoring our enemies'(and everyone else's) communications. Just one more reason to not use the Net for anything that requires secrecy.

Nah; you just have to accept the advice that the internet security folks have been saying again and again, at least from the early 1980s, and probably a lot earlier: The only way to have secrecy is end-to-end encryption. And you can't rely on any builtin encryption; you have to install it yourself. Preferably from the source code, because if you use any vendor's binaries, you have no idea what may be hidden inside them.

This is not some sort of clever or paranoid advice. It's the ongoing from all the security folks from the beginning.

(Well, OK; except for the ones who have something they want to sell you. ;-)

Re:Third cut?

[Zeinfeld]

Second, you're absolutely right that it would be suicidal. My understanding is that the Iranian Sunburn missiles can rather easily take out our supercarriers. Don't we just happen to have three right there in striking range? Is the idea that we get Iran to take out our supercarriers to JUSTIFY the ceaseless war and kick it up a notch?

Well one possibility is that they plan to use nuclear weapons after they lose the carriers. My working assumption is that Bush is a clinical psychopath and that he actually enjoies getting people killed, gives him a buzz. If so using a nuclear weapon would give him the biggest buzz of his life.

Before you dismiss this as Bush hatred, consider the peculiar reaction Bush had to the Texas executions, his insistence on keeping open the option to use torture at huge political cost despite the evident fact that the US is no longer using torture. I cannot explain this situation in political terms, it makes no sense.

These adventures in the middle east have not made the US stronger, they have made Iran stronger and the US weaker. A war with Iran will have the same effect resulting in a single pan-Shia state.

Re:Third cut?

[spun]

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?

Re:Third cut?

[jd]

Ironyblind just means you can't see Irn Bru soda.

Re:Third cut?

[jd]

That, and the Egyptian captains were issued whetstones by the US navy for anchor-sharpening practice.

Re:Third cut?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

No. I always been 137. Was 167 on the "old" Technocrat, too. Before they ditched UIDs.

Re:Third cut?

[jd]

Actually, I believe the transatlantic cable has indeed been cut by accident at least once in the past decade. Even so, we're talking very different incident rates here. Anyways, as for who is responsible, half the planet has motives and the other half have motives for making the first half look guilty of something. This makes "Murder on the Orient Express" look like a tale of lilly-white innocents. It could be any of them. It could even be all of them. The earliest we're likely to know for sure is in 50 years time when the UK declassifies this year's goings-on - as part of SIGINT, they will know what is happening, one way or another.

Re:Third cut?

[jez9999]

Co-incidence is what people call it when they're confronted by something systematic that they aren't able to understand. It doesn't exist.

I think you're thinking of "magic".

Do you know the meaning of co-incidence? It means some things happening simultaneously. It's quite possible to fully understand an event and say that it was a co-incidence.

Re:Third cut?

[ShieldW0lf]

I disagree.

I think coincidence just means that despite being slapped upside the head with a clue, you still don't understand what's going on. It's one thing to accept that some things are beyond your capacity to ever understand but still exist and move on on that basis, it's another thing to believe that just because you can't see the system, it isn't there.

Coincidences are very often the only hints you get that there is a pattern there, and the best you can do is acknowledge that it exists in some shape and move on with that niggling knowledge resting in your head without either obsessing over it or dismissing it.

If you can do that, you can intuitively anticipate patterns that are beyond your capacity to properly understand.

Calling something a coincidence, on the other hand, is a way of psychologically dismissing it. It's a way of protecting a persons sense of being in control, which is very important to most people.

Maybe in the grand scheme of things, I'm wrong, but I find this perspective on the world empowering, so I'll probably keep it regardless.

Re:Third cut?

[owlstead]

From the fortune cookies file (always handy to have the fortune db accessible):

Hanlon's Razor:
                Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained
                by stupidity.

Re:Third cut?

[spun]

Oh, it's true. Could be anyone. I just picked Bush because I know sumdumass loves him. I'm a bad, mean troll, I know.

Re:Third cut?

[hazem]

Last night while sitting in my chair
I pinged a host that wasn't there
It wasn't there again today
The host resolved to NSA.

Shakespeare of the net.

Several people are impressed by that. However, I'm the product of the American education system, so that parody has sailed completely over my head. Googling for the first line pretty much yields the parent post. Can you help enlighten me? What is that based on?

Re:Third cut?

[jd]

No, you picked Bush because 98% of the planet wishes it was him, and the other 2% handed him cable cutters.

Re:Third cut?

[onepoint]

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.

Re:Third cut?

[KORfan]

Why would a US carrier get within range of Iranian missiles? A USN CVBG is built around using it's aircraft to strike the enemy, and they can use air-to-air refueling to extend their range more than ten times that of an Iranian shore-to-sea missile. If the Iranian Navy wants to come out to fight they'll sink quite quickly. Iran has no hope of striking a US carrier.

If you're referring to the 2006 Hizbollah attack on a Saar 5 corvette, keep in mind that the Saar 5 has a displacement of 1227 tons, and a Nimitz-class carrier displaces over 100,000 tons. Damaging a Saar 5 is a long, long way from sinking a carrier.

Iran's airforce hasn't had proper maintenance since the days of the Shah. This was made clear in the first Persian Gulf war, when they couldn't defeat Iraq. The Iranian F-14s stayed clear of combat and acted as AWACS planes. Iran was using massed infantry attacks against armor, minefields, and large earthen fortifications. Remember the Korean-made plastic keys to heaven? After the Shah was ousted they did their best to drive out the technorati. If you were a geek, you were in unwelcome. If you could maintain electronics, they wanted you to take up camel herding.

If we had the manpower to invade Iran, and I'll agree that we don't, it would be an exercise in logistics to supply ammunition and fuel. Hopefully we'd have to manage large numbers of prisoners, but only a fool would count on that. Trying to occupy Iran would make Iran look pleasant. If they try to stand against us on a battlefield, they'll lose. If they want to sit in cities and kills us in ones and twos, they'll do so. As it is, we can bomb all we want.

Re:Third cut?

[themoneyish]

Speaking of movies, it might be a fire sale

Re:Third cut?

[smittyoneeach]

New, here?
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/03/the_blameamericafirst_crowd.html

Re:Third cut?

[emilper]

How about:

  - winter in Northern Hemisphere -> bad weather -> ships not being able to enter poorly designed ports -> ships attempting to anchor outside port in order to prevent drifting and save on the fuel.

  - lots of cables in place

  - some of the cables end near ports, mostly because there is infrastructure in place

  - some of the anchors, while the ships are pushed by winds/currents, break some of the cables.

Dilemma solved. Nobody profits.

To all those folks talking about US submarines cutting cables or US arranging for the cables to be cut in order to do ... whatever ...: take a deep breath, and maybe drink a glass of water. If you imagine any country depends on it's official communications only on submarine cables, think again. I bet Iran has land cables to Russia, Turkey, Pakistan etc. Egypt talked about "rationing" the use of "internet" because the filesharers were using that particular cable to get whatever they are getting from peers in Europe, and because it's better to blame the p2p-ers than to explain why is there only one cable in place.

Check this out:

PING irna.ir (209.1.163.102) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 209.1.163.102: icmp_seq=1 ttl=49 time=297 ms

irna.ir is "The Islamic Republic News Agency". It's up and running fine. Iran is not cut off from the internet. Egypt is not cut off from the internet, and it would be stupid ... no, moronic, for US or any European/North American state to arrange this, since Egypt is one of the few states in the Middle East where some resemblance of reason is preserved.

Re:Third cut?

[Ginsu2000]

Theory 1: Its a NSA ploy so presumably innocent slashdotters will click on the posted Iranian links (to see if they are still up), so that the NSA can justify their snooping.

Re:Third cut?

[jsiren]

Seeing as submarine cables do occasionally get cut by forces of nature and the odd unfortunately laid anchor, it's hard to tell whether these go in the oops or "oops" category...

Then again, this certainly is no communications blackout. Slowdown, yes; troublesome and costly, yes, somewhat. Even though Internet Traffic Report indicates router1.iust.ac.ir as unreachable, www.iust.ac.ir is currently reachable, at least from northern Europe. I don't know about other connectivity, though.

Re:Third cut?

[mabhatter654]

Those guys are good.. if they wanted to just tap lines, the outage would be under an hour, and not all at once and at 'off peak' times to not tip off anybody.

Re:Third cut?

[Chris Johnson]

The router that's dead is vortechosting, but someone from Miami was posting. Who's familiar with the network topology in Florida? What I'm wondering is whether vortechosting being dead cuts off Tampa from the internet.

Can you have connectivity to Miami but have Tampa still be black?

That would be significant because Tampa is CENTCOM and SOCOM (aka Special Ops). Is there anyone in Tampa who can still post or is Tampa really black? Because if Tampa is black that could mean SOCOM is where the attack is coming FROM and there are things happening in Tampa that aren't supposed to get out.

Re:Third cut?

[Cajun Hell]

How much tech do you really need to cut a cable?

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?

[darkmeridian]

It may be intentional, but who did it? Not necessarily the United States and Israel, if you think about it. Iran may not want to let its people access the Internet, while the powerful get Internet via microwave or satellite.

Re:Third cut?

[lawn.ninja]

We aren't very well versed in warfare tactics eh... First you cut power. Then you cut communications, if you can't completely eliminate them you clog the pipes. This is effectively dividing them up and making smaller individual targets that can't coordinate as well as they should be able to. Then by removing the communications and power you also get the side benefit of messing with their economic system. Bam! Instant instability. Now you let that go and act like you want to help. "Oh no, we'z be sendin' aid right to ya pronto!" After that you let the populace implode on itself. The instability and the recent threats of nuclear weapons now give you a valid reason to occupy the country. You can't let the bad guys get their hands on the nukes right, we're only trying to help. Just my, tin hat wearing, take on it. It's how I'd justify an invasion if I wanted to bypass any type of controls.

Re:Third cut?

[orasio]

No, you picked Bush because 98% of the planet wishes it was him, and the other 2% handed him cable cutters. I don't think that has any logic.
I live in South America, and I sure wish there was no war against Iran, because I think everybody loses in that scenario. If I wished it was Bush, regardless of whether I like him or not, I would be rooting for war. I don't think 98% of people are rooting for war.

Re:Third cut?

[Chris Johnson]

Let me fix that for you:

if this is followed by news that Iran just OMG WTF SANK ALL UR CARRIERS DOOD! FOR NO REASONZ! MARTIAL LAW! WAR IS NOW WITH YOU!

_then_ we know what happened, and the missing data is "after an unprovoked strike at Iran, probably by Special Ops coordinated out of SOCOM in Tampa, Florida" which is apparently out of contact with the Internet as we speak. Specifically, vortechosting is black, you can get through to Miami but there's major and continuing internet outage right around where CENTCOM and SOCOM are. Something's happening, guys.

Re:Third cut?

[John Hasler]

Because as everyone knows, Iran has absolutely no communication links but that one cable: no radio, no satellite links, no buried cable into neigboring nations: just that one single undersea fiber-optic cable.

Right.

Re:Third cut?

[medcave]

Florida shows to be down too. Guess they nuked it in retaliation!

Re:Third cut?

[Dun Malg]

We all know that ironyblind people can see irony correctly underwater while those who have correct perception cannot.

There, fixed that for ya ;-) Attempted facetiousness != irony.

Re:Third cut?

[The One and Only]

Before you dismiss this as Bush hatred, consider the peculiar reaction Bush had to the Texas executions, his insistence on keeping open the option to use torture at huge political cost despite the evident fact that the US is no longer using torture. I cannot explain this situation in political terms, it makes no sense.

Bush was a callous jerk about Texas executions, true. Part of that was definitely an act to piss off liberals, because conservatives find those things funny (e.g. Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh) and would be sympathetic to his antics. Even if it wasn't, it doesn't prove that Bush gets turned on by killing people, just that he doesn't feel any mercy or remorse for it if he thinks it's justified.

As for the torture thing, there are two possible motivations. One is that there are, in fact, a limited number of corner cases where torture is actually useful, though in the vast majority of cases it's horrible and unjustifiable. Another is that the bill to ban torture was seen as an unnecessary overreaction by the left (I don't think it was but Bush and other conservatives undoubtedly did) and supporting that bill would have been seen as a political concession. This is similar to the conservative opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, which some conservatives saw as a rallying cry for the feminist left more than it was a good-faith attempt to improve the law.

I have no interest in or desire to apologize for Bush. I always thought he was a well-meaning dullard with too much loyalty to the wrong people, people who ultimately used him. Less Palpatine, more Jar-Jar Binks.

Re:Third cut?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are almost certainly at least a handful (I feel fairly comfortable saying around 5-10) of diverse long-haul fiber routes into Tampa, owned by multiple fiber providers, and almost certainly more into Miami, some through Tampa and some not.

Re:Third cut?

[Chris Johnson]

The tone of that is so dark that I think I want to add a little caveat here: I may be REALLY AGGRESSIVELY trying to sort out what's happening in what might be a major US military operation currently underway- which could well get me dragged out of my house by special ops. BUT...

I'm an American, and consider myself as patriotic as a person ought to be, and if I've correctly guessed what's trying to happen, I have major complaints about the plan. What I'm proposing is that someone, probably Cheney, is trying to execute a false-flag thing (possibly for the second time? I couldn't say), specifically they are trying to orchestrate a strike on Iran for the express purpose of getting Iran to hit back.

Because if Iran sinks our carriers, as they can in fact do, but there's no news of any attack by US, it's 9/11 all over again, which is completely what the executive branch politically needs right now. They NEED an attack, preferably on military targets they can control and order within range of the attack.

BUT IF IRAN SINKS OUR CARRIERS OUR MILITARY IS CRIPPLED. Never mind the rightness or wrongness of secret unprovoked bombings of Iran, that's a separate and worthwhile discussion. Endangering such a major backbone of our military for political gain is treasonous.

So if suddenly OMG they sunk our carriers, that says I guessed right- and THAT says that the people running this were willing to trade off our military effectiveness, literally, for another chance to chant 9/11 9/11 9/11 and get their political way.

I don't think I have to approve of that in order to be an American, or patriotic. My hope is actually that these perhaps-preparatory actions such as making Iran and Tampa (?) go black, and moving the carriers within Sunburn range, were allowed to happen but the actual part involving an unprovoked and secret strike on Iran hits a roadblock and doesn't happen. Then we'd all be left happily guessing WTF happened, and you can tease me about it all you like ;)

Re:Third cut?

[Plekto]

Re-routing the traffic all through the U.K. means that it is all being monitored. The U.K. analyzes and filters all(100%. Not 90 or 99%, but 100%) information that goes in and out(and has laws it's written to make it legal to do so) through email and the web and so on.

The U.S. is working on such a system but it's only partially implemented.

Even 3-4 months of monitoring all of the traffic in and out of Iran is golden from an information gathering/spying perspective. The U.S. just took advantage of the first two breaks. (breaking Iran's cable also sends a "we own you" message to Iran, make no mistake about it) - All it would take is a SEAL team or similar in such shallow waters and a few minutes to cut.

Why it think this is because of the stupidly simple ease in which you can knock out half of Iran's bandwidth for a month or two. One group of demolition divers and a few hours of work(most of that being decompression). That's nothing compared to thousands of other more nefarious deeds done during the Cold War.

Re:Third cut?

[Tango42]

"Dilemma solved. Nobody profits."

Except the cable repair company...

Re:Third cut?

[SpaceLifeForm]

Yesterday upon the stair
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?

[Chris Johnson]

Zeinfeld, this has nothing to do with Bush. He's a figurehead. I've heard elsewhere that in a speech in the last couple days he looked REALLY bad- which brings me back to how lost he was on 9/11. This guy is not running the show. When things go down, he's given a copy of 'My Pet Goat' and told to sit and be quiet. It's Cheney behind this stuff.

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?

[palantir0]

The comment was funny if your sphincter isn't all up in a bunch. People laugh at incredibly awful things to relieve tension and to cope with things that are mostly out of their control. US will retain superpower status regardless of a sinking ship. The world is falling mentality doesn't equate to real world that operates at a much higher level of sophistication.

War would be a bad thing, no disagreement there. Bush is itching to bomb them before leaving office probably. Isn't likely to happen now however which is a good thing.

The moral of the story: bury the cables so they don't become anchor food.

Cheers

Re:Third cut?

[LaskoVortex]

All you've stated is that you don't believe the coincidence. You have given no proof that this was on purpose or preparation for an invasion. Just because you believe, or don't believe, something doesn't make it a fact.

How about, you? Hmm...All you've stated is that you believe the coincidence. You have given no proof that this was not on purpose or preparation for an invasion. Just because you believe, or don't believe, something doesn't make it a fact.

You have to believe one thing or the other. Believing in coincidences means you are necessarily believing in the low probability situation, why else would you label it a coincidence? You did use the word "coincidence" did you not?

Re:Third cut?

[X0563511]

No, most likely some jackass decided to firewall echo requests to the router, or replies from the router. You know, for "security".

Re:Third cut?

[bdjacobson]

Well hey, at least if that's the case it's clearly a case where they're actively interested in listening to THEIR data; which makes me less concerned that they're interested in me. Then again, I'm not actively organizing protests (or am I?) :O

Re:Third cut?

[__aaqvdr516]

Once is accident.

Twice is coincidence.

Thrice is enemy action.

And 7 is the number of undersea cables that were damaged in an earthquake near Taiwan in 2006. Sometimes things happen, especially in one of the most traversed areas in the middle east. I've been through there on a ship. There are ships anchored constantly. The anchors that we're talking about are not the tiny kind that are on your fishing boat. They're designed to rip into the sea floor. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they just drag. I've had the pleasure of being dragged while anchored quite a long ways due to tidal currents near Anapolis MD. It's not far fetched at all. It's reality.

Re:Third cut?

