Fifth Cable Cut To Middle East

You may have noticed a number of stories recently about undersea cables getting cut around the world. Apparently the total is now up to 5, but the scariest part of this is that Iran is now offline. You can also read Schneier's comments on this coincidence. Update: 02/06 17:42 GMT by Z : As a commenter notes, though the country of Iran is obviously experiencing some networking difficulties, it is not offline.

Comments

Goldfinger meets Pogo

[JesseL]

"Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."
-Auric Goldfinger

But who is the enemy?

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[SailorSpork]

Why can I picture George Dubbya Bush in a scuba suit, holding a giant pair of sheers and screaming "I'll cut off the terrorist's interweb tubes!"

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[Pharmboy]

I doubt it. If anything, we would want Iran to have 100% free and uncensored access for all citizens.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[gnick]

Not necessarily related, but IMHO interesting:
The US Navy has had to deal with fishing boats intentionally dragging their lines across cables many times. Around their Japanese bases, the US had a couple of data lines strewn along the ocean floor. If the lines were cut, the Navy would have to fix them. To do that, they had to keep fishing boats out of the area when they were working, so they would compensate the fishermen.

Obvious Japanese fisherman's solution:
1) Drag anchor across US data line.
2) Skip work and receive generous compensation.
3) $ Profit $

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[Anonymous Coward]

Our government doesn't want that for us so why would they want it for others?

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[necro81]

I'd like to believe the US isn't behind it for any number of reasons. One of those many reasons that occurs to me is the precedent it sets: if we declare that cutting cables is a valid way of pursuing foreign policy, what implications does that have for the US, who has more cables than anyone, relies on their cables more than anyone, and has the most $$$ invested in those cables? Put simply, if cables become fair game, the US has more to lose than anyone else. The powers-that-be couldn't be that stupid, could they? Sure, they're stupid enough to start a senseless war that's quagmired our foreign policy and military, but to do something stupid enough to threaten our livelihood (and pr0n)? (this is a half-sarcastic, half-pleading comment. I know that they really could be that stupid.)

Keep in mind, too, that these cables aren't, for the most part, state owned assets like radar stations or bridges - they are the private assets of companies and conglomerates, who have invested many billions in their installation. Those conglomerates are able to pursue the US for damages much more effectively than, say, Iran.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[Anonymous Coward]

Our government doesn't want that for us so why would they want it for others? Yep, you get to go around shouting to everyone about how you're "censored".

You are an idiot.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[manotick]

Connecting The Many Undersea Cut Cable Dots - 9 Or More? http://www.rense.com/general80/cable.htm This is quite an interesting comment. It claims there may be as many a nine cables down now.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[Bruiser80]

Because an informed populace promotes change, especially when grave injustices are being done and the local government is shielding its populace from it. Elected US officials don't want an informed populace because they would be putting their own political lives on the line. That and infrastructure is expensive.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[jamstar7]

But we'd also wanna cut off Iran's leaders, especially its military, from cheap, easy, and fast sources of information. If we were planning on attacking them, it's best to keep them confused as long as possible.

Interesting how this is happening during the primary election cycle in the US, now, isn't it? And no, Iran isn't totally cut off. But if more cables get cut, what would that tell the astute observer?

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[William-Ely]

The plot is much more sinister than we think. Step 1: Cut cables Step 2: Post story on Slashdot Step 3: Have everyone ping Iranian servers to death to prove story wrong Step 4: ??? Step 5: PROFIT!

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[Per Wigren]

I doubt it. If anything, we would want Iran to have 100% free and uncensored access for all citizens. Impossible. That would enable them to share music and movies. Hollywood would go bankrupt.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[Bob9113]

I'd like to believe the US isn't behind it for any number of reasons. One of those many reasons that occurs to me is the precedent it sets: if we declare that cutting cables is a valid way of pursuing foreign policy, what implications does that have for the US

Not that I think we're doing this, and I do believe you have a valid point. But... that's the same reason we used to have a hard-line stance against torture. I don't think we've been doing particularly well lately at considering the consequences of our actions. It seems like the powers that be are so utterly convinced that they are right that they cannot grasp the possibility that something bad may come of their actions.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[kripkenstein]

I'd like to believe the US isn't behind it for any number of reasons.
I'd like to believe that too, and I think your reasons are valid.

My guess is Islamic isolationists. That is, those people that, ever since Qutb, believe that that West is a corrupting influence on Islam. Internet access is a prime way for such influence to occur, so they would seem to have a very strong motivation to do this sort of thing.

Just a random theory, but none of the other ones make much sense to me.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[PitaBred]

The word you were searching for is "intact". It's one word, not two.

