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?

[gbjbaanb]

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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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 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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

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

[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.

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:This is getting exciting!

[nebenfun]

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

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?

[Bloke down the pub]

I am too willing to accept that something is fishy

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

"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: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

[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: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:This is getting exciting!

[everphilski]

NO INTERNET FOR YOU!

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>

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

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.

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

[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

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.

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: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!"

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.

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: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: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.

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...

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!

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

[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

[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

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.

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 ...

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: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?