[khallow]

Hmmm, at a glance it appears that there's really two instances of cable cuts. The first two occured in the same spot (a bit north of Alexandria, Egypt) and could be explained by someone dragging a single boat anchor over both of them (accidentally or deliberately).

Re:Third cut?

[Dun Malg]

Calling something a coincidence, on the other hand, is a way of psychologically dismissing it. It's a way of protecting a persons sense of being in control, which is very important to most people. The desire to be in control makes people see controllable events as random and uncontrollable? Interesting analysis, to say the least! The same theory would be more accurately applied to conspiracy theorists. The compulsion to see undesirable events as having human instigators is an expression of the desire for control. Some folks find the idea that there isn't someone behind these events, that there's nothing that can be done to prevent these random horrors, too frightening for words. They grimly cling to the notion that someone, somewhere is in control of things, making bad stuff happen. Someone who, if the conspiracy were only exposed, could be made to stop these terrible events.

Re:Third cut?

[Chris Johnson]

http://www.google.com/search?q=operational+range+of+sunburn+missiles

They're cruise missiles. Good luck getting through the Strait of Hormuz when the Sunburn's range covers the entire width of the Gulf at that point.

What reports I've seen suggest the carriers are off the coast of Iran, which is absolutely within Sunburn range. Hell, more than half the Gulf is. If there are friendly forces in Saudi Arabia or Qatar, or if they can fire Sunburns from ships, every inch of the Gulf is vulnerable. It's not like we have these missiles. They're Russian. The rest of Iran's defences suck. They have nothing worth a damn for protecting themselves against bombing or sea-to-land missiles. They just have that offensive capability, and it's not specifically theirs, it's Russian technology.

"we can bomb all we want" my ass. You make me ashamed.

Re:Third cut?

[Zeinfeld]

Why would a US carrier get within range of Iranian missiles? A USN CVBG is built around using it's aircraft to strike the enemy, and they can use air-to-air refueling to extend their range more than ten times that of an Iranian shore-to-sea missile. If the Iranian Navy wants to come out to fight they'll sink quite quickly. Iran has no hope of striking a US carrier.

The further out the carrier is from the targets, the longer the time it takes to get to and from the target area, the less time can be spent over the targets.

The supercarrier strategy was developed when? 1970s? 60s? Since then Russia and China have spent rather a lot of time working out strategies to sink them. Both have the resources to build a supercarrier, neither has chosen to do so. One explanation is the standard US military chest thumping 'we are supreme' approach, another is that missile technology has rendered supercarriers obsolete the same way that the machine gun rendered the cavalry charge obsolete.

If you're referring to the 2006 Hizbollah attack on a Saar 5 corvette, keep in mind that the Saar 5 has a displacement of 1227 tons, and a Nimitz-class carrier displaces over 100,000 tons. Damaging a Saar 5 is a long, long way from sinking a carrier.

The World Trade Center was even bigger, your point? If the electronic countermeasures can be defeated on the small ship by one missile I would not be too confident that the countermeasures on the larger ship cannot possibly be defeated by a simultaneous attack from many missiles.

Iran's airforce hasn't had proper maintenance since the days of the Shah. This was made clear in the first Persian Gulf war, when they couldn't defeat Iraq.

This is somewhat true of the US supplied planes, but the revolution was almost thirty years ago. Since then Iran has been buying planes from Russia and China and even more missiles. Iran has the second largest missile fleet in the third world, second only to North Korea.

If Iran is a pushover then why is everyone nervous of her? Seems to me that this is just more of the happy-think that got us into Iraq. Its easy to blunder into a disaster when anyone who dares suggest that the military might not be quite as strong as imagined can be dismissed as unpatriotic, a traitor or whatever.

I don't think that there is anyone in the military command left who has the guts to actually raise hard questions. After seven years of politicization the only generals left are the yes men.

Re:Third cut?

[happyfeet2000]

Cthulu awakes. And he's pissed. You can follow his path on the map...

Re:Third cut?

[Brickwall]

This is in response to all the posts that suggest Bush is anxious/eager to start a war with Iran before he leaves office, and not just palantir0's post.

You are all touching in your paranoid naivete. Bush is less than a year away from retiring to Crawford, and leaving all the crap behind. Far from starting another war, he'd be happy if there were signs that Iraq was cooling down. At this point in time, he's more concerned with his place in history than he is with bombing Iran. He'd like to be remembered as the man who started the process of bringing democracy to the middle East, not a trigger-happy fool. After Inauguration Day, you won't hear any more from him until he's out working the stump for brother Jeb in 2012.

Re:Third cut?

[Plekto]

Well, you do need at least a bit of plausible deniability. ie - "This happens all the time..."

You also can't just yank it or else get slammed by the press and the U.N. for it - and that's a lot of negative publicity our government doesn't want right now.

So you cut it and conveniently offer to route traffic through other systems(which you control of course). Message sent, offer to help them, and legal (thanks to U.K. laws) means to look at the traffic.

Re:Third cut?

[Sh0t]

what kind does he have?

I found out I was colorblind when i joined the Marine Corps, until then, I had NO idea I had a problem. when I took the dot tests and the falant tests, i failed utterly.
One side effect was that i saw through camouflage better, sorta like what you are saying here with your father, but it works because we don't get the same break up of the shapes that camouflage tries to accomplish.

I have what they call "yellow/green" colorblindness.

It was odd in my case because it is very rare in blacks, and i'm a black male.

Re:Third cut?

[geekoid]

Maybe Iran did it to try and stop the US from gathering intelligence? or maybe the company that gets paid to fix it did it, or a tel com competitor?

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?

[Dun Malg]

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. It happens about once a year or so, judging by a quick Google news search.

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?

[gunny01]

If the US is behind this, it's a pretty stupid move. I bet for ever Iranian teenager reading how to bomb the infidels, there's at least ten watching porn. Cut off the internet, and you cut off the messages of the west.

The Iranian Army will still teach them to make bombs, though.

Re:Third cut?

[Dun Malg]

the missing data is "after an unprovoked strike at Iran, probably by Special Ops coordinated out of SOCOM in Tampa, Florida" which is apparently out of contact with the Internet as we speak. Specifically, vortechosting is black, you can get through to Miami but there's major and continuing internet outage right around where CENTCOM and SOCOM are. Something's happening, guys. Yes, because it is standard military procedure to disrupt civilian internet communication (but not phone or any other) in the city nearest any base where men in dress uniforms sit in concrete bunkers handling the mundane logistics of a real combat operation thousands of miles away... just in case an internet blogger has xray specs and can see them at their desks? Seriously, if you actually knew anything about SOCOM there at MacDill AFB, you'd know how frickin' stupid you sound. There's nothing to see there. It's the administrative headquarters for special operations units. And even if it was a deployment center full of SEALs and Green Berets and such, you'd never know anything was going on anyway, because the normal activity level would be completely indistinguishable from the deployment of a handful of small special ops teams. What possible benefit could there be from cutting off Tampa's internet connectivity?

Re:Third cut?

[Poltras]

I have what they call "yellow/green" colorblindness. For my part, I cannot distinguish pale red from pale green... not sure about yellow. And I have no idea about camouflage, but I'd sure like to take the test hehe. Unfortunately no camouflaged ninjas ever attempted to kill me...

and i'm a black male. Woah, let's stay impersonal here, like slashdot was meant to be. ;)

Re:Third cut?

[Dun Malg]

Looks like a variation of the old classic:

As I was climbing up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
He must be from the CIA

This one goes back about 40 years.

Re:Third cut?

[geekoid]

I would be highly surprised if we fought Iran using the same tactics as we use in Iraq.

Iraq would be cracked like an egg with a old school style bombing. Not that show off are new stealth fighter bombing, I mean dropping bombs from 30-40,000 feet.

We could also destroy a couple of key water plants and cripple their country.

Iran is such a problem for us because we wanted to minimize damage, and we've been pretty damn good about it. We could have leveled any city they have in a matter of hours. Conventionally.

No, the reason it would be a bad idea is because of the political fallout;which you mentioned.
Now, if the US, Russia and China struck a deal about the outcome, the Iran would just be screwed. No that would be unlikely, but major countries like a regular and dependable supply of oil, and having your supply in constant risk from Fanatics is a risk.

Clearly what is happening is that the great Cthulu has awoken and there trying to stop it.

Re:Third cut?

[ShieldW0lf]

The world is full of conspiracies. They're all over the place. As a businessman, I'm a conspirator. As someone interested in creating disruptive technologies, I'm a conspirator. Every corporation is an open conspiracy. Conspiracies are everywhere, they're the natural order of our society.

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:Third cut?

[armada]

What makes you think that it's not the Iranian government (or a rogue faction (wow, that sounded like a clip from a cheesy game just then)) summarily killing all outgoing and incomming public communication? If sensoring public use of the interweb is too much trouble.... just kill it in such a way that you dont come off as the oppressor.

Re:Third cut?

[kd5ujz]

Could it possibly be underwater wiretapping gone bad? Practice?

Re:Third cut?

[whowe82]

Thats amazing, except for concrete to completely cure takes about 500 years.

Re:Third cut?

[Chris Johnson]

Touche, sir. But remember, we're talking about the White House. They're CRAZY. You expect the things they do to make sense, and work? :P

Re:Third cut?

[Zeinfeld]

We could also destroy a couple of key water plants and cripple their country.

They could close the Straits of Hormuz to shipping and cripple every Western economy.

If we attack their civilian infrastructure they can and will retaliate against ours. We have rather more points of vulnerability than they do: power plants, chemical works, storage depots.

Re:Third cut?

[rs79]

Keep in mind the day after 9/11 one million Iranians demonstrated in Tehran in a candellight vigil in support of the US.

Since then the US has done nothing but antagnize them.

In any war "the people" get the blame for being swine, but in all cases it's a very small number of dangerous lunatics that are the ones that are truly evil. Of course it's the people that suffer the most, the evil swine themselves allways seem to survive to fight another war.

And so it goes.

Re:Third cut?

[rs79]

Keep in mind the day after 9/11 one million Iranians demonstrated in Tehran in a candellight vigil in support of the US.

Since then the US has done nothing but antagnize them.

In any war "the people" get the blame for being swine, but in all cases it's a very small number of dangerous lunatics that are the ones that are truly evil. Of course it's the people that suffer the most, the evil swine themselves always seem to survive to fight another war.

And so it goes.

Re:Third cut?

[DavidTC]

No, the theory is that you can provoke them by firing a few missiles at them, wait until they haul out one of their missiles and sink one of our superdestroyers we have anchored off their coast, claim they attacked us, and then start bombing.

You couldn't hide a war, you could easily hide a tiny attack to start a war.

I don't know what's actually going on, and I doubt it's anything. Within a week or two, everything will be back to normal and a lot of people will look paranoid.

But if Iran suddenly mysteriously 'decides to attack us' while we're out of contact with them, that's what happened.

Re:Third cut?

[juhan pruun]

In other news Iran is dealing with Russia to buy long range surface-to-air missile systems. http://www.lenta.ru/news/2008/02/01/iran/

Re:Third cut?

[rs79]

The Iranian explanation that it was a routine inspection just trying to get the numbers on the side of the boat made more sense than the pentgons explanatin with audio from here and video from there.

If I was on that ship and somebody said "look - terrorists, they're going to blow us up" I'd have responsed with "they why are they wearing lifejackets?"

Re:Third cut?

[jollyreaper]

That must be what they mean when they say, "Comcastic" I'm glad they went with that rather than "comgasmic." Cuz that would just cross the line.

Re:Third cut?

[totally bogus dude]

It's a very compelling theory, but I have to wonder: why are they only tapping them now?

I think it's a bit naive to think that they haven't been tapping these lines for an awfully long time. Of course that brings up a related possibility: the taps were discovered and are being removed.

I also think it's pretty unlikely that anyone would transmit anything sensitive over the internet without strong encryption.

Re:Third cut?

[Hes Nikke]

I'd sure like to take the test hehe. what does it mean if the bottom left of the first test was hard, and i see an 8 for the 2nd test?

Re:Third cut?

[Kazymyr]

Nah, it's just the new season of "24"

Re:Third cut?

[Chandon Seldon]

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

That's a decent first approximation, but it's not good enough if actual maliciousness is reasonably likely. Any competent person doing something malicious will make damn sure it looks like an honest stupid mistake.

Re:Third cut?

[weierstrass]

because the diameter of the eastern hemisphere is 800 miles.

Re:Third cut?

[Propaganda13]

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.

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."

Exactly! The non-colorblind person couldn't see the colors correctly so he was pointing out the wrong cables. Duh!

Re:Third cut?

[emilper]

everybody much too busy being Tom Clancy and cutting tinfoil

Re:Third cut?

[GrassIsRed]

They grimly cling to the notion that someone, somewhere is in control of things, making bad stuff happen."

Someone like Osama bin Laden you mean? Official explanations are often conspiracy theories too you know.

Re:Third cut?

[sumdumass]

Oh spun, lol. It isn't that I love him, It is that I don't like seeing him unfairly accused of things. I would goto the defense of even you if everyone started ganging up on you capriciously and maliciously. You could say I'm more motivated by the actions of others then any love for Bush.

Re:Third cut?

[rossz]

Your dad has the rarest form of color blindness. I've only heard of one other person with it. I have the more common red/green type, plus a slight touch of the blue/yellow one. I always bring a friend along when shopping for anything that requires color coordination to avoid embarrassing mistakes, e.g. clothing.

The ability to spot camouflage is because the design and color choices were made to trick people with normal sight.

Re:Third cut?

[sumdumass]

There are these telescoping things that fit over the eye and magnify things to the point you can see then as far away as the horizon. I think they are called binoculars and monoculars. If you watch the Iranian video, the guy standing beside the other guy talking on the radio was using a pair to watch the speed boats play chicken with the big navy ships.

All joking aside, Iraq was attempting to force a situation. Maybe not one where they would get fired on but possible one where they could cause evasive action and observe the ships maneuvering ability as well as it's maneuvers (good for setting traps later). I think their actions were more geared towards an international reaction then any actual damage combined with a little inteligence gathering.

As for sailors wearing life jackets, Well we don't know that they weren't packed with explosives instead of buoyancy materials. But they probably where wearing life jackets and a likely reason for them to be wearing them could be very similar to why a lot of sailors never learned how to swim in the past. They knew sitting in an ocean waiting to be picked off by sharks or starve to death which ever came first was worse then the 3-5 minutes of not breathing. Similarly, it is reasonable to expect a soldier, suicidal or not, to do something in the line of duty but protect himself in the process. It isn't that they don't mind dieing for their country, it is that they prefer not to especially what falling overboard doesn't help anyone else out.

But think about this statement on life jackets. What if they were wearing them, You basically said that if I did have a boat load of explosive running towards your ship, If I was wearing life jackets, I could probably get closer then if I wasn't. OK, so what if I could get closer but not all the way close. I could steer the boat at your ship, open to full throttle and jump overboard allowing my boat to crash and explode into the side of yours. And if your ship was moving at any speed, the other boats could pick me up and get us out of there while your still dealing with the confusion of the explosion. It isn't like the ship can stop on a dime. And even if it could, it wouldn't because of the other threats around it. It is hard to second guess something that happened under stress, especially with life and death on the line. For every what if or should of, there is another then if and would of.

Re:Third cut?

[Neillparatzo]

Spy sappin' my salary.

Re:Third cut?

[greg_barton]

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."

You've just repeated my basic attitude about most things. I like to call it "Devout Agnosticism" for short. :)

Re:Third cut?

[StikyPad]

Pressing is just using a larger iron to get the job done faster. What would be ironic is if you ironed your BCGs, on account of the fact that you weren't wearing them.

Re:Third cut?

[laejoh]

ironyblind?

It just means you can't understand a certain kind of humour.

Re:Third cut?

[gr8scot]

Check this out:

PING irna.ir (209.1.163.102) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 209.1.163.102: icmp_seq=1 ttl=49 time=297 ms

irna.ir is "The Islamic Republic News Agency". It's up and running fine. Iran is not cut off from the internet. Egypt is not cut off from the internet, and it would be stupid ... no, moronic, for US or any European/North American state to arrange this, since Egypt is one of the few states in the Middle East where some resemblance of reason is preserved. Confirmed.

$ ping irna.ir
PING irna.ir (209.1.163.102) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 209.1.163.102: icmp_seq=1 ttl=48 time=38.1 ms
64 bytes from 209.1.163.102: icmp_seq=2 ttl=48 time=37.3 ms
64 bytes from 209.1.163.102: icmp_seq=3 ttl=48 time=37.4 ms
64 bytes from 209.1.163.102: icmp_seq=4 ttl=48 time=38.9 ms
64 bytes from 209.1.163.102: icmp_seq=5 ttl=48 time=36.9 ms
64 bytes from 209.1.163.102: icmp_seq=6 ttl=48 time=37.4 ms
64 bytes from 209.1.163.102: icmp_seq=7 ttl=48 time=37.8 ms
64 bytes from 209.1.163.102: icmp_seq=8 ttl=48 time=37.2 ms
64 bytes from 209.1.163.102: icmp_seq=9 ttl=48 time=42.4 ms
64 bytes from 209.1.163.102: icmp_seq=10 ttl=48 time=38.6 ms
64 bytes from 209.1.163.102: icmp_seq=11 ttl=48 time=47.3 ms
64 bytes from 209.1.163.102: icmp_seq=12 ttl=48 time=35.6 ms
64 bytes from 209.1.163.102: icmp_seq=13 ttl=48 time=49.0 ms
64 bytes from 209.1.163.102: icmp_seq=14 ttl=48 time=39.1 ms


--- irna.ir ping statistics --- 14 packets transmitted, 14 received, 0% packet loss, time 196372ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 35.669/39.553/49.063/3.852 ms

Totally, confirmed: 00:45 PDT, 2008-02-02. And, judging by the times, at least one of the three cut wires is repaired. Maybe it was just the weather.