And I'm sure that it is. They are also not offline, as my buddy with a plain home connection is still chatting with me, so they obviously aren't feeling too hurt by it.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[moosesocks]

I doubt it. If anything, we would want Iran to have 100% free and uncensored access for all citizens.

A responsible citizen, yes, would want the Iranian people to take matters into their own hands, and make sure that their government leaders are accountable and responsible.

On the other hand, if you're an American politician trying to sell a war, Fear Uncertainty, and Doubt play very well to your cause on both sides of the table.

As it stands, I don't believe that the Iranian people are all too upset at their government. Although their approach to civil rights is a bit backwards from the Western perspective, it's been that way for several generations (and is largely the fault of previous American and European intervention in the region). Likewise, the Iranian government doesn't strike me as being all that secretive.

I hate to defend the current Iranian regime, but I don't believe for a moment that it's remotely as bad as Bush makes it out to be.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[randyest]

Intact.

Unless you meant that the network is inside a small nail.

(Also their but I've just about given up on that one.)

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[Boronx]

You don't understand the mindset of the current American government. They believe in a unipolar world where you have to sit back and take it if they deem you should have no Internet, but they will nuke you if you so much as stub your toe against one of their cables.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[risk one]

Who cares about them, doesn't anybody realize that we're cut of from the Iranian network? What will I do without Ahmadinejad's delightful blog?

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[zwei2stein]

Well, cutting US undersea cables is splendid idea.

You can hurt their economy BIG way, and you dont have to come even close to them, all you need is sub or ship and knowledge of cable locations. Neither is very hard to come by.

Investment of few mil$ dollars, results priceless.

Chaptha: Piloting (hehehe)

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[jc42]

... Step 3: Have everyone ping Iranian servers to death to prove story wrong ...

Heh. I read that while having a few traceroutes running in other windows, testing times to a few sites in Iran. All of them do pretty well from here (Boston) as far as the sites in New York, Amsterdam, and Turkey, with ping times mostly under 200 ms. Then the packets go to numbered machines without DNS addresses, and the ping times jump to over 500 ms. I'd thought that this was probably a sign of satellite hops, but now I wonder. Maybe it's just that we've slashdotted all the routers. Ya think?

The government site at www.iran.ir doesn't repond to pings, but it does respond on port 80 in the usual manner. It is sorta slow, but firefox doesn't time it out.

I don't read Farsi, so I can't tell much about what it says. There are some familiar faces at the upper left, though. ;-)

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[Daniel_Staal]

(Posted in code so they can't understand it:)

You are positing a hertofore unshown level of intelegence and understanding of the complexities of the mindset of countries other than the USA in the USA's current leadership. I respectfully suggest that they are more likely to try the direct approach, despite the accilary effects strengthening their enemies position. This seems to meet with the past record of those leaders actions.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[Chris Burke]

I'm sure they meant that Iran's internal net infrastructure is turning into the wind.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[rjschwarz]

If you were trying to foment an internal revolution you might want to cut off outside info knowing the Mullahs would be blamed and their explanations would appear to be excuses for their own foul deeds. In the past Iranian students have rebelled for less.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[meh037]

psst.. http://visualroute.visualware.com/ and paste this IP 194.225.228.25 Where does it go? No one knows!

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[spidercoz]

Never give up! The illiterati must be destroyed, or at least beaten with a dictionary.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[aplusjimages]

I couldn't help noticing you posted as AC. What's the big deal?

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[homey of my owney]

Why is the immediately prior reference being ignored - that at least two of the four cables were not cut, but taken offline due to power issues? No biggy, just curious.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[dwiget001]

Well, the U.S. doesn't have plainclothes members of the Ansar Hezbollah attack members of a union and badly beat them up, including cutting the tongue of one of them. So much for democracy in Iran, huh?

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[kestasjk]

I think you've got a few things totally backwards here, I'll try and explain the Iranian situation in a (full-post-sized) nutshell.

A responsible citizen, yes, would want the Iranian people to take matters into their own hands, and make sure that their government leaders are accountable and responsible.

On the other hand, if you're an American politician trying to sell a war, Fear Uncertainty, and Doubt play very well to your cause on both sides of the table.

First off America is pretty war weary (to put it lightly), I really doubt trying to push another war though is a great political move.
Secondly; Bush doesn't have to please to general public, he's on his last legs whether whether or not he kindles some favor.

As it stands, I don't believe that the Iranian people are all too upset at their government.

It's a lot more complicated than that. Mahmoud came in promising wealth for the poor, and has delivered in many cases, but failed elsewhere. At the moment the Iranian economy isn't going well (e.g. inflation at 25%, according to non-government sources), and there has even been gas rationing (in a country with massive gas reserves!) which really didn't go down too well.
Then you have the Islamic reforms, with headscarfs being more strictly enforced and a suppression of the clothing young Iranians want to wear. This is popular with some but not others. There's also suppression of government criticism in the media, and media also needs to be very tame (think FCC-on-steriods). (Young) Iranians aren't ignorant (as I understand Iranian education stands out from other Middle-Eastern countries by a long way); they are often pro-West and pro-reform, and they don't like the media oppression or Mahmoud jailing the students which lead protests.

The nuclear program is an interesting one. It seems that, like Chavez, Mahmoud likes to be seen as a crusader for the little guy, even if it doesn't parallel what goes on in Iran. What's ironic is that you say Bush is stirring this up to gain some political favor, when in fact the opposite is true; Mahmoud milks the Iran vs the evil empire angle for all it's worth.
When they reach a new threshold with uranium enrichment, or manage to launch a satellite, cue the government media's patriotic music and euphoria. (I feel I need to point out that this is actual government media, not to be confused with the tin-foil Fox-is-controlled-by-the-government "government media")

Iran getting powerful weapons, launching satellites, and capturing British soldiers in defiance of the West is great for Mahmoud, and ever since a US report came out last year saying that they aren't pursuing nuclear weapons to the extent previously thought Mahmoud has become less and less popular.
I've read that in Iran they joke that Mahmoud wouldn't bother with his nuclear program if the US wasn't opposed to it.

Not only have his lesser government members begun to criticize his policy, but he recently got snubbed by the Supreme Leader of Iran himself, something which is a big political blow for him. (It's like a member of the Vatican getting chided by the Pope for something he said; it's not supposed to happen)

Likewise, the Iranian government doesn't strike me as being all that secretive.

Read up about Natanz and Iran's dealings with the IAEA. Even Russia, who has supported and assisted with Iran's civilian nuclear program, is now saying they are concerned about Iran's recent satellite launch.

One thing for sure is that Iran is not Iraq 2. There aren't many parallels between them, and the biggest and most important difference in my opinion is this: In Iran Mahmoud is subject to checks and balances, he isn't a dictator and he has to watch where he treads. Economic sanctions and internal political pressure will definitely be enough, I would be astonished if it came to war.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[Xtravar]

I don't believe that the Iranian people are all too upset at their government. Actually, they are. It's just that our actions keep bringing them together, whereas if we left them alone they'd change drastically.

I went to an Iran speech by Gary Sick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Sick (former Carter adviser & author of October Surprise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_surprise_conspiracy) where he argued that Iranian politics is somewhat similar to American politics.

For example, we aren't too happy with George W Bush, our current leader, yet when a tragedy happens or we are threatened, we seem to rally behind the current leader.

The only ones who benefit from international saber-rattling are the "establishment" who would otherwise be kicked out of power. There is actually a lot of discontent with the current leadership of Iran, but by threatening Iran we only strengthen them.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[somersault]

"Our government claims it wants democracy and freedom for others, but doesn't seem to value that too much here at home either."

There, fixed that for you..

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[Anarke_Incarnate]

I believe Kim Jung Il has a Myspace.......... Ooooh, he's in my extended network.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[Shakrai]

Impossible. That would enable them to share music and movies. Hollywood would go bankrupt.

I know your just being a wiseass, but if the Iranians are sharing our music and movies then we've probably already "won". Our culture is one of our most important exports and at the end of the day it's going to be a hellva lot more effective at bringing change into that country then bullets will.

The sooner that Americans and Iranians realize that the other one is populated by people not that much different from them, the better off we will all be. Seeing our culture is a huge first step towards realizing this goal.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[mahdi13]

Because "cut" sounds so much more menacing and hostile then "taken off line"...also gives the conspiracy theorists more to go on

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[uniqueUser]

My first thought was that maybe Iran did it to themselves (to stop public information) but there is better ways of doing that (ie China). I think there is a 70% chance that this was on purpose. If it was on purpose, I think that there is a 90% chance that Iran did not do it. If Iran did not do it, then I say 60% chance Israel did. If Israel did do it, there is a 90% chance that the US helped. Can someone do the math?

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[Shakrai]

Still, the US has practiced torture in the recent past, before the US started outsourcing it's torture to client states via "extraordinary rendition" or kidnapping as it used to called. So much for democracy in the USA, huh?