...and it would be stupid ... no, moronic, for US or any European/North American state to arrange this, since Egypt is one of the few states in the Middle East where some resemblance of reason is preserved. Frankly, my dear, I just don't give a damn about your strategic plausibility arguments. Just show me that the IntarTubes are still On, mmm-kay?

Re:Third cut?

[LaskoVortex]

whoosh

That's the sound of mod points being wasted on your post.

Re:Third cut?

[jamesh]

Unfortunately no camouflaged ninjas ever attempted to kill me...

Are you sure? What if they did and their attempt failed... how would you know?

Re:Third cut?

[daniel23]

Check this out:

PING irna.ir (209.1.163.102) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 209.1.163.102: icmp_seq=1 ttl=49 time=297 ms

Nice try. I suggest you do a traceroute on that host or feed the IP to some IP2Location look up.

209.1.163.102 (irna.ir) is hosted somewhere near san francisco

7 sl-gw35-nyc-11-0-0.sprintlink.net (160.81.172.169) 144.399 ms 128.771 ms 128.782 ms
  8 sl-bb23-nyc-11-0-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.13.36) 132.188 ms 131.804 ms 131.979 ms
  9 sl-bb24-nyc-6-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.13.170) 137.595 ms 136.567 ms 135.432 ms
10 144.232.9.118 (144.232.9.118) 1757.524 ms 1757.793 ms 1758.047 ms
11 cr1-loopback.sfo.savvis.net (206.24.210.70) 227.055 ms 224.271 ms 226.472 ms
12 er1-te-1-0-1.SanJose3Equinix.savvis.net (204.70.200.229) 217.334 ms 217.254 ms 216.697 ms
13 hr1-te-2-0-0.santaclarasc4.savvis.net (204.70.200.210) 213.887 ms 213.728 ms 215.181 ms
14 bhr1-pos-12-0.santaclarasc4.savvis.net (204.70.194.198) 216.759 ms 213.994 ms 213.840 ms
15 216.34.2.234 (216.34.2.234) 223.272 ms 223.703 ms 223.968 ms
16 209.1.163.102 (209.1.163.102) 218.678 ms !X 218.600 ms !X 219.086 ms !X

Re:Third cut?

[gr8scot]

There are times when things can be accidentally coincidental. But when the probability mathematical odds get really high, then the question should always be: was it deliberate? If it was terrorists there is a high likely hood that there would be a: "look what we did" news cast. But if it were the covert actions of a semi legitimate government, then it would be made to look accidental. OK, computer geek, model the ocean currents, the depths of the waters, the weights of boats and anchors, and, showing your work, explain the "high likely hood" that these coincidences are not the direct result of the weather. No? Then, just reply "Idle speculation is more fun for me than being right."

Re:Third cut?

[eionmac]

Cutting enemy communication cables is established UK practice. Refer events in 1914 and 1939 re the various German empires undersea cable communications. Egypt was practice for Iran perhaps?

Re:Third cut?

[cytg.net]

my thoughts excatly .. so when does the US liberation army inva...liberate those poor people ?

Re:Third cut?

[amorsen]

To install a tap on a circuit, you need to first cut or break into it if it's a fiber-optic cable. Wrong. Fiber-optic cables can be tapped simply by bending them. The "simply" bit gets a bit harder when you have to do it beneath the sea, of course.

Re:Third cut?

[**loki969**]

I just found a story in the firehose that might be related to that.

New release of Mujahideen Secrets software

Internet Business Law Services reports:
http://www.ibls.com/internet_law_news_portal_view.aspx?s=latestnews&id=1968

"Software designed specifically to aid Muslim terrorists hide their identities and location while online has been released in an updated version, according to security analyst Paul Henry of Secure Computing. He says the program is named Mujahideen Secrets 2, and claims it is "the first Islamic program for secure communications through networks with the highest technical level of encoding." Henry, VP of technology evangelism at Secure states that until recently al-Qaida didn't pose a credible threat on the Internet because of its reliance upon outdated technology. But having now developed modern encryption tools, the entire equation is changed. Equally disturbing is the fact the new jihadist program is being distributed via servers based in the U.S. -- in Tampa, Florida." It's available at http://www.ekhlaas.org/ (... but this site doesn't seem to work very well.)

Perhaps they disconected the server bc it hosts terror-warez.

Re:Third cut?

[onepoint]

the other person that you mention, is most likely my dad's pal ( he should be about 58 to 63 now ), he's the one that my dad sold most of his business to. they both only see gray ( given a zillion shades of it ) and are in great demand by industries all over the world.

most people have meet the results of my dad's work or my dad's friend, if you walk into a McDonald's or burger king. all the yellows and all the reds are EXACTLY alike there is no noticeable shade variation ( unless it's age ). Till my father stopped working, he was flown 3 times a year to factories, to confirm that the color coming off the line was exactly like the original color.

color association can be a real problem, the second you are tricked by the mind, you are stuck. That's why some people walk into an area and walk right out quickly, they get that "vibe" and they need to run quickly ( sometimes it's sound association ).

most humans have high levels of light sensitivity in which they can see different shades, it requires training. from what I recall, we are green and purple sensitive, so the black gentleman that mentioned he was very rare is correct ( and most likely people from areas where humans are prey ) , since survival in those conditions require keen eyesight development. Darwin rules apply, and over last 10000 years it just became rarer and more rarer.

Most of Europe, humans lost their prey status when megafauna was eliminated.

Re:Third cut?

[emilper]

It was never down. Repairs on the cables in the Mediterranean will be done sometimes next week due to very bad weather in the area. I don't know about the other cable, though ...

Re:Third cut?

[emilper]

Sir, you are absolutely right and should be modded up.

Irna.ir is hosted in US, California.
Baztab.com is hosted in Texas.
Iran Dayly is hosted in California.
and so on ...

I think if somebody wants to disable the Iranian propaganda machine they would have to cut off from the internet not Iran, but United States. Kind of ironic.

Still:
http://www.khamenei.ir/ is hosted in Iran and is was up yesterday, and still is
http://www.president.ir/fa/ is also hosted in Iran and was up, and still is

Re:Third cut?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

My mom has a color association. She hates Red. Nothing in our house was allowed to be red. She also pronounces the word wrong out of sheer spite (She says with a southern drawl not present in any of her other words 'RaaadD'). I don't know why, she says she just hates it. To be honest, its sort of rubbed off on me. I don't have any clothes with red in them, and I can't bring myself to buy anything thats red. It just looks wrong, unless its a small dress on an attractive woman. Then its cool.

Maybe thats why I don't like Red Hat or Fedora.

Re:Third cut?

[TheLink]

Sure. But really advanced maliciousness uses stupid people to do the dirty work :).

And sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.

Re:Third cut?

[permaculture]

"I don't see conspiracy where ever I look, but why would it have to be the US?"

Well, everyone outside the USA (and many inside) have been speculating for the last couple of years about who the USA will invade next.

And the smart money is on Iran.

Re:Third cut?

[palantir0]

He was building the rhetoric to attack/provoke iran. The only thing that cooled that was our report that Iran wasn't building a nuclear bomb. Otherwise, I don't believe for one second that he wasn't on that path. Don't forget that hitting Iran would be nothing like Iraq. There would be few or no troops. Given that only a nuke can penetrate the facilties, it would take alot of work to build momentum to do that. Likely it would be a small ground assault with air support instead of a nuke to take out facility. Now that it has been completely derailed by the report, I agree with you, he won't be able to do anything until he leaves office. I don't agree he doesn't want to do this while at the same time promoting peace in Iraq and Afgan.

Cheers

Re:Third cut?

[crmarvin42]

I'm not so naive as to think it couldn't be the US, it's just that the default assumption seems to be that it is hostile action and that it's the US. I find it hard to believe that the US is the only government that is at odds with Iran.

Re:Third cut?

[Brill]

its interesting how the military recognized and exploited his abilities. cloth, paint, lights, camo. hmmm

Re:Third cut?

[arminw]

.....You can't let the bad guys get their hands on the nukes......

Except in Pakistan the bad guys may get the nukes soon, if they don't already have them.

Re:Third cut?

[LiquidFire_HK]

Cthulu awakes. And he's pissed. Yeah, because you misspelled his name.

Re:Third cut?

[MSZ]

This just in: Undersea cable accidentally cut by stray anchor, whole Iran loses Internet connectivity. In other news, Navy anchor operator awarded medal for great service to Allah and the Iranian nation.

Re:Third cut?

[gr8scot]

I didn't know that I had been...

Who appointed you the TRUTH gatekeeper? Ha! So far, only you.

Re:Third cut?

[gr8scot]

But when the probability mathematical odds get really high, then the question should always be: was it deliberate? If I had noticed your alias before replying to you above, I probably would have put that a little bit differently than challenging you to model the scenario in a computer simulation. I think you're missing an important aspect of the 'bigpicture;' specifically, the conclusion that the odds are 'really high' against everything other than your hypothesis ignores the scenario somebody else already proposed above, that boats were anchored in rough waters and their anchors were dragged through some fiber optic cable, which I think is very plausible. Have a nice day.

Re:Third cut?

[bigpicture]

You make the assumption that what is reported is always accurate, or even the intended truth. That might be a little bit naive. Oh no, those in control or who might loose face never manipulate the media, do they?

For systems with built in redundancy, you might question the odds, of a complete failure. Or why do cables come ashore, at ports or where ships normally anchor? Or do they? Some of these considerations might even be a bit of a credulity stretch don't you think.

Re:Third cut?

[coolGuyZak]

The reports that were touted by Cheney et al. came from military intelligence. They were thoroughly torn apart by intelligence analysts at the CIA, then thoroughly ignored by those in power. Our spies, to be sure, had nothing to do with those reports.

Re:Third cut?

[gr8scot]

You make the assumption... That is your own assumption, and is not quite correct. You actually don't know that I've concluded one version or another. What I have said to you so far is only that your estimate of the improbability of the specific claims reported might not account for some relevant, statistically significant variables, such as strength of ocean currents and numbers of vessels anchored in the vicinities of important fiber optic cables. I don't know that to be the correct explanation. I do insist, based on what has been reported and on what remains totally unreported, on not discarding the benign explanation out of hand before I decide which version of events seems likeliest to me.

... that what is reported is always accurate, or even the intended truth. That might be a little bit naive. Oh no, those in control or who might lose face never manipulate the media, do they?

For systems with built-in redundancy, you might question the odds, of a complete failure. OK, let's get specific. "For systems with built-in redundancy" in general, I do indeed tend to more suspiciously "question the odds of a complete failure." It depends how redundant, and what type of system you're describing. So, back to my first comment to you in this thread, I don't have specific information that supports the conclusion that the reported interruptions are necessarily beyond the realm of possibility. Do you?

When talking about foreign nations whose leaders have antagonistic personal or ideological relationships, I also tend to be less willing to assume the worst. More than enough of that goes on without my help, for my liking. I might turn out to be wrong, but if inaction is incorrectly taken until more solid information is available, no harm is done. Making the opposite mistake is a more serious matter.

Or why do cables come ashore, at ports or where ships normally anchor? Or do they? It was suggested above that because of lousy weather, many ports have had difficulty accommodating all the boats wanting to dock. As a result, there have recently been vessels anchored where they normally do not, close to shore but not in designated ports. Until I have more specific information about a particular act of sabotage, I'm not going to assume that I know something that I really know to be mere speculation, however plausible the explanation is for the limited set of facts you're considering. That kind of thing seems to me more suited to a James Bond movie than discussion of real-world events. Do you like James Bond? Bourne?

Some of these considerations might even be a bit of a credulity stretch don't you think. Not until I know that the waters in the locations in question were in fact calm at the time, and that whatever ship's anchors sliced each line had "no good reason" to be anchored in each of those places. So far, I don't know anything of the kind, partly because you have provided no specific information to lead me to that assumption. Of course, neither has anybody else, but most people have not made the claims that you have.

Have a great day!

Re:Third cut?

[CAIMLAS]

You must admit that this is an entirely appropriate counter-attack. Very moderated.

Re:Third cut?

[darkonc]

What if they did and their attempt failed... how would you know?

• The unexplained footprints on the ceiling.
• Ninja stars embeded in your bathroom mirror
• Your dog has had his larynx removed
• Your alarm system stopped working.
• Loss of dial tone.

Re:Third cut?

[onepoint]

Exploited? well he was paid real good, for the work he did. That's how he formed his business. the military is real good at figuring out how to get specialist. I learned from my father about civilian contracts and all the paperwork involved.

Re:Third cut?

[CAIMLAS]

It is my suspicion that this is a not-so-subtle "warning". They attacked power plants via the Internet, so we've deprived them of direct access to those sources.

Overall, it's a fairly punitive rebuttal. They got off easy.

Re:Third cut?

[inKubus]

And the fact that certain US/Saudi Arabian oil companies have cables directly between Houston and Saudi. Private cables, not Flag, which is a consortium of international telcoms and local governments. So, hey, let's extend an olive branch and you can use our network, which flows directly into downtown Houston. Then everyone will forget for a while and in 10 years it will still be there because the tech who connected it died accidentally in a plane crash and it was unlabeled so no one ever thought to check it.

Granted, it's possible to lose this many at once to chance, but those cables are armored, especially at depths anchors normally go to.. Could this be part of the "information blockade"? Interesting that there was a major "information warfare" exercise recently also..

The point is, with no long-range communications coming out of a country, the powers that be can say they are saying whatever they want, and we have to believe them. Like how they depict the Iranian president as being very dark-skinned, when the majority of Iranians are white. Or other things. Naturally. And of course, knowing this, and knowing that the same cases were manufactured for all wars previous to now, you come to realize that we the public are pawns and are simply living the story written for us by the great ones.

Also, this is interesting.

Re:Third cut?

[bigpicture]

That's it, now you are doing your homework! You might have to cut and paste this link, and it will give you some indication of just how many cables there actually are. They take out your cables, they take out your satellites, jam your radio waves, and pretty soon you are blind and deaf. Then they attack. That region is so peaceful, this could never happen, right. I bet the Israelis see it that way too. A lot of things are just what they seem, but sometimes they are not.

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Technology/Pix/pictures/2008/02/01/SeaCableHi.jpg

Re:Third cut?

[gr8scot]

That's it, now you are doing your homework! Thanks -- I think.

In the United States, "that's it" can either mean "that's right/good job" or "that's the last straw!!" which is what our previous conversations predispose me to expect. But, then, "doing your homework" is pretty much always complimentary, so I lean towards interpreting "that's it" as a compliment. Also, I have an enormous ego, so I pretty much expect compliments, at any time. ;-)

They take out your cables, they take out your satellites, jam your radio waves, and pretty soon you are blind and deaf. Then they attack. That region is so peaceful, this could never happen, right. I bet the Israelis see it that way too. A lot of things are just what they seem, but sometimes they are not. That's certainly one factor in making an educated guess. Another is that nobody likes being invaded, or even having a war in their neighborhood. Although in the long-term refugees are likely to become very appreciative, productive & vocally loyal additions to freer society than the one they left, few politicians' terms are that long, so politically, refugees are widely seen as a short-term nuisance, only. And, the regional tension that you correctly noted also has the well-known effect that all nations are about as well-armed as they're able to be, in order to deter their enemies from attack. Lastly, lacking the ability to pull up CNN.com, et al, will keep the civilians relatively less informed, but based on what I know, military operations use different, more robust methods of communication. Cutting civilian communications might be a very distant prelude to eventual attack, but to be honest, its likelihood of leading to riots and such makes it seem more like a terrorist tactic.

Re:Third cut?

[spun]

That's actually a pretty decent motivation. But maybe he actually deserves it. I have to ask, did you defend Clinton the same way?

Re:Third cut?

[sumdumass]

When he deserved it.

The problem as I see it is that there is so much already to criticize Bush (and even clinton) over that we don't need to make stuff up or stretch the truth to exaggerate the effects. Of course when you weed through all the exagerations and outright lieing, you see that is isn't quite as bad or hopeless as people are making it out.

It seems that in the US, the way to win an election isn't to get a better person on the ballot but to attack and lower the perception of the opponent so you defeat them. It isn't "the best man wins" anymore but more of the one who survived the attacks better. And instead of raising the bar we end up lowering it while at the same time locking out legitimate winers. Look at the primaries, it is more about strategic wins then showing the country you the right person for the job. Edwards stayed in the race to block Hillary's momentum and dropped claiming support for Obama after he stopped her from taking the lead. The republicans have all decided to skip states because certain ones would mean more then others. John McCain win Florida and is claiming victory because they don't split their delegates like the other states.

Anyways, you have probably already seen that. The point wasn't to show you it but to lead into this next statement. It doesn't matter who wins because the other side will take the next 5 or 8 years stretching the truth, expressing opinions as if they are fact, outright lieing and anything else they can think of to damage the position of the current politician and prop they next guy up. Kerry ran on a platform almost identical to Bush's with the caveat that because he would be president it would somehow all turn out better. He got half the vote on the premise that it would somehow be better with him in office. The differences between the two's stated positions were so minor that most people can't accurately point them out. This tells me that the problem isn't with the politics as much as the perception of the politics. the perception is created because of the lies and stretching of the truth.

I don't think I would care who the president was or what party he is from, it is the office more then anything I am concerned with.

Re:Third cut?

[maxwell demon]

You must admit that this is an entirely appropriate counter-attack. Very moderated. But was it moderated +1 Insightful or -1 Troll?

Re:Third cut?

[S-4'N3]

Is it just me, or are the implications of this fiber cut being greatly exaggerated. I was able to traceroute to an IP in Iran with no problem. Perhaps the lights have gone out for a large portion of the population, but their local hosting services are still up. (and yes, I checked to ensure that the server was physically in Iran and not hosted elsewhere) It's my understanding that the goal of something like the Internet is to have no single point of entry, so if one major fiber goes out, you still have alternate routes in place.

Re:Third cut?

[budgenator]

My chemistry instructor was colorblind and a military pilot, he claimed he had a copy of the colorblind test stolen and memorized the numbers on the bottom of each plate.

Re:Third cut?

[budgenator]

I don't know seems like bullshit to me, in my field we judge color to the point where seeing minute color difference in two pieces is very precise. I often compare color under three and four different light sources to get the best compromise possible and my industry is moving to digital analysis. Your average Joe isn't going to see the difference in a red colored Mc Donalds chair under florescent lights, the same chair under diffused northern light and direct sunlight.

Re:Third cut?

[budgenator]

To be honest my first tinfoil hat hunch was that the Iranians or Al Qaeda cut the cable not the USG. Probably not a mainstream extremist element but one of the extremist-extremist factions, every group has a few loose cannons and the ones in Al Qaeda or Iran have to be way out there.

Re:Third cut?

[bigpicture]

I deal a lot with legal documents, and interpretation most times hinges on what precedes or what follows, in this case it means "good job", because you are looking at all known inclusions or possibilities, and not unnecessarily excluding any possibility at this point.

I have more than a passing interest in this, because I put money on the line a few years back and lost it. A company named Global Crossing, with an IPO of about a half billion capitalization, and two years later Chapter 11. They were in undersea cables, when the flavor of the month was bandwidth, percent of dark cable, and redundancy.

Re:Third cut?

[budgenator]

when I checked router.vortechhosting.com is dead as a door nail but Vortech "can you ping me now" seems to be alive and doing fine. I would be amazed if CENTCOM and SOCOM didn't have plenty of backup resources between them, purchasing commercial bandwidth is likely a luxury rather than a necessity anyways.

Re:Third cut?

[galanom]

At least you accept that throwing bombs indicates a conspiracy. However, don't you think that's too late to find it out? It's like predicting earthquakes from the view of fallen buildings!

Re:Third cut?

[Lippard]

There have been three cable cuts in two incidents. The first incident was the tanker anchor that cut FLAG Telecom's Europe-Asia cable and SeaMeWe-4 in the Mediterranean off the north coast of Egypt, on the route between Palermo, Sicily and Alexandria, Egypt. Those cables run in parallel from Palermo to Alexandria in the Mediterranean, through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea, then from Djibouti to Mumbai, India.

The second incident was a cut in FLAG Telecom's FALCON cable, which connects up with the Europe-Asia cable off the coast of Mumbai and goes north into the Persian Gulf past Oman, UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain, and lands in Kuwait. In the other direction, it rounds India and connects to Sri Lanka. That one was cut between Oman and UAE.

None of these cables lands in Iran. There is a subsea cable from Kuwait to Iran; the impact to that was indirect.

Note that in December 2006 there were *nine* cable breaks in Asia as a result of earthquakes. Submarine cables (like terrestrial cables) break all the time due to natural and man-caused accidents, which is why every cable operator contracts with cable laying and repair fleets to repair breaks.

I don't think there's anything suspicious here. I've discussed this in similar detail at my blog, which includes a link to Telegeography's submarine cable map.

Re:Third cut?

[rossz]

Nope, not your dad's friend. The other person I knew about was Monty Roberts, a somewhat famous horse trainer.

Re:Third cut?

[flynns]

What's frice?

Re:Third cut?

[gr8scot]

Sure, I heard of Global Crossing, they were really big news just a few years back. I can't seem to remember what it was, but wasn't there something odd about their demise?

Re:Third cut?

[bigpicture]

They were the darling of Wall Street, so I invested a few bucks. They went bankrupt and got bought out by one of their partner/creditors when the "dot com" bust came. The original stockholders got shut out, and now they are up and running again under the Global Crossing name. Apparently they are one of the big undersea cable players.

Re:Third cut?

[gr8scot]

That's it, now you are doing your homework! Nice try. My homework was already done. Now, go and do yours. You claimed that when I called you on your specific claims without evidence, I was making an "assumption." In fact, I was stating the very opposite, refusal to accept any assumption, including yours, without proof, which you still have not provided. The link above only offers a plausible motive for sabotage, not positive evidence. And I never said sabotage wasn't plausible, so you haven't disproved or successfully rebutted anything that I have said, only what you've projected.

I'm sorry to hear about your financial loss. I hope your portfolio was diversified.

Re:Third cut?

[bigpicture]

It was never about rebutting or proving anything. I think if you look at any of my slash dot posts about any topic in the past the theme is always about casting dispersion on the "I'm right and you are wrong, and here's why" approach as a means of arriving at the truth, or in the case of science or religion arriving at Reality. Thats just what you have done here, and of course with the BIG EGO the next step is DENIAL, "no I'm not doing this and here's why". It's classic, but you don't see that, because EGO is about deception, mostly self deception. Your self deception is that you know the truth about everything, and my position has always been "relative thinking processes can never know the truth" therefore it is always about "don't believe or don't disbelieve" because time changes theories. The world is not flat this year, but it was some years back. Is cholesterol good or bad for you this year, I forget?.

Here is a copy of my very first post in this endless series. It would seem that as of today we are up to the fourth cable cut, and not anywhere near shipping, in fact an area off limits to ships. I think there were only two when I originally wrote this. It was merely pointing out the probabilities of accidental in such a situation. Not "I'm right and you are wrong", but then I'm not a self appointed moderator, my ego does not require that.
>>>>>>>>Remember this:
"There are times when things can be accidentally coincidental. But when the probability mathematical odds get really high, then the question should always be: was it deliberate? If it was terrorists there is a high likely hood that there would be a: "look what we did" news cast. But if it were the covert actions of a semi legitimate government, then it would be made to look accidental."

Re:Third cut?

[gr8scot]

I think if you look at any of my slash dot posts about any topic in the past the theme is always... I'm really much more interested in the message than the messenger. Now, back to whodunnit:

"There are times when things can be accidentally coincidental. But when the probability mathematical odds get really high, then the question should always be: was it deliberate? No problems, yet.

If it was terrorists there is a high likely hood that there would be a: "look what we did" news cast. But if it were the covert actions of a semi legitimate government, then it would be made to look accidental." That's a specific claim, and with insufficient data to support it. That's all I have to say about this.

So you're telling me...

[erareno]

Iran just got their internets pwned? =O

This is getting exciting!

[Jugalator]

*brings out the popcorn*

Re:This is getting exciting!

[nebenfun]

I'm in Tehran. I hope my Seinfeld torrents finish. Everything is going fine...#@&$(*&NO CARRIER

Re:This is getting exciting!

[everphilski]

NO INTERNET FOR YOU!

Re:This is getting exciting!

[Chazerizer]

So how did you post that?

Iran hasn't lost connectivity

[anotherone]

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/

Re:Iran hasn't lost connectivity

[ShieldW0lf]

The countries internet connection is hanging by a thread, and you slashdot their university. Smooth move, asshole.

Re:Iran hasn't lost connectivity

[rvolz]

Correct. I mean, based on the site, Florida would apparently also have no connectivity (as of 16:30 EST).

Re:Iran hasn't lost connectivity

[mrboyd]

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.

Re:Iran hasn't lost connectivity

[petermgreen]

how many more cables would have to be cut to effectively take the middle east off the net?

Re:Iran hasn't lost connectivity

[mrboyd]

I have no idea about that, but if it is a conspiracy we will know soon enough. :)

Re:Iran hasn't lost connectivity

[ill stew dottied ewe]

My linux webserver runs at 233mHz you insensitive clod! At this point the hardware doesn't matter, it's the (lack of) bandwidth.

Re:Iran hasn't lost connectivity

[WillAffleckUW]

The countries internet connection is hanging by a thread, and you slashdot their university. Smooth move, asshole.

You're assuming he's not working for the NSA.

If you were, posting such a link might be intentional.

Never assume the friendly repairman at your door in a secure location is there to help you.

Re:Iran hasn't lost connectivity

[ThatsNotPudding]

"...but bittorrent traffic seems to have been blocked." Ahh, now we know why this was done.

Re:Iran hasn't lost connectivity

[ElGanzoLoco]

how many more cables would have to be cut to effectively take the middle east off the net?

Not too many: since FLAG and SEA-ME-WE-4 (the two fastest links, by far, connecting the region to the rest of the world) are already partially or completely down, I think cutting SEA-ME-WE-3 would be enough to bring what remains of the infrastructure to its knees. If any backbone nerd cared to provide any details... :)

I'm pretty sure there are other routes; however, they are much slower lines and are mostly dedicated to telephony. Most countries in the middle east also have at least one satellite link of some sort, which are hard to scramble (or so they say).

However, in case of actual, long-term, bandwidth shortage, it would be quite trivial for most Middle Eastern countries (where telcos and access to international connectivity are typically state-controlled) to block bittorrent, FTP, YouTube, Kazaa, etc, and dedicate all the remaining bandwidth to essential services, such as e-mail, or allocate all the bandwidth to the government and administration.

The problem of many Middle-Eastern and North African countries is that they never really developed neighbour-to-neighbour communication links. For instance a ping from Tunisia to Morocco has good chances of going through Palermo (Italy) or Marseille (France). I'm pretty sure a ping between two countries in the Gulf would give surprising results too.

Re:Iran hasn't lost connectivity

[CrazedWalrus]

Just... you know... out of curiosity...

Re:Iran hasn't lost connectivity

[networkBoy]

At least that's a fairly legitimate reason to block and such...
-nB

Re:Iran hasn't lost connectivity

[mrboyd]

I don't think there is any legitimate reason to block anything. It's too much of a slippery slope, once you start blocking things you can always find a way to legitimate blocking something else to "save the children" or the elderly.
One of our provider is blocking everything that doesn't match the "value of the UAE" and yesterday slashdot editors probably posted something VERY BAD for the children because it was blocked by the retards at the TRA in Abu Dhabi (you know who you are).

Re:Iran hasn't lost connectivity

[Lippard]

None of the cut cables land in Iran, anyway. Iran has connectivity through (at least) TTNet in Turkey over terrestrial cable, and through a submarine cable from Kuwait that has not been cut.

Putting the puzzle pieces together

[CRCulver]

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 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.

Re:Putting the puzzle pieces together

[Kadin2048]

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 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.

Re:Putting the puzzle pieces together

[LWATCDR]

"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."
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.....
Sorry.
The Jimmy Carter is the last of the Seawolf class submarines. The newer Virgina class is actually lower tech and cost than the Seawolf.
They named it the Jimmy Carter because he served on Nuclear Submarines. It was named in his honor. it was modified for spying because it was the best for the job and the last available.
Since he launched it and said what an honor it was to have it named after him all I can say is.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.... ha ha ha ha ha ha ha......
Really..

Re:Putting the puzzle pieces together

[aschoeff]

A Subtle Knife, for a subtle move?

Say it isn't so! All we need now is the NSA being responsible for draining the Dust out of the world.

Re:Putting the puzzle pieces together

[merreborn]

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.

Well said. If this was a tapping, it wouldn't have made international news -- the outtage wouldn't have lasted more than a few minutes at worst.

Re:Putting the puzzle pieces together

[dollar99]

If the break was intentional the goal wasn't to break the line. The goal was to tap the line. Its gotta be easier to implement a tap while the line is down. When it comes back up it will undetectably tapped. Viola!

Re:Putting the puzzle pieces together

[AxB_teeth]

If this was a tapping, it wouldn't have made international news -- the outtage wouldn't have lasted more than a few minutes at worst.

In a perfect world, yes. If I were overseeing such an operation, however, I'd be certain that while I was implementing the tap there was a very noticeable diversion.

Re:Putting the puzzle pieces together

[MightyYar]

Seriously, that parent poster is smoking conspiracy crack. Using the same logic, naming National Airport after Ronald Reagan is a sick joke because he fired all of those air traffic controllers. They probably serve KETCHUP there, too, just to really get to him.

Re:Putting the puzzle pieces together

[Deadstick]

Viola!

Salt water ruins those. Euphonium!, maybe.

rj

Re:Putting the puzzle pieces together

[AxB_teeth]

Of course, I forgot... DUN DUN DUN!

Re:Putting the puzzle pieces together

[R2.0]

So, the US is responsible, and we know that because the folks on the Jimmy Carter royally fucked up 3 times in 2 days? After trying to secretly tap the first cable and cutting it instead, they just said "Oh crap" and went on to the next cable?

And then cut that by accident?

And then cut a third by accident?

Why do I think that is far less probable than either:
1) Idiots on ships
or
2) militants on ships.

Re:Putting the puzzle pieces together

[petermgreen]

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.
I would imagine it is much easier to tap an already broken cable without being noticed than to tap a working one.

Re:Putting the puzzle pieces together

[DerekLyons]

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 for exmaple.

I'd personally wonder what rock Bamford was hiding under then - because the USN was quite open that Jimmy Carter was a replacement [in capability] for Parche. You don't need 'whistleblowers' to tell you what the USN openly admits and experts in the intelligence community have already concluded.
 
But then, that approach, as opposed to pretending Bamford is fount of wisdom knowing stuff nobody else knows, won't sell as many books.

Re:Putting the puzzle pieces together

[LWATCDR]

The best part is that yo yo got a five for it.
Of course everybody and there dog knows that the Jimmy Carter was modified for underwater OP so no whistle blower needed there. The goal of taping and underwater cable is to do it without anyone knowing that you did it. So even if you where going to break the cable you wouldn't do all of them at once.
But the best part is that the cable lands in Europe. Any of the countries that it lands at would probably be happy to let the US sniff the cable if we let them share the data.
Also Egypt has more to loose from Islamic extremists than most countries and they are a pretty good friend to the US. Want to bet that they would let us tap those cables as well?
Sounds more likely to be fundamentalist trying to cut the Middle East off from porn, western news, and entertainment.

Re:Putting the puzzle pieces together

[Kadin2048]

I would imagine it is much easier to tap an already broken cable without being noticed than to tap a working one. Sure. Particularly if you don't have a submarine for doing it underwater, undetected. The way those cables are spliced when they break (according to Neal Stephenson's article on them) is by hauling them up to the surface and doing the splice there -- slack is left in the cable for this purpose -- and then dropping it back down. But if you have a specially designed sub for doing it underwater, breaking the cable (with the inevitable result that a ship will be sent out, and the cable hauled up) is the last thing you'd want to do.

It's not a bad conspiracy theory if the Men In Black are the Russians or the Egyptians or maybe even the Israelis, pretty much anyone in the world except the U.S.

If you do want to go after the conspiracy-theory angle, who you really want to be looking at are the repair ships. If there was some common thread among all the repair efforts (same contractor doing the work, same organization bankrolling them), then I'd start to come around to the side that something nefarious might be going on. Because that's how I'd imagine someone lower-tech than the U.S. would accomplish a tap.

Re:Putting the puzzle pieces together

[urcreepyneighbor]

Don't confuse the conspiracy theorists with facts. You'll only frustrate yourself.

1) Idiots on ships Ding-ding-ding. It's happened before.

Re:Putting the puzzle pieces together

[petermgreen]

breaking the cable (with the inevitable result that a ship will be sent out, and the cable hauled up) is the last thing you'd want to do.
I disagree, you break the cable and wait for them to find the break first, then once they have found the break and are working to fix it then you do the tap (somewhere else on the cable) while the line is being fixed.

Anchor?

[band-aid-brand]

apparently caused by another wayward anchor in this case, the word anchor means "specially engineered cable cutting device capable of precision slices while on the ocean floor"

Can anyone enlighten me?

[Pojut]

What are these undersea cables constructed with? I mean the cabling, insulation, and outer casing.

Re:Can anyone enlighten me?

[Pojut]

Calvin: If girls are made with sugar and spice and everything nice...and boys are made with snips and snails and puppy dog tails...what are tigers made out of?

Hobbes: Dragon flys and Katydids, but mostly chewed up little kids.

Re:Can anyone enlighten me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the BBC can enlighten you!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7222536.stm

Re:Can anyone enlighten me?

[Surt]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable
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

Re:Can anyone enlighten me?

[mikael]

The BBC has an article with a cross section of an undersea cable

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?

[russotto]

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.

Re:Can anyone enlighten me?

[mikael]

This is the largest anchor I have seen. Our neighbour has a fence made out of 18-inch anchor chains segments. I can see how having one of those fall on top of a repeater unit could do damage, and the momentum of a large tanker attached to a cable could easily pull it apart.

Re:Can anyone enlighten me?

[evanbd]

These are large ships, with large anchors. Imagine how big an anchor, and how strong an anchor chain, you'd need for a ship with displacement measured in tens of kilotons.

Re:Can anyone enlighten me?

[rahvin112]

That's not even big, the one's on the largest cruise ships are about 3 times that size, I'm talking the size of a full king-cab pickup. I imagine supertankers and aircraft carriers have anchors about 5-10 times that size. Big ships need BIG anchors.

Re:Can anyone enlighten me?

[crabpeople]

If a 2 tonne backhoe can do it im sure a 20,000 tonne freighter can do it better. Whats more, those cables generally have alot of slack so that they can be pulled to the surface for repair. That anchor probably cut through it as a hot knife through butter, if you think about it.

Re:Can anyone enlighten me?

[Ex-MislTech]

http://static.flickr.com/111/313315426_3b89208612.jpg

These weigh several tons, and with the added weight of their anchor chain,
not much can stand up to them.

After all they are meant to hold a multi-thousand ton ship still at sea
under light gale conditions.

Ex-MislTech

Re:Can anyone enlighten me?

[ill stew dottied ewe]

That second cable name probably bothered the conservatives. They don't want anyone to know about the cable that delivers the "water sports" porn.

Re:Can anyone enlighten me?

[Majin Bubu]

Yes, the one in the pic is not so big, I have seen larger. However, aircraft carriers are not much different in size from a cruise ship, and they are much less tall (less wind caught -> less push on the ship -> less pull on the chains), so they won't have a larger anchor. But a tanker plowing along at 12 knots dragging one of these is plenty for sinking a submarine... No problem with a cable.

Re:Can anyone enlighten me?

[artg]

"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."

So .. that would mean only the old-tech cable that you can tap with outdated spy equipment is still working. I wonder where the high-tech spy sub has just been reassigned ?

Re:Can anyone enlighten me?

[dbIII]

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.

The anchor may not be heavy but remember that it is attached to a very heavy ship dragging it along! If it is any consolation the steel "armour wires" probably scratched the slightly softer steel anchor a bit when the cable was cut.

Re:Can anyone enlighten me?

[IonOtter]

An average petroleum tanker weighs around 200,000 - 300,000 tons when full. The anchor weighs about three, and 200 feet of chain weighs another 6 tons.

Standard practice is to drop anchor and a few hundred feet of chain while moving backwards to give the ship a solid hold on the bottom.

Add a 14 knot breeze and a 4 knot tide, and you've got an anchor that's going to drag a few hundred yards until they pay out enough chain to secure the ship.

In the meantime, ANYTHING the anchor happens to rumble over is going to be obliterated

A disruption of communication can mean only one...

[lthown]

thing: war - the advisor dude from Star Wars Episode 1. Looks like the trade federation is coming for the Arabs!

InformationWarfare

[SupremeDiety]

I feel like America is going to do something stupid.

Re:InformationWarfare

[HTH NE1]

I feel like America is going to do something stupid. "Going to"? Been doing stupid things for awhile I would say, hmm?

Re:Not the tubes!!!

[CRCulver]

Well, to make it simple, the sad news is that the trucks can't drive through them no more.

When will they learn.... Oblig quote

[hermit_tries_virtual]

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?

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[hesaigo999ca]

I am too willing to accept that something is fishy when the only 3 cables that were holding comm link to the middle east are somehow ALL cut in the same exact way. Send in the Grissom from CSI
he'll tell you it is almost improbable to have the 3 cables cut in the same matter , more likely
someone who wanted to cut communication, so the question becomes, not how or why, but more importantly who???

USA - maybe
Rebels - maybe
Russia or China - 100%

Slowing down our outsourced jobs?

[FunkyELF]

Is this part of some plan to slow town our Indian and Asian counter-parts?

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[Bloke down the pub]

I am too willing to accept that something is fishy

It's in the bloody sea, what do you expect?

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[orclevegam]

Out of curiosity while would Russia or China be more likely then the USA to want to cut communications with the middle east? Also, by defining USA and Rebels as a maybe, they by definition must be more than 0% likely, therefore it's impossible to then list Russia or China as 100%.

So let me get this straight...

[Xelios]

All I have to do to cripple the electronic infrastructure between countries for over a week is enlist a few boats to drag their anchors across the sea floor? Obviously you can't just cut one cable and take out an entire country's connectivity, but a coordinated attack seems like it could do some serious damage. Maybe we should be burying these cables a little deeper?

US Navy Frogmen

[myrikhan]

Hey, US Navy Frogmen/Frogpersons need work too!

The Palestinian-Israeli situation doesn't look so good so perhaps
Bush is looking for a different legacy.

Ya but conspiracy theories have to be complicated!

[Sycraft-fu]

You can't have a conspiracy theory if it is simple and straight forward. After all, a simple straight forward plan involving just a few people might actually work. No, rather it has to be massively and unnecessarily complicated with lots of intricate connections. That way, the people who notice the conspiracy are great geniuses for being able to see what nobody else could!

Seriously, it is just more of the same shit like moon landing conspiracy or 9/11 conspiracy. You've probably noticed that we have a fair amount of nutters on /. and of course they are going to subscribe to wacky conspiracies.

This is just going to be one more of those. However it doesn't work if it is something simple, they are only compelling if they are twisted and convoluted and something only the US government with its massive resources could pull off. A sub with some secret cable cutter sound so much better than a fishing trawler with an anchor.

"The Monsters are Due on Maple Street"

[HTH NE1]

"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."

Re:"The Monsters are Due on Maple Street"

[sdpuppy]

Congrats - perfect Twlight Zone reference

but me without mod points

Re:"The Monsters are Due on Maple Street"

[TubeSteak]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monsters_Are_Due_on_Maple_Street

"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." Well I guess the Middle East is one of those "few variations".
They're much more likely to blame Israel &/or the USA than to devour each other.

Re:"The Monsters are Due on Maple Street"

[246o1]

That episode was about people. Americans, Israelis, and Middle Easterners are all people. You are exactly wrong, it seems to me, since the Middle East is not an exception to the show's point: people are distrustful and get crazy when exposed to any vaguely negative change.

Re:"The Monsters are Due on Maple Street"

[WhiteWolf666]

Middle Eastern states may blame the US/Israel alot, but they have absolutely no problem waging war upon one another, as well as waging impressive civil wars.

Re:"The Monsters are Due on Maple Street"

[Enoxice]

I wish I hadn't already wasted all my mod points. I love the Twilight Zone (the 28dvd set for $200 was sooo worth it).

Re:"The Monsters are Due on Maple Street"

[porter235]

Thank you for this quote. It is great!

Re:"The Monsters are Due on Maple Street"

[Karem Lore]

"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."

Isn't this from the FBI's handbook for terrorist/hostage situations? (At least that's what the "Die Hard" documentary I watched a few years back said).

Re:"The Monsters are Due on Maple Street"

[Agripa]

Isn't this from the FBI's handbook for terrorist/hostage situations?

Only if it is followed by burning them alive.

Rerouting traffic

[belthize]

The thing that jumped out at me was:

"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.

      Certainly 3 cuts (or 4 depending on your numbering system) seems awfully strange. If you assume it's intentional
the obvious (to me) question is why, to what end ?

      Isolation isn't really practical with cell phones etc, the fact that they've rerouted all the way through
the US and UK (really ?) implies sniffing. Seems like a fairly cumbersome way to do it, why not just quietly
reroute or even duplicate the traffic.

      Not saying it was intentional ... just pondering the reasoning if it was.

Belthize

Re:Rerouting traffic

[lexarius]

"Oops, sorry about those cables. We'll just pop on down there and patch them right up." - with "patches" that wiretap the cable and allow for man-in-the-middle attacks. Maybe?

Re:Rerouting traffic

[belthize]

Maybe....

      It's certainly curious having so many chopped cables in 1 week. That
backhoe operator certainly was out of his depth.

Belthize

Re:Rerouting traffic

[Kadin2048]

Isolation isn't really practical with cell phones etc That's a pretty silly statement. A cellphone is just a tiny little radio transceiver, only capable of hitting the nearest tower. Where do you think the signal goes once it reaches there? Hint, it's into the same telecommunications system that feeds into the undersea cables.

The only part of the infrastructure that cellphones provide an alternative or parallel to, are the lines running from the CO to your house. It doesn't save you if the problem is in one of the backbone segments.

Now, if you have a satellite phone (e.g. Iridium, Telstar), then you have a truly parallel network, at least until you get to the downlink station where it rejoins POTS. But I'm pretty sure such things are illegal in Iran, except for Western journalists and the elite. They're not something that regular folks have access to.

That said, if Iran wanted to cut off its own people, say for the purpose of doing something really nasty internally, they have easier ways to do it than cutting cables in the Med. I'm not buying that particular conspiracy theory. Neither does it seem like anything the U.S. would do, or derive much benefit from, particularly given the alternatives the U.S. has at its disposal (including the cable-tapping submarines that have been mentioned over and over in this thread so far).

The most likely possibilities to me are: (1) it was a terrorist act aimed at disrupting the most heavily Westernized parts of the Middle East, by a group with fairly limited resources, or (2) it was truly an accident or coincidence.

Re:Rerouting traffic

[mea37]

Yes and no.

Yes, you're right that cellphones use the same long-range infrastructure as everything else.

But is it really true that all of the communication infrastructure for Iran feeds through undersea cables? All of it?

They don't use satelites? They don't run any communications to/from bordering countries by land?

Re:Rerouting traffic

[assassinator42]

As pointed out earlier, iranet.ir is still connectible. And a traceroute from within the US shows the traffic going to Paris (te10-2.passe1.Paris.opentransit.net) before Iran.

Re:Rerouting traffic

[Sanat]

See... Bush is not dumb

Two birds with one stone

Re:Rerouting traffic

[WillAffleckUW]

And a traceroute from within the US shows the traffic going to Paris (te10-2.passe1.Paris.opentransit.net) before Iran.

We already have an Echelon listening station in the Paris location, so that means we get both NATO feed and US feed of all traffic to/from Iran.

Iranian government's website still works...

[Doug52392]

president.ir, the website for the Islamic Republic of Iran Presidential Office is still up. So it's not a complete Internet blackout, but it could be just a certain geographic region (or a damn good coincidence).

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[XenoPhage]

I am too willing to accept that something is fishy

It's in the bloody sea, what do you expect? Bloody? Fishy? ...

Wrong on so many levels...

Cloverfield 2

[Lurker2288]

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!

Re:Cloverfield 2

[Kitanin]

Best check your math---this one appears to be travelling Eastward. =)

Re:Cloverfield 2

[John Whitley]

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...! ;-)

Re:Cloverfield 2

[Lurker2288]

They'll be easy targets, too, because while everyone else is running their asses off in blind panic, they'll be the ones stumbling around with a camcorder jammed to their faces to make sure they capture every harrowing moment.

Seriously, dude, you're climbing across the roof of a collapsing building--put the camera away.

In related news

[ObiWanStevobi]

Office productivity throughout the Middle East has risen sharply.

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[jo42]

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.

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[mrwolf007]

Also, by defining USA and Rebels as a maybe, they by definition must be more than 0% likely, therefore it's impossible to then list Russia or China as 100%. Not if it was cut in three different places.

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[sethstorm]

It's in the bloody sea, what do you expect? The Revelations haven't happened (yet). It's still the "regular" sea.

The Great White Backhoe

[xleeko]

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>

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[Stormwatch]

I am too willing to accept that something is fishy

It's in the bloody sea, what do you expect?

Sharks... hopefully, with laser beams attached to their heads.

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[RingDev]

How many ways are there to cut a cable buried at the bottom of the ocean? Saying that it is improbablr for them to be cut in the same way is absurd. That's like saying it's improbably for 3 people to be shot by a gun, as opposed to beat to death or suffocated with it.

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, why did it take this long for one of the lines to get caught? If not, why were those boats trying to anchor there? What was causing the movement of the anchor? Storms? Idiots? Tides?

And truly, it's really not even that unlikely. Running cables next to each other makes maintenance easier, so it would lie in reason that if you are dragging an anchor across one, you are likely going to drag across the other. And once you cut the line, you are going to wind up with more vehicles in the area attempt to repair and investigate the situation. And with more traffic you increase the likelihood of another accident.

-Rick

Stating the bleedin' obvious..

[Shuntros]

Juts mentioned this story to the girlfriend... Her response? "That'll be the American anti-terrorist strategy then...". Such insight for one so innocent...

Dolphins did it.

[dow]

You are all so wrong you wouldn't believe. Nuclear War? Russia? China? USA? Bwahahaha...

The dolphins are mobilizing... They are allied with Porpoises, and Duck Billed Platypus'.

YOU ARE ALL DOOMED!!!

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[hardburn]

At risk of being off-topic, Ann Coulter just said she'd back Hillary, so I think the four horsemen should be around here any minute now.

Re:Fourth Undersea Cable

[calebt3]

Undersea cable... Field in Pennsylvania... I'm getting nauseous.

Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into it

[mgh02114]

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

"Many readers are reporting..."

[jpellino]

... and many more are trying like heck, but to no avail.

Re:I smell...

[calebt3]

a nukular war Just so long as it's not a nuclear war

I'm sorry! All right!!

[Bullfish]

I thought it was a beanstalk! They travel along the ground (and into water sometimes) before they go up to the clouds!

Jack

Re:I'm sorry! All right!!

[jd]

Well, yes, in The Goodies episode they did.

In Soviet Russia...

[Nero Nimbus]

Undersea fiber optic cables cut you.

Shallow seas

[flyingfsck]

The Persian Gulf is actually very shallow at about 35m at its deepest. So anchor damage by large ships is very likely there.

Re:Shallow seas

[Anonymous Coward]

Anchors go to the bottom, no matter what the depth! Shallow water actually minimizes the likelihood of dragging the anchor because it is easier to pay out sufficient scope

Re:Shallow seas

[scubamage]

Given that I can't recall in recent memory when one of these cables has been cut before the liklihood of these cables being cut one a day for 3 days, purely by chance, to be almost nil. A ship captained by a reactionary who hates the net? Possible. Goverment surveillance? Possible but strangely high profile. You better believe any sensitive data going through those tubes is gonna be monitored by warhawks in every one of the affected nations. Also, it wouldn't surprise me if China at the very least sends a sub out to verify the integrity of the cable over its full length. The fact that we conspiracy nuts are thinking it means that the conspiracy nuts in the affected nations' departments of defense were probobly taking action yesterday.

Re:Shallow seas

[almightynayr]

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

Re:Shallow seas

[ModelX]

Persian Gulf is not that shallow but not really deep either. Let me quote Wikipedia:

The waters are overall very shallow and have a maximum depth of 90 metres and an average depth of 50 metres.

Re:Shallow seas

[ivan256]

Pick a year, and enter "Undersea fiber cut " into google.

Then realize that *your* recent memory isn't a very good thing to base odds on. Better to search.

This one particularly stands out from my top-of-the-head recollection: http://whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm/388

There has been at least one major undersea cable disruption ever year of this decade. Either maintenance accidents, shipping accidents, earthquakes....

Re:Shallow seas

[scubamage]

Fair enough :) I hadn't realized they were quite so numerous, suppose this sort of thing doesn't normally make big headlines. eh?

Silence at last!

[Radon360]

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.

Different Interpretation

[a-zarkon!]

I think the Iranian government did this to isolate themselves from the rest of the world while raising suspicion that it's the work of some Western government. They're pulling the plug to control information into/out of their country prior to some kind of crack-down. Just another crackpot tinfoil-hat theory...

cut for a purpose

[recharged95]

To prove the senator's theory that the tubes will fill up with water.

And all of Iran's computers will overflow.

Re:cut for a purpose

[Uzuri]

I have to thank you for the mental picture :)

ooh i got a good one

[pretygrrl]

so like maybe it IS the Jimmy Carter, and maybe they are installing some sort of man-in-the-middle equipment, which requires a cut a re splice?
thats a neat wrap up of both the surveilance AND the cyberwar aspects of this conspiracy

How to tap the cable

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the simple way to tap all their cables would be to have a fishing boat (or whatever) make a simple, accidental cut in one place. Then you splice the cable elsewhere while they're fixing it. You know, because otherwise they'd catch you.

That said, doing them ALL at the same time is suspiciously obvious. If I had to guess, whoever is doing it is doing it to quietly send a message like "we OWN you and there's nothing you can do about it." This feels more like they're trying to put pressure on them than a prelude to war, though, although I think only the US has seriously been considering more wars over there. Definitely NOT a wise option, but that hasn't stopped them before.

Anyhow, major undersea cables that are well-separated don't just get accidentally cut like this. At least, not all at the same time. This is FAR too suspicious to be coincidence.

Re:How to tap the cable

[Eric Smith]

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.

Re:How to tap the cable

[RxScram]

The USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23, the newest (and heavily modified version) of the Seawolf class submarines) was NOT retrofitted... it was specifically designed and built to be a replacement for the USS Parche. The keel of the Carter was laid in 1998, and the submarine was commissioned in early 2005.

Re:How to tap the cable

[Afrosheen]

Retrofitted? What does the sub have on it, a giant pair of scissors sticking out of the front?

Re:How to tap the cable

[threephaseboy]

Well gee, First hit on google for "uss jimmy carter":

This is due to the insertion of a section known as the Multi-Mission Platform (MMP), ... The MMP may also be used as an underwater splicing chamber for tapping of undersea fiber optic cables. This role was formerly filled by the decommissioned USS Parche (SSN-683).

Re:How to tap the cable

[Afrosheen]

Thanks for the insight but I was making a joke.

Re:How to tap the cable

[eli pabst]

What does the sub have on it, a giant pair of scissors sticking out of the front? Actually it was fitted with a gigantic ear. In fact, the sub gets its name from the comically over-sized ears of Jimmy Carter.

Re:How to tap the cable

[Eric Smith]

Depends on how you define "retrofit". The MMP wasn't part of the plan for it when the keel was laid.

Re:How to tap the cable

[StargateSteve]

And how would you not detect loss of connectivity? mirror the internet for everyone in Iran, and the handful of iranian sites for the rest of the world? and respond to all emails? gimme a break. !possible.

Re:How to tap the cable

[Zymergy]

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.

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

Re:How to tap the cable

[camperdave]

Well, they're retro-fitted, so I expect they'd be sticking out the back. Hmm... maybe all they did was sharpen the prop.

Re:How to tap the cable

[e-scetic]

Sorry, after seeing what the US military is capable of in Iraq and Afghanistan, I don't see them as the best there is.

Re:How to tap the cable

[BuddhaMonkey]

The US military did quite well at what it was supposed to do in Iraq. Occupation wasn't part of the job description. Afghanistan was best done by the CIA and by the time the DoD got there things were already set up for a "victory".

Re:How to tap the cable

[Eric Smith]

I said it was possible to tap the cable without loss of connectivity. I never said that it was possible to cut the cable without loss of connectivity, as that would be a contradiction in terms.

This means that it's unlikely that the cut would be due to the U.S. government installing a tap, as some conspiracy theorists have suggested.

Re:How to tap the cable

[gr8scot]

Sorry, after seeing what the US military is capable of in Iraq and Afghanistan, I don't see them as the best there is. Don't be sorry. After personally meeting the best that the Navy has to offer, I concur.

Re:How to tap the cable

[musakko]

I've always thought the USS Richard Nixon would have been a better name for a submarine that carries out covert wire tapping operations..

Re:How to tap the cable

[Hazmat339]

Just like if the CIA wanted to run a covert op they would just do it covertly, right?

In Italy, CIA Agents Are Undone by Their Cell Phones
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/15-07/st_cia

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[russotto]

At risk of being off-topic, Ann Coulter just said she'd back Hillary, so I think the four horsemen should be around here any minute now.

To bring us back on topic: Apparently barracuda DO in fact school.

Or are they

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

You're completely correct in your estimate of the situation, which is why you are completely wrong. It looks like an "accident". Like when Regean, developed "Alzheimer's". Or Patton died in a Car "accident".

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[Firehed]

Shouldn't the lasers fuse the broken lines back together?

Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into

[The_mad_linguist]

>The government always surprise me by sinking to a new low, maybe this is the new low?

Well, it *is* the bottom of the ocean.

Sealab

[HTH NE1]

"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!"

Has anyone considered?

[CrtxReavr]

I know it's, unfortunately en vogue to bash the USA, but has anyone considered that maybe some jihadi has some scuba gear? Wants to keep out the evil, infidel influence?

-CR

Re:Has anyone considered?

[heinousjay]

Nah, that's impossible. Only the US does bad things.

Re:Has anyone considered?

[wizkid]

My opinion..... Some religious fantic's are the ones dragging the anchors. 3 cable in this timeframe? I don't think it's a coincedence. Someone is pushing the press to put a good light on it. We don't want to impair anyone wanting to take there call centers overseas. To many corporations are saving all that money for the stockholders, so why should they care if they can't get those service calls for a day or two.

Re:Has anyone considered?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm...jihadis have gotten bashed overy day 24-hours a day since earlier this century. A LOT more than the US ever has.

Re:Has anyone considered?

[sheldon]

Maybe they bought a submarine on ebay?

Well, maybe

[Weaselmancer]

If this is our spies, this would seem to be a pretty boneheaded execution of tapping lines.

Maybe it's a sort of purloined letter. Something so boneheaded looking you wouldn't suspect spies of doing it.

Re:Ya but conspiracy theories have to be complicat

[Firehed]

Or the conspirators are just counting on an incredibly stupid general populace (safe bet) and an outcry of hatred by those that believe the assumed story towards those who question the truth (also a safe bet, as proven by your post and so many others).

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 9/11 being an inside job is just the slightest bit more complicated than some idiot in a boat turning out to be from the government instead of just being your standard idiot.

Oh, great...

[KC7GR]

I wondered why my daily spam load had dropped a bit. What the heck am I going to do now to fill the gap?

I suppose I'll have to count on the Russians to fill in with Viagra and Cialis offers...

Re:Ya but conspiracy theories have to be complicat

[kalel666]

You can't have a conspiracy theory if it is simple and straight forward. After all, a simple straight forward plan involving just a few people might actually work. No, rather it has to be massively and unnecessarily complicated with lots of intricate connections

There should be a theory to explain that kind of reasoning.

Something that sounds cool, but I'll be damned if I can think of a name.

Fuck it, I got no time for this, I need a shave.

I guess

[shadyi]

May be the ship they sent to fix the first two cables cut the third one instead......

Re:Iran has completely lost Internet connectivity?

[TurinPT]

5? close guess! The actual number is 18 million.
Yeah I know you're a troll but I don't care.

Re:Ya but conspiracy theories have to be complicat

[dgatwood]

But then there's the corollary: if you are doing black-ops work and do not wish it to ever be known that the job was done by the government, it would be best to do the work in a manner so insanely convoluted that anybody familiar with Occam's razor would immediately conclude that such a plan doesn't make sense, and thus assume that something else much simpler and benign must be going on.... :-)

For example, as someone else already suggested, if the government wanted to covertly tap such a cable, the most effective way to do this would be to have somebody drop anchor and cut the cable at point A so that no one would notice the several days of individual fibers going randomly dark caused by a submarine installing fiber taps on all of the cables in a different location. The Occam's razor folks would immediately conclude that such a conspiracy was entirely too complex to make sense, and thus anyone suggesting that this was happening would be labeled a nutjob.

Of course, if you were doing that, you would also probably cut each cable at different times to avoid suspicion, but this, too, can be explained away as a means to further add to the implausibility of such a conspiracy to minimize the odds of anyone believing it.

That said, Occam's razor tells us that poorly enforced rules about where boats can drop anchor probably caused two of the failures, and Murphy's law neatly explains the third, so odds are pretty good that this is a combination of bad luck and human stupidity rather than malice by a government agency.... Still, it's fun to think about alternative scenarios....

Besides, we all know the truth. :-D

Florida's down, too

[Insightfill]

It looks like Iran has completely lost Internet connectivity.

Using the internet traffic report site, I can see at this time that Florida has 100% packet loss, too. Creepy.

Re:Florida's down, too

[Chris Johnson]

That is weird. What's in Florida? *google*

CENTCOM is in Tampa, at MacDill Air Force Base. And SOCOM. Socom is Special Ops. That actually gets my attention more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Special_Operations_Command Here's what SOCOM does- if they're doing anything now, it's in the middle of an internet blackout that is simultaneous with the Iran internet blackout (whether that is partial or complete).

I don't think creepy quite says it. "Did Cheney manage to get a nuclear weapon into the hands of Special Ops?" is more the question.

The commander of SOCOM is Eric Olson, who was appointed only July of 2007. In September, Cheney made a speech to CENTCOM and SOCOM, in Tampa, saying among other things:
"The terrorists have been at war with the United States for a long time. And after 9/11 this nation made a decision: We are at war with them. This is a long-term commitment, not a passing issue. There will be no running, or relenting, until the problem has been dealt with -- decisively, systematically, and permanently."

"We've gone on the offensive, destroying safe havens, targeting their leadership, restricting their movements, closing off their money channels, infiltrating their operations, monitoring their communications, and working in dead earnest to stop the proliferation of catastrophic weapons. This new imperative has laid some very important work on many shoulders, from homeland security, to intelligence operations, to law enforcement. But no one carries a heavier burden than the war fighter, who engages the enemy on his own ground and slugs it out in tough conditions for the sake of freedom and the sake of our security here at home."

"As the prime target of the terrorists, America has also enforced a doctrine that is essential to our own safety, and to eventual victory in this struggle. It is simple to state and understood by all: Governments that support or harbor terrorists are complicit in the murder of the innocent, and they must be held to account."

I'd sure like to know what they're doing in Tampa right now. We're not necessarily talking about a provocation to Iran executed by regular military attack. We might be talking about a provocation executed by Special Ops. ...for political reasons, and using our supercarriers as the bait for Sunburn missiles, risking complete obliteration of our navy's effectiveness.

I do NOT LIKE the fact that Florida's black. WTF is happening?

Re:Florida's down, too

[Chris Johnson]

Forgot to post something- remember this? Nuclear weapons mysteriously 'lost' and sent across the country without orders- which does not happen- for reasons that were never really explained?

http://www.nowpublic.com/politics/six-lost-nukes-sent-middle-east-military-cant-seem-keep-track

I smell the sinister hand of...

[Badmovies]

...Dr. Malic and his submarine, the Black Shark in all of this. Has anyone in the Middle East spotted a flying lion that speaks with an Asian accent?

It wasn't the US it was the RIAA!

[jay42jay]

The RIAA must have seen some people uploading songs and since they can't really do much in Iran they did what they could. They stopped piracy! At least they'd do this everywhere if they could.

While we're at it...

[CFTM]

Since we're all speculating like crazy on how the evil Americans did it, I figured I'd speculate that the evil north Koreans sent a fleet of fishing boats to the mid east and dropped anchors on these telco lines in order to get the Iranians pissed off so they'd attacked an American vessel in the Strait of Hormuz, precipitating world war III...given that GWB has about 11 months left, they figured to get it down now.

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...

You don't seem to understand sir...

[Microbie]

But Mr. Ahmadinejd, your name is the one on the account, so you will need to be on buoy number 37 and we will send someone out tomorrow between 11:00 and 5:00.

Shallow enough to scuba dive

[Dr. Spork]

A recereational scuba diver without a depressurization chamber can safely operate at a depth of 70 meters. I'm sure that scuba gear is easily available everywhere in the world. For a saboteur, that would probably be the easiest method. They could either bring wire cutters or lay delayed-blast charges. It's a pretty big disruption for a pretty small investment.

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[Eli Gottlieb]

Bloody? Fishy? ...
We only wish,
To catch a fish,
So juicy sweet!

But what has it got in its packetses, GOLLUM! GOLLUM!

chances?

[Tom]

Coincidence?

It looks like Iran has completely lost Internet connectivity." Ok, I'm paranoid, but it is an election year, and the world would be surprised a lot if Bush didn't fuck up something else before he goes.

Seriously, what are the chances of this?

Re:chances?

[Catbeller]

Not paranoia. Our current Presidential brain trust lied to you before, at least 900+ times on record, to start the previous unprovoked invasion and conquest. It't not paranoid to mistrust scheming bastards who've tricked you so many times before.

Paranoia is, say, you thinking the corner newsstand is a CIA listening post established to monitor you. That would be a symptom of mental illness.

It's not paranoia when you suspect the man who runs the newsstand of plotting to assault children when he has, in fact, assaulted a 60,000 to a million children in the last six years.

Americans are not that amnesiac. Almost, but not quite.

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[RealGrouchy]

There is only one possible conclusion: Manbearpig has learned to swim.

- RG>

Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into

[Stormcrow309]

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.

The Navy must be losing it...

[FredMenace]

They're getting slow in their old age. They were SUPPOSED to cut them all at the same time.

Re:The Navy must be losing it...

[WillAffleckUW]

They were SUPPOSED to cut them all at the same time.

No, you cut them in sequence so you can see how the internal Net and backup lines are configured in Iran, and to allow the printers and multi-core chipsets to report out intel to the NSA before you make it go dark.

Then the severed machines run BSOD attacks and any other core ops programs the NSA set loose.

Cheney's in his bunker, counting all his money, setting up the GOP to steal the election as we speak.

That's weird

[Zorque]

It must be a coincidence, but I lost my connection for a few hours today. I live in the western US, though, so it's probably not related. Still...

Florida to?

[Drakin020]

Pardin if this is a stupid question, but looking through the site...it shows a router in Florida is down. Am I reading this correctly? Again sorry if this is a stupid question.

http://www.internettrafficreport.com/history/111.htm

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[Afrosheen]

Red Wings FTW!

Re:Ya but conspiracy theories have to be complicat

[petermgreen]

Sounds like a pretty simple conspiracy to me, bribe a couple of people to do a cable break and then slip in quietly to do a cable tap or whatever.

Only the bribers and bribees and the people doing the tap need ever know.

ATHF

[HTH NE1]

[Hetch appears on the monitor, but the camera reads him as a multi-colored blob.]
"Hetch sewed himself a fiber-optic suit!" "His name is Hesh, Shake, not Hetch."

"Um, the video distortion affected the audio too, making `Hesh' sound like `Hetch'. Yeah, that's it. I didn't look up the series on IMDb and then completely fail to check the how to spell characters' names, both in dialog and stage direction."

"Yeah, right."

"Get back to da story, Shake."

"Right, so Stormy, he says:"

"Dude, you look like one of those pure-energy creatures from Star Trek!"

And nothing of value was lost. (nt)

[Kuroji]

Yes, there is no text here.

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[rve]

The cables were cut in three different seas, hundreds, even thousands of miles apart.

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[Damocles the Elder]

I don't know about the third one, but according to Ars, the first two were 2 km apart from each other.

It's we who are doomed

[Binge]

I for one welcome our new Vogon overlords, I'm told their poetry is something to behold... Anyone got a spare Sub-etha?

Mod parent up

[SeaFox]

that was good

Hmm

[FredMenace]

What do you do in an election year when the economy is going down the drain? The standing party generally never wins the presidency when the economy tanks, but hey, I suppose it's worth a shot.

While we can tap cables, maybe we can't tap them all at once. And maybe we want to control what goes in/out. And make a statement.

And let me guess, the hackers who supposedly caused the power outages were from the middle east?

Re:Hmm

[Catbeller]

Or Cheney's brain trust loosed the "Hackers cut power" meme just before they started severing multiple cables to the middle east in preparation for that damned Iran attack he wants so much. Cut one cable, cut two cables, oopsie here's Iran going dark.

With Cheney's crowd running the country, you have to posit a conspiracy of him not trying to start a war. He just doesn't care what you think. Iraq was him, all the way, feeding his lies to the President through his own personal three man intel reinterpretation squad. The man likes war. He wants the oil sewn up for the USA. His behavior has been consistent since the Ford presidency, the fake Soviet threat he faked up for Reagan, and the Iraq/Iran war he has so single-mindedly pursued; lie, mislead, plant fake news, control the message, kill massive numbers of people with no qualms, win. I've not seen such a human in my limited life in the US. He's just fewking evil. No one has been so brazenly up front with his desire to change the world into a US empire (with him in charge in his role Grand Vizier). He had a rep for being a backstabbing lying bastard with no morals in the Ford White House, and he's not backed down since.

Humm

[d4rkf1br]

Yeah it totally screams NSA or something. Maybe its some upgrade gone bad to the existing systems used by the NSA to monitor everything? hehe.. I don't normally subscribe to this whole conspiracy theory BS but it sure does seem fishy (no pun intended) However it does give me an idea. How is the communication to India? Primarily some undersea cable as well huh? Surprised no disgruntled or laid off IT worker who has lost a job to outsourcing hasn't tried building a submarine or taken scuba lessons and go hunt down the cables to India. I kid I kid... no need to educate on how impossible it would be, I know there are alot of smarties here who can tell me mathmatically or scientifically why this or that wont work. Really I was just kidding. :-P

Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into

[drspliff]

I think you're forgetting a key thing though...

If you want to send a very strong political message to another nation... how would you go around doing it?

Re-routing Traffic...

[TiberSeptm]

This looks like a means for intelligence gathering. If you read the explanation on the FLAG company's website (owner of 2 of the cut cables) they say that traffic will be re-routed through US and UK lines. Sounds like an excellent opportunity to monitor pretty much all internet communication going in and out of Iran doesn't it? Someone asked "why do this in secret" earlier... well there you go. ""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." Yep.

Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into

[amohat]

Also, could just be arrogance. Could be simple logistics.

Could it be a coincidence? A student of history would tell you not likely. Governments have done all manner of devious stuff in the past, why would you rule anything out?

"A communications disruption can mean ... "

[unsigned integer]

only one thing -

invasion.

Re:"A communications disruption can mean ... "

[Carbon016]

I will sign no nuclear treaty!

Re:Ya but conspiracy theories have to be complicat

[Chris Johnson]

I don't think there's any chance of the USA doing this to covertly tap any cables, because I don't believe the White House actually wants any information. They never have before, why would they now?

Occam's razor suggests to me that somebody wants to have more dramatic warlike actions.

Right now my theory is somebody whose name rhymes with 'insaney' wants to hear 'Communications out of Iran are all down, sir!' so they can order "Drop lots of bombs on them, and move the supercarriers closer!"

Because Iran can take out carriers with Sunburn missiles- and if we bomb Iran as Cheney has so wanted to do, but there is NO news of that, and then Iran sinks all our carriers and there's OMG WTF BBQ! news of that 24/7, it's as if they had attacked us.

Right?

Nothing may happen- Iran isn't likely to sink our carriers as a random outburst, and our military might not be taking orders blindly from Cheney. I hope not. But if we hear about our carriers being SUNK (after all the effort to play up a threat to them, notice?) you can be sure that Cheney found a way to bomb, without Congressional approval. I still think he was behind the mysterious clearing of a nuclear weapon that almost got flown across the country to a staging airbase for the Middle East.

Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into

[MrSteveSD]

Your diversion suggestion is a good idea, however, I should think there are some real problems with this. Cable companies must inspect their cables from time to time so any tap would risk detection and it would cause a big international incident. Even if the US could tap a cable in an undetectable way, how are they going to record/sift the enormous amounts of data? You would need a lot of computers and storage facilities on the seabed which would be difficult to hide. And how would you power all that equipment?

Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into

[eli pabst]

Why would they do all 3 at the same time so as to make it absurdly obvious? They have the technology, both in terms of a specialized submarine with that capability and the ability to tap a fiber optic line. They could easily have done so with minor disruptions so that no one notices. To take down all 3 at the same time for several days would be idiotic. I think Occam's Razor wins here for me.

Three cables cut

[loafula]

Let's see here- 3 cables cut in a short time frame and all in the middle east.. Who would benefit? I'm willing to bet it is more likely foreign governments trying to keep their people uninformed than it is an external power trying to spy. Spying is a subtle act. This is in no way subtle.

Re:Ya but conspiracy theories have to be complicat

[the_one(2)]

I'll probably never get how you can lump the moon hoax conspiracy with the 9/11 conspiracy. I'm not saying that I'm convinced 9/11 was orchestrated by the US government but it's undeniable that there are a lot of fishy details regarding 9/11 like the pentagon no plane theory and the fact that everything except pentagon looked like controlled demolitions. I just want an explanation and so far the most credible ones, believe it or not, are the conspiracy theories (IMHO).

PS. really loves this

Land

[simpl3x]

I think that the 'black water' may actually be on land...

Proposal for special +10 brilliant rating

[jd]

Some comments simply deserve a special "otherwise unachievable" rating. The parent post would be one of them.

Re:Proposal for special +10 brilliant rating

[Nerdfest]

There's a site called SeenOnSlash.com that tends to have a good selection of the best comments, including this one. They have an RSS feed as well, which is nice.

Marine biology is outer plaice here.

[jd]

Eel urn.

Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into

[Lehk228]

the government on the bottom of the ocean, now THERE's an idea we can all stand behind

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[raehl]

Bloody? Fishy? ...

Wrong on so many levels...

Just wait a week and it'll be fine.

Re:So long, Florida...

[DragonTHC]

Florida doesn't use undersea cables.

It's a peninsula attached to the rest of the country.

It is most definitely NOT disconnected.

I live in Miami. I'm posting this just fine.

Rod Stewart ACKs the problem

[smittyoneeach]

The Third Cut Is The Deepest

I would have given you all of my packet
But there's someone who's decided to jack it
And she's taken just all that I had
But if you want, I'll try to ACK again
Baby I'll try to ACK again but I know

The third cut is the deepest, baby I know
The third cut is the deepest
When it comes to being lucky she's cursed
When it comes to ACKin' me she's worst
But when it comes to being ACKed she's a thirst
That's how I know

The third cut is the deepest, baby I know
The third cut is the deepest
I still want you by my side
Just to help me with the anchor I've pried
And I'm sure gonna give you a try
And if you want, I'll try to ACK again
Baby, I'll try to ACK again, but I know

The third cut is the deepest, baby I know
The third cut is the deepest

'Cause when it comes to being lucky she's cursed
When it comes to ACKin' me she's worse
But when it comes to being ACKed she's a thirst
That's how I know

The third cut is the deepest, baby I know
The third cut is the deepest

More to the point

[Xest]

I don't see how the existing conspiracy theory of "They cut the cable so they could install monitoring equipment" possibly makes sense.

Here's the scenario:
1) Cable is cut
2) Monitoring equipment is attached to cable
3) Cable company comes along, rejoins cable, notices odd monitoring device attached

Am I missing something here, is this not a fundamental flaw to the plan the fact that any kind of monitoring equipment on a cut would be immediately noticed? Or is it the US navy that will be fixing the cable also? That doesn't seem particularly likely.

I'm sure there's far less blatantly obvious ways to monitor data travelling along the cables as you say and any equipment on the cable would appear rather prone to be found. I mean, let's face it the Russians and Chinese also have subs and equipment perfectly capable of checking the cable so unless we're going to add them into the plot and make a mega conspiracy theory, monitoring being the reason for the cuts makes next to no sense at all.

If there is a conspiracy theory here then disruption has to be the goal, monitoring just simply doesn't make sense for the reasons above. I think it's more likely to be that some asshole has figured out he can chop cables with his anchor and has also managed to find where the cables are exactly if it's not simply sheer coincidence related to some change in shipping lanes and anchoring areas.

Re:More to the point

[Blakey Rat]

I didn't say it did, in this case. I was replying to another poster's post.

Obviously if the Navy was engaged in tapping fiber lines they wouldn't:
1) cut them
2) cut THREE of them

I mean, duh.

Re:More to the point

[psychicninja]

Am I missing something here, is this not a fundamental flaw to the plan the fact that any kind of monitoring equipment on a cut would be immediately noticed?

Maybe I can shed some light on the plan:

1. Pick two spots on the cable 100 miles apart.
2. Cut place 1.
3. Cut place two and install monitoring equipment.
4. Cut in place 1 gets repaired and service is restored.
5. ?????
6. Defeat Terrorism!

Re:More to the point

[Xest]

Yeah, I was primarily agreeing with your sentiment on the issue ;)

Another point that struck me is how would they extract the data from some monitoring device? If it uses any kind of wireless technology then surely other craft could intercept it and even pinpoint it's whereabouts using any signals it may transmit. If it is passed down the cable then is that really any less obvious than just snooping it at the cable ends?

The only real non-obvious way would be to visit the device physically or near enough if it just transmits short range signals but as I mentioned previously I'd imagine if there was any truth in navy snooping the first thing on some Russian sub commanders agenda would like be "go see what's down there" right now.

Re:More to the point

[amorsen]

I don't see how the existing conspiracy theory of "They cut the cable so they could install monitoring equipment" possibly makes sense. Especially since you don't actually CUT cables in order to tap them.

Re:More to the point

[DesertKat]

Monitoring light on fiber involves the simple bending, not cutting, of the fiber and picking up the light escaping the cladding. This is how fiber is tested, inserting a light source and reading the resulting reception at another point...fusion splicing machines have been using this technology for better than 2 decades. The problem is that there is always a loss of signal that can be detected through monitoring at the nearest switch. Besides the difficulty of the intercept, breaking down the packets to the individual DS3s to the DS1s, then to the individual circuits. Keeping in mind that fiber transmission, today, is at rates that can hardly be imagined, OC388 or OC776. That's over 16 million individual conversations per fiber. The traffic has to be inserted into the light stream with timing marks that are coded, and decoded, during a similar operation at the following reception site. Without the header information, it would take the national laboratory computer a very long time to split out, and combine, a 3 second conversation. Now, I don't think anyone is monitoring anyone's conversations out in the middle of the ocean. The equipment alone would occupy a room of 30-feet by 50-feet.

A List of Conspiracy Theories

[tobiah]

Please list your theory here...

Re:So long, Florida...

[Chris Johnson]

Cool beans. So, are you noticing flight after flight of nuclear bombers suddenly departing for somewhere? :P

Dude, the ability of the Internet to route around outages (intentional or unintentional) is not in question. The fact that you can get through is just proof that the Internet works. I'm more interested in why I saw a total blackout for SOME sort of Florida connectivity.

You're in Miami, right? It would be Tampa that was dark. Is it in fact Tampa that's black? That's CENTCOM and SOCOM.

The Single Anchor Theory

[tobiah]

The cuts were the result of a single freak anchoring mishap...

Re:The Single Anchor Theory

[Catbeller]

Three times... that's one clumsy anchor.

It'll be springtime, in Iran, for Dick Cheney
Red states are happy, and not gay
Iran can't speak out to protest
Look out! we're cutting all the rest...

Re:Ya but conspiracy theories have to be complicat

[alan_dershowitz]

The only part that doesn't work is the fact that the cables were completely severed. So the theory is wrong, but it's still actually less convoluted than reality, which is that the USA owns and operates a sub designed to splice and eavesdrop on undersea digital communications cables undetected.

accuracy?

[sakurakira]

I'm not really sure how accurate this is regarding Tehran being completely dead. For some reason, it shows Florida being at 0 also, but that is where I'm writing from.

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[BadMrMojo]

Also, by defining USA and Rebels as a maybe, they by definition must be more than 0% likely, therefore it's impossible to then list Russia or China as 100%.

The seemingly erroneous total is a byproduct of that motivational seminar he attended. He's giving his whackjob theories 110%.

Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into

[Chryana]

So now that they have tapped into them, they'll just bring them back on line? Those cables would be the easiest point for any hostile power to secure, since all they would have to do to make any tap irrelevant is to encrypt all the communications which go through the cables. Hopefully, the US intelligence is more competent than that and will use some other means, such as rooting one of the endpoints, to gather data.

Lupin 3rd to Steal Persian Crown Jewels

[tobiah]

Feb. 29, 2008 - Renowned international thief Lupin 3rd announced his plans today to steal the Crown Jewels of Persia. Inspector McCleed's subsequent pursuit was hampered by a sabotaged anchor winch.

Standard US attack procedure

[WillAffleckUW]

Sounds like standard ops for a preemptive bombing attack on Iran.

The main question people in Iran should be asking is: are your printers and computers running strange jobs that seem to be doing something, because if they are, they are doing the prep work to report the Intel back to the US forces.

Especially those AMD multicore chips you bought in Dhubai ... they're all designed to run spy intel if they receive certain signals.

To the bomb shelters, Batman!

Re:Standard US attack procedure

[Catbeller]

Futzing with spying is too complex for the real world. Anyway, the NSA has monitored those cables for years, no doubt. No need to splice, and that would be one hell of a splice, data processing wise.

Cutting is just simpler, works every time, and causes a lot of problems. Could be a way of ratcheting up harrassment of the Iranians. Considering that we declared their armed forces terrorists, I don't think cutting their cable is beyond Bush's moral limits.

Obligatory

[justinlee37]

So doesn't this all kind of suggest that maybe the internet really IS a series of tubes?

Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into

[DrVomact]

To take down all 3 at the same time for several days would be idiotic. I think Occam's Razor wins here for me.

<paranoia level="high">Ah, but what if a certain American "superpower" suddenly felt an urgent need to tap the cables that go into, say, Iran? Maybe because it wants to start a war in a week or so, and needs that extra big hit of intelligence before it launches the bombers?</paranoia>

No, I don't think there's anything to it. But the paranoid version sends shivers up and down my spine, while the sensible one doesn't.

What about the ALTERNATE theory

[WillAffleckUW]

That they cut them so they can replace them with new cables that just happen to have signals ports built in to give the NSA even more detailed access ...

It's like when I worked in an HQ, you never trust any repairman, even if cleared, that you did not specifically request.

Re:Not a big problem

[Catbeller]

I keep reading all these references to "conspiracy theories" that I haven't seen in this thread. Psi Ops: at least post a few conspiracy theories before you seed the "conspiracy theory" meme.

Oh, there's a weird one now. Thanks, Psi Ops!

Haven't seen an anti-American post yet either, tho I haven't read it all yet. I posted an evil Dick Cheney writeup; I don't think that counts. He is an evil fuck, and his brain trust at the Pentagon and the CIA are fully stupid enough to try such a lame stunt.

Or cables were cut accidently three times. And exit polls don't work after the year 2000.

Or there may be one idiot submarine commander swanning around cutting cables just to start a commotion. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. How is the cable "broken"? Is it really, or is there some sort of cascading bug in the underseas communications system. Trying to be fair here. Don't really see the sanity of cutting cables, but I never saw the sanity of blowing up a country that had fully opened the doors and surrendered, either. Sane people are not in charge right now.

How come there's a Vogon ship over DC?

[WillAffleckUW]

Um, did anyone remember to go to the sub-sub-basement and see if there's anything on display in the bottom of the locked filing cabinet in the disused bathroom?

Re:How come there's a Vogon ship over DC?

[geekoid]

I tried, but there was a warning about a tiger, so I left.

Fourth Cut?!

[Jedi Holocron]

Some news sources are now reporting that a FOURTH cable has been cut as well.

Re:Fourth Cut?!

[geekoid]

What news sources?

Maybe the cables are just emo

[Jesus_666]

Has anyonw sniffed that traffic? Did the cables transport many HIM or Linkin Park MP3s lately?

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[RingDev]

Yeah, not that they were right next to eachother, two of them where what, a couple of kilometers apart. Not side by side, but close enough that a single ship dragging an acre could take out both. Just saying that a chain of events could easily create this same situation.

The primary point remains though, it is not incredible that 3 undersea cables were cut by ships dragging anchors. It is incredible that 3 were cut in such a short timeframe, but the fact that they were cut in such a way is pretty much to be expected. Unless the previous replier was correct, and that ManBearPig HAS learned to swim. But if that is the case... we're all doomed.

-Rick

WHat? are you serious?

[geekoid]

You can't prove a negative. If you postulate it is not a coincidence it is upon YOU to show evidence of wrong doing. Imagine a police officers came up to you and said "Prove you didn't commit a crime?"

Re:WHat? are you serious?

[Headcase88]

"innocent until proven guilty" doesn't always work when you're talking about large governments. The US gov't has enough control and power that the top-management there could get away with lots of illegal stuff and bury the evidence enough to create a "reasonable doubt", even with the checks and balances that are supposed to prevent corruption.

Looking at this, I guess they could do it to hurt Iran's economy and the population's ability to get info in the short term. I have to agree with you though, the US wouldn't have much to gain unless they were going straight into war with them soon, which (correct me if I'm wrong) is nigh impossible at this point without Iran making a clear threat.

Re:WHat? are you serious?

[Plekto]

The obvious punative reason to do this to people in Iran is to make the people unhappy with the current leadership. That's exactly the sort of reasoning our government believes will work with Cuba as well. As insane as it is, they still think that making the people unhappy will somehow make the people blame Iran's government instead of the U.S.

Re:WHat? are you serious?

[LaskoVortex]

You can't prove the positive either. You can only infer one hypothesis or the other based on testing each, arriving at a refined hypothesis through the process of elimination. In science, we call that "science".

If you postulate it is not a coincidence it is upon YOU to show evidence of wrong doing.

One must formulate a hypothesis before anyone can test it. If I postulate, I have no responsibility to show evidence of such postulation--other people can do that. If they are wise, they will consider this possibility here, or risk more cables getting cut through mechanisms they have chosen to ignore.

Let us consider the facts here. For as many years as I know of, no cable has been cut. Lets think about the probabilities. We'll assume one cable is cut per 1500 days (< 5 yrs) on accident. So, on any given day, the probability is 1/1500 assuming its just another day at the beach (so to speak). Now, I have read about 3 cables being cut in as many days. We can use binomial probability to determine our expectation for 3 cables being cut in just your ordinary average year: 0.0018. How about an ordinary average week? 1.034e-8. Ok, the latter was a pretty improbable event, wouldn't you agree? How about your ordinary average stretch of 3 days?

So you are going to tell me that its even less likely that the cables were cut by one nation or organization acting maliciously to achieve some end?

[Tinny voice sounding like you]You know what, actually I think the terrorists who hijacked the planes on 911 were not colluding with each other--but I am exempt from proving this because "you can't prove the negative".[/Tinny voice] Do you see how idiotic you sound?

We knew to look for colluding terrorists after 911 because three improbable events (planes running into buildings) happened closely in time. Do you see the similarities, or are you going to assert that its just a coincidence?

Re:WHat? are you serious?

[gr8scot]

You can't prove a negative. If you postulate it is not a coincidence it is upon YOU to show evidence of wrong doing. Imagine a police officers came up to you and said "Prove you didn't commit a crime?" That makes "coincidence" a suspiciously strong alternative hypothesis.

Re:WHat? are you serious?

[ravenshrike]

It would have worked with Cuba a long time ago, but Fidel was smart. He didn't try all that hard to stop refugees from leaving. This means that the potential revolutionaries that were willing to do something, did something and left, thus leaving a dearth of bodies for the revolution.

Re:WHat? are you serious?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

In general, most Iranians are free to come and go at will. It is bloody expensive - but if you want to live elsewhere, the barriers are at entry - not exit.

Re:WHat? are you serious?

[budgenator]

If I wanted to hurt Iran by using the internet, I'd be dropping satellite dishes not cutting cables. I figure that if Iran and Cuba was supposed to be a butch of cockroaches, why not turn on the lights and watch them scury!

Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into

[sfjoe]

4) Profit! (at least in terms of intelligence gathering and cyber-war capability

You don't have to limit your profit to only intelligence gathering. Intelligence agencies have long been known for sharing information to give a local business the advantage over its foreign competition.

Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into

[blind biker]

If that was true (not saying it isn't or is), wouldn't it be smarter to NOT cut all three cables at once? You know, so as to not attract suspicion?

Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into

[Catbeller]

Al Qaida never uses electronic communications in ops, not in successful ones, anyway. The 9-11 attackers, and bin Laden himself, only used face-to-face communications. Where's BL again? Can't find him, eh? Seem to work.

Accidental/occidental

[moxley]

How fucking stupid do you have to be to think this is all accidental?

Seriously.

Two guesses as to whose interests those doing the cutting are serving.....

Re:Accidental/occidental

[kiehlster]

I'll go with Jamaica. Those heavy accents can never be trusted, mon.

Re:Accidental/occidental

[geekoid]

Dude, I've seen someone roll 15 d6 and have them ALL come up one.
I've seen 7 rolled 12 times in a row.
It is known that randomness tends to be clumpy.

The US has no interest in cutting those cable and it make no sense for them to do so.

Now something might be going on. Sure, but lets not be jumping to wild speculation.

Re:Accidental/occidental

[moxley]

Three cables in different locations severed within a few days of each other.....

Wild speculation is thinking that there isn't intent in there.

Re:Accidental/occidental

[emilper]

there is nothing going on ... Iranian sites are available just fine. Only the data from Egypt is going to be rerouted through US and UK.

Re:Accidental/occidental

[DrStrangeLoop]

Dude, I've seen someone roll 15 d6 and have them ALL come up one.

thats what you get from playing a sorcerer and casting nothing but fireballs all day long :)

Re:Accidental/occidental

[tkw954]

Here is a related cartoon.

Re:So long, Florida...

[Jesus_666]

What? You mean Florida has more than one router?

Realistically?

[Catbeller]

Doesn't seem to make sense, invasionwise, for the USA to cut the cables. Why bother? If we invaded, believe it the cables would be down the instant the bombs arrived. Why bother telegraphing (groan) your move?

Could be one lousy set of coincidences. Happens. Says something that we automatically suspect the Cheney War Bunker of starting an invasion. Because he did it before? Not paranoid if you are facing a maniac with recent history of starting wars for national gain.

Could be Cheneyites just trying to cause problems in Iran. They've a history of nastiness in South America that would make your bowels liquefy. It's not past them to try it, but doesn't make operational sense for an invasion. Psi op, yes indeed, that makes sense. He's just a mean old fuck. Meanness defines his government.

Re:Realistically?

[Chris Johnson]

Yup, he did do it before. I've had a lot of fun tinfoilhatting the whole thing from the deranged perspective of a guy who shoots old men in the face and likes it, and having reached conclusions, I'm happy to let it drop.

Remember, if suddenly we find that Iran has launched a dastardly unprovoked attack and wrecked our navy, that's when we'll know Cheney got his hands on a private nuke stash! :D

And if not- well then we'll ALL be happier, so here's hoping it's just been a gedanke-experiment :)

Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into

[WillAffleckUW]

Al Qaida never uses electronic communications in ops, not in successful ones, anyway. The 9-11 attackers, and bin Laden himself, only used face-to-face communications.

They do use encrypted images to send basic updates while on task, though.

Usually limited to specific messages like "go to ground" "abort" that kind of thing.

That way they can be browsing a Net image of a nice car, save it to a disk or USB, and decrypt it when they're in a safe spot - which is totally normal behavior for someone viewing an image who wants to save the cool picture.

paranoia

[grumling]

Maybe they all got cut because they all run in parallel? An anchor dragging along a canal, breaks one immediately, and opens up the other two, exposing the bare fibers. The current or wake from passing ships break more and more fibers, leading to more outages. I've seen pix of the suez canal, and it doesen't seem all that wide, compared to the ships that pass through it.

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.

Re:paranoia

[ill stew dottied ewe]

They were in two separate seas, the "pair" in the Mediterranean was over a mile apart. It's not paranoia if they are out to get you.

Occam's razor

[wildcatherder]

After reading the fantastic conspiracy theories, I must refer to Occam's Razor ("wiki" it). I have to believe that someone is repeatedly dropping Occam's Razor and cutting the undersea cables. This is a high-visibility item only because of the great boom in Internet traffic in recent years. Cables get cut all the time. Older cables were wire and resulted in fewer channels lost per incident. Modern cables are fiberoptic and "chock full o' channels". It is considered cheaper to repair damaged cables in that area, precisely because it is shallow, rather than going to expense of properly entrenching them.

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[gnunick]

USA - maybe
Rebels - maybe
Russia or China - 100%

So, you're saying that there's a more than 100% chance that someone did it. Right.

Anyway, the way I see it, some governmental organization was probably practicing, proving that they could do it and observing the consequences. The chances that the world would learn from this and suddenly make all undersea cables less vulnerable to this sort of attack (how?) seems slim.

If it hadn't happened under the sea, I'd term it a 'dry run'.

Jokes aside--The real questions are who did it, and what is the target they were practicing for?

Of course, many countries have better internet service than the US, but none have bigger economies, more dependent on high tech (never mind the outsourced workforce, which has already been hard-hit by these problems in the Middle East & South Asia), than the US. A sudden loss of most of the internet connectivity for North America would be catastrophic to the US. I say that makes them the richest target, and conversely the least likely to have made this practice run.

Such an attack would be cheap to undertake, so any number of America's enemies could be responsible. I can think of some prime suspects, but have no reason to pick one over another.

Just thought of a THIRD reason to do this

[WillAffleckUW]

What if there's a revolution going on in Iran and they cut their own cables?

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 ...

Shark Attack Effect?

[dunc78]

I wonder if its like the shark attacks in the U.S. They have always been common (somewhat), but the media needs a story to over report about.

Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into

[Hoch]

Unfortunately for this theory, the location of breaks is found by timing the echo of a signal. A second break would cause a shorter time to echo on that end. It would be observable.

signal loss

[symbolset]

It is also plausable for it to be done without any significant signal loss.

If you just nick 5% of the diameter of each fiber the repeaters you're between will make up for the degradation. It wouldn't look any more suspicious than normal deterioration.

I think I could design this device. The people with real skills probably wouldn't need anywhere near 5%. Signal injection is much more difficult.

Breaking the cable does nothing for signal intercept. Broken cable = no signals to intercept. Broken cable = very likely someone will come inspect your snooping operation = very bad outcome. OTOH, breaking the cable to drag away evidence you've been tampering with it when you have another much harder to snoop intercept = good way to cover your tracks.

Opps! I did it again.

[Neanderthal Ninny]

Not to cap Britney Spears when she is down but her song "Opps! I did it again" is aptly named for these events.
WTF is happening in the Middle East with all of these cable cuts. If I didn't know any better that all of these events could be planned events. Maybe I'm a paranoid android but what are the chances (statisticians please answer) that three cables cuts in such a limited geographical area could occur?

Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into

[oliphaunt]

Or, in true Neal Stephenson style, the cable is ALREADY tapped by the US, the Iranians know it, and this is just the excuse they're using to change all the codes...

Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into

[Headcase88]

History textbooks speak about things of importance. If it turned out that these three cuts were just a coincidence, it wouldn't be part of history (except in a really specific subject). Likewise tons of coincidences have happened in this world that have not been recorded to history. You can't really look at the percentage of items in a history textbook that were revealed to be coincidence and use that as an indicator for how rare a coincidence is.

But being 100% sure that this is a coincidence is foolish as well.

How convenient for the NSA!

[Anonymous Cowhead]

From the linked article:

"It may take sometime to fix the cut but we are rerouting the traffic to another cable in the U.K. and U.S...." How convenient. As far as the US is concerned, it's definitely legal to spy on foreign communications that transits US borders. FISA doesn't even apply (not that it really does anymore, but that's another story.) And I wouldn't be surprised if Britain thinks the same...

Nothing is sacred

[Headcase88]

Good lord, the conspirators have found a way to hack into and edit Wikipedia!

related to opening of Iranian Oil Bourse?

[bushwhacker2000]

from a post on in the goldismoney forums:

There's a good chance that this is related to the Iranian Oil Bourse. It is scheduled to be opened between Feb 1 and 11 on the island of Kish in the Persian Gulf.

http://www.energybulletin.net/12125.html
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id...onid=351020103

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:related to opening of Iranian Oil Bourse?

[bushwhacker2000]

sorry for the broken link for presstv.ir, here is a tinyurl version: http://tinyurl.com/3422xw

Re:related to opening of Iranian Oil Bourse?

[Chris Johnson]

Wow, THERE you go. That's the missing reason in a nutshell. That's also total mayhem waiting to happen on Monday... just when you thought life couldn't get more interesting.

Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into

[cheekyboy]

5. Americas enemies will use paper & cdrom delivery methods for communications, slower but secure.
      If they want secure direct comms, just call the #1 communists on the planet, China and ask for a secure sat link for $9.95/minute.

6. Its not hard to wrap a VPN on top thats triple encoded with keys changing every 60seconds. Im sure the russians can aid in some land based wifi type comms with repeaters every 5 miles.
      Sure its not cheap, but damn cheaper than your own sat.

I guess this operation is to stop all the minor lower level cells/operatives from communicating effectively.

Not just "many, many" tons

[bigtrike]

Connected by a very heavy cable or chain to a ship which weighs many, many tons. Ripping apart a communications cable = not a problem.
To further reinforce your point, a large ship, such as an oil tanker, can weigh over a hundred thousand tons.

Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into

[eli pabst]

After I posted, the first thing that popped into my mind was that crazy ass story about how the CIA cooked up that scheme involving Howard Hughes constructing that giant deep sea drilling platform the Glomar Explorer that was really a cover to raise a sunken Russian sub. If you would have came up with that theory, I would have seriously wondered if you were insane. So who the hell knows, maybe they are just hiding it in plain site.

Blasphmy!

[Smordnys s'regrepsA]

That's not what Woody Allen told me!

Re:So long, Florida...

[DragonTHC]

socom is in miami. Military internet connections don't rely on commercial backbones. They have their own fiber networks.

tampa and everything south of it including miami is routed through the backbones running through orlando to atlanta.

We're talking about backbones here. The occasional router doesn't qualify as a backbone.

My best guess about the blackout of Florida was that some half-assed Internet company had a router go out.

Re:Mercury Retrograde. . .

[jjohnson]

Am I to understand that you believe that the apparent motion of Mercury has some causal relationship to the functioning of electronics? Not the real motion of Mercury, which is unchanged, or the real motion of Earth, which is likewise unchanged, but the appearance of moving in the opposite direction?

How about you don't force me to wade through an entire astrology site and just give me a thumbnail explanation of how an issue of relative perception can have an effect on my computer?

Mother Earth, Mother Board

[jjohnson]

Two of the three cables cut were FLAG cables, which Neil Stephenson wrote about in an epic article for Wired called Mother Earth, Mother Board.

Interesting thing about FLAG--it's an entirely private consortium that was created just to build a cable that went from England to Japan. 95% of all undersea cable goes to or from the U.S.; when a study group identified that major gap--Europe to Asia--they launched the project themselves.

Add AT&T to your roster of dark conspirators...

Mod Parent Up, Insightful

[gr8scot]

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?
It might be just the weather.

Oman's largest telecom, Omantel, said a tropical storm caused the damage while du (DU.AI:[web widget]: DU.AI, , ) , the United Arab Emirates' second largest telecom, said the cables were cut due to ships dragging their anchors.
Good call, mea37. There is enough duplicity in politics to keep 200% of voting taxpayers busy for 9 lifetimes, without making shit up. As you were, Slashdotters.

Can you spell "prelude to war"?

[itsybitsy]

It sounds very fishy that three cables would be cut in three days. While it's possible, it's not likely probable that that would happen? Or is it? Who would like to calculate the probability of that occurring?

Ok, so when does the war begin? If it hasn't already? Or will our media and internet be cut too?

It's high-tech Luddites

[mcvos]

It could be high-tech Luddites sabotaging the internet to stop evil porn. I expect the transatlantic link to be next.

Ocean floor

[Dr. Cody]

Indeed, they are as low as whale shit.

"Ken Lay, anchor's away!"

[oobi]

Kenny's still getting the hang of his new yacht over there in Dubai

We All Live in a Muslim Submarine

[flyneye]

Anyone who doesn't believe this is going to be called "Allahs will",go stand on your head over in the corner and be counted.

Re:Can anyone enlighten me? larger Anchor:

[pedrocarvalho]

well, that's a tiny anchor. Something more like this: http://www.menkent.dk/assistpics/22ton2.jpg/

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[urcreepyneighbor]

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. Drop a few million copies of The God Delusion in the Muslim world. Hell, drop a few million copies of The Root of All Evil?, too. Maybe then we'll see some progress.

Fully encrypted packets

[Stephen Ma]

I think the original poster was thinking of fully encrypting all the traffic that goes through the cable. So if you were a cable snooper you would have no idea whether Abdullah has sent or received any packets, because even the source and destination addresses would be scrambled while the packets are in transit through the cable.

Please don't make jokes

[tkrotchko]

"Really? I thought it meant they're using Comcast."

Francis has already yelled at us for making jokes about this. Apparently this is not a joking matter.

Maps

[visible.frylock]

Here are google maps for Alexandria, Dubai, and Musqat. Dubai and Musqat are across the Persian Gulf from Iran.

• Alexandria
• Dubai, Musqat

Wikipedia shows that similar outages occurred in 2005 and 2006 in Pakistan and Southeast Asia.

Well, Iraq switched to the Euro and the...

[gmezero]

In November 2000, Iraq began selling its oil in Euros. Iraq's oil for food account at the UN was also in Euros and Iraq later converted its $10 billion reserve fund at the UN to Euros... ...and then the U.S. invaded and one of the first things it did it switched the country back to selling oil in Dollars. Hmmm...

Re:Mercury Retrograde. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

Am I to understand that you believe that the apparent motion of Mercury has some causal relationship to the functioning of electronics? Not the real motion of Mercury, which is unchanged, or the real motion of Earth, which is likewise unchanged, but the appearance of moving in the opposite direction?

I have several views on this.

One of which is that perhaps it is not Mercury per se that is causing the effects noted, but that the system we live within is fractal in nature. Events reflected in the small are reflected in the very big. Both Mercury and terrestrial electronics devices inhabit the same system.

When one considers that matter is an apparent illusion, being rather more akin to an expression of something far more ephemeral, our universe can be recognized as little more than a holographic projection. There is no sound reason not to believe that there are patterns and systems in effect which do not behave according to physics as currently recognized by orthodox science, which is, as everybody knows, limited.

How about you don't force me to wade through an entire astrology site and just give me a thumbnail explanation of how an issue of relative perception can have an effect on my computer?

What I am suggesting is that people take some time to evaluate the forces at work, which can be done easily enough by reading through a horoscope such as the ones I linked to previously, and performing their own measurements. If there is something there which tweaks at your mind, then curiosity should demand further investigation to determine whether or not there are real patterns unfolding or if it is merely the mind trying to invent patterns where none exist. It is far more valuable to look at what is going on in the world rather than pretend that previously unrecognized forces don't exist based on current (incomplete) knowledge structures. I find it odd that this is not something which is instantly recognized more often. If you are curious about the universe at all, then you should need no prompting. The need for prompting implies previous conditioning, and such conditioning serves those who condition, i.e, not you.

-FL

Colourblindness

[Mark_MF-WN]

Fascinating.

It's always interesting to see how people with these genetic abnormalities cope. Some people seem to turn them into gifts, while others just suffer from them. Like autism -- the majority of people with autism seem to be disabled from it. But for a few people it enhances their other skills, sometimes to an extraordinary degree.

Of course, colourblindness comes in a variety of types. There's even some unconfirmed evidence of the opposite, a rare handful of people (exclusively women) who have an extra color receptor, and can distinguish colours that are isochromatic to the rest of us. Something about a mutated gene for the eye's cone cells, on one copy of the X-chromosome, which results in chimerism of the retina. Apparently it's difficult to do research on this, because the mutation (if it exists) only affects about 1-in-10,000 women.

Your father may have had something analogous that affected his ability to distinguish the brightness and saturation of colours that are isochromatic to the rest of us.

Logic

[Mark_MF-WN]

I think the logic there is that it worked so well with the USSR. The problem is that Russians already had a natural hatred of their leaders, extending back centuries. So blaming all of their problems on their own government wasn't a big leap for them. If necessary, they would have invented imaginary problems for which to blame their government. That's just how Russians are. Hence the need for Gulags, secret police, purges and whatnot, to keep the people in line.

Cubans and Persians, on the other hand, are much more patriotic. Cubans have remarkably high quality of life for such a poor nation; much higher than most of their neighbours (excluding the US). Communism works better at the small scale, and Cuba's success (or rather, their lack of complete failure) bears this out. Persians in particular adore their government for successfully defending them from Iraq during the war. Whatever else you might think of the Ayatollahs, they're rather more benevolent and progressive than Saddam Hussain. So the majority of Persians aren't very inclined to blame their own leaders for anything -- particularly when the USA is threatening to invade them or drop a few nukes to teach them a lesson.

3rd Undersae Cable Cut In 3 Days

[B.A. Brooks]

3rd Undersea Internet/Communications Cable Cut in 3 Days (CNN) -- An undersea cable carrying Internet traffic was cut off the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, officials said Friday, the third loss of a line carrying Internet and telephone traffic in three days. (UAFF/ARM) -- My sources told me today that this is clearly a message to other countries by The United States Government and Military that they own the Internet/World Communications and can shut them down anytime they wish. The Internet was invented by Tim Berners-Lee http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/, and is still owned and operated by The Department Of Defense. ARPANET / DARPANET. Do your research and you will find out this is true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

A Clear Message From The DoD!

[B.A. Brooks]

3rd Undersea Internet/Communications Cable Cut in 3 Days (CNN) -- An undersea cable carrying Internet traffic was cut off the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, officials said Friday, the third loss of a line carrying Internet and telephone traffic in three days. (UAFF/ARM) -- My sources told me today that this is clearly a message to other countries by The United States Government and Military that they own the Internet/World Communications and can shut them down anytime they wish. The Internet was invented by Tim Berners-Lee http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/, and is still owned and operated by The Department Of Defense. ARPANET / DARPANET. Do your research and you will find out this is true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

something funny

[raidet]

Of course there's something funny happening. People are so concerned with how their comments make them look, they deny the patently obvious. If you study history you'll know that government conspiracy is commonplace. The only problem is that a certain class of nutjob will tend to construct the most absurd consipracy theories from the most innocuous events. This causes people to gravitate away from making any kind of conspiracy theory, which is gravely foolish.

Re:A shame no one will probably read this

[Lippard]

Your claim that SeaMeWe-4 was cut near Marseille is incorrect. It was cut on its Marseille-Alexandria leg, while FLAG Telecom's Europe-Asia cable was cut on its Palermo, Sicily-Alexandria leg. Those two cables are right next to each other off the north coast of Egypt, and were both cut in the same incident by the same tanker.

Re:A shame no one will probably read this

[Lippard]

s/Marseille-Alexandria/Palermo-Alexandria/

Both cables land in the same places...

Iran is not disconnected

[Helevius]

Iran is not disconnected, according to a company that monitors routing tables.

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[hesaigo999ca]

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/04/0158249 for the fourth time....
and China or Russia stand the most to gain as they would be the next ones to control the flow after the cables are cut, to reroute traffic through another source for the moment, and guess what, packet sniffing anyone???

"Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back"

Re:Third cut? do i smell Conspiracy BS?

[hesaigo999ca]

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/04/0158249...

This means your theory of elevated traffic might be true, however I do know that that space is
monitored by the international comity and also, it may be improbable to have all lines cut the exact
same way or within so close a time span, however impossible that after the first 2 ( and now up to 4 ) that any governments wouldn't make sure that it would secure the last lines left.

Now that you made me think of it, definitely another government, they would need extreme training ( more then rebels have ) and high tech equipment to get by security ( a mini sub possibly )
So we are now left with US/China/Russia.

Iran is not and never was in the dark. . .

[tekshogun]

Internet traffic is affected, yes, but they are not in the dark. If you check the many websites hosted out of Iran, you'll see they can be accessed, albeit slowly. The Internet monitoring from Analog X was only ping one router.

Re:Maybe the NSA has to cut the cable to tap into

[DrVomact]

I remember that one. There were news reports that the CIA had tried to raise a Russian sub, but that the sub had broken in half during the attempt, and that the salvage attempt ended in failure. I could never figure out whether the whole thing was made up, or whether it truly was tried and they failed, or whether the story of the failure was disinformation circulated by the CIA to cover up their success...

See, ain't this fun?