I won't defend torture, but there is a bit of a difference between going after outsiders and using your thugs to intimidate the local electorate. Get back to me when we start using extraordinary rendition against domestic political opponents.

My country has done some really stupid shit the last seven years, but we'd have to fall a lot further before I'd start comparing us to Iran. If you lived in Iran you might not even be able to point out the bad stuff that your Government has done. We can still do that here.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[iocat]

Although their approach to civil rights is a bit backwards from the Western perspective

All the executed homosexuals and women beaten for not maintaining the appropriate veil angle on the street say "hi."

Oh, so do the journalists killed in detention by the regime.

So do the children being kids being executed by the regime.

So does Amnesty International , while we're at it...

Oh, and so do the local Christians, Zoroastrians, Bahai, and Jews, who are routinely persecuted by the regime (you can do the search yourself, I'm getting nauseated looking at these links).

Look, I understand people don't like GWB, but to insinuate that the US is somehow responsible for human rights violations in Iran, or has a somehow comprable record on human rights is insane.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[WormholeFiend]

What are you, some kind of PHB?

Everyone knows that proper spelling and grammar are essential to effective communications.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[CrimsonAvenger]

I love /. Anytime I need to be reminded that I am surrounded by obsessive, moderately autistic, anal-retentive nerds I only have to misspell a word or make even the most basic grammatical mistake. It's like baiting a field for virgin hunting.

I love /. Anytime I need to be reminded that I am surrounded by a self-styled "intellectual elite" that is functionally illiterate, I only have to read a few posts. And I don't even have to bait, since most of them do it naturally.

Why do people insist on believing that being semi-literate is a sign of their inherent superiority?

Oh, and "there", "their", and "they're" are three different words, with significantly different meanings. Learn to tell them apart, and people won't have to believe that the American Public School System (as if there were such a thing) has failed in its (purported) design purpose.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[Cairnarvon]

Because if it's not perfectly totalitarian, it must not be censorship, right?

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[PReDiToR]

Yes, because learning perl, C++, Java and .NET is easy compared to spelling words properly. Hell, that built in spell-checker is so counter-intuitive that people think the red line that appears under words means they have emphasis added.

Who cares if you look like a fool on Slashdot, you're probably far too busy to care, what with reading your bugtracker and fixing all those spelling and grammatical errors in your oooh shiney! new GUI? You know, the one that won't compile because you typo'd a function name or declared a variable that you misspelled later on.

You just go ahead and bait people. Better still ... Do it in txt spk, that really gets them. Illiteracy is so much fun, we should encourage a generation of undereducated kids to have trouble communicating their ideas to older folks with brains. That way the government won't even have to censor the internet, people just won't go looking for fresh new ideas from the younger mindset!

English isn't the easiest language to learn, but pointing out common errors is one way to teach people.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[TheLink]

Slashdot is allegedly a nerdy site.

The obsessive perfectionist trait is probably good for programmers, engineers, scientists and other nerdy areas.

But there are plenty of sloppy people around producing sloppy work.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[metamatic]

Get back to me when we start using extraordinary rendition against domestic political opponents.

José Padilla. Glad to be of service.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[Nim82]

"If we were planning on attacking them, it's best to keep them confused as long as possible."

I doubt a lack of internet access will confuse the average Iranian, nor their military infrastructue. If news (of significance) relating to a brewing conflict is to be spilled, chances are it will be on CNN and beamed to the world. Failing that, I'm pretty sure comrade KGB would let the Iranians know what's happening. Iran will know just as well without the net what's going on - Digg, Slashdot and Youtube are not their primary information sources ;)

Given the very low level of net access there, I can't see it having any impact on the day to day lives of the average Iranian either.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[hachete]

I agree in principle with you but it's a nuance easily missed. My major point is that the US cannot use the torture argument anymore, cannot be holier than thou with resorting to the form of words that you use.

The USA has broken it's long tradition, and it's a hard to wash your hands clean. Whether the torturees are domestic victims or foreign, it doesn't matter. The US government has sanctioned tortured, has been seen to re-define the terms of the Geneva convention with weasel words (courtesy of Rumsfeld), has been seen to bully, intimidate and degrade prisoners. And the kidnappings? Who's to say what's happening these days in the USA? Everyone is under restraint orders, orders that one can't even talk about. Phones are being tapped, habeas corpus has gone AWOL.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[PReDiToR]

--

"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it in good English"
There. Fixed that for you.

(This is a .SIG related joke, if you have them turned off)

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[Jerry Beasters]

5 in similar area in a short time is hardly "conspiracy theory". It's fact.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[HiThere]

The cables may not have been physically cut, but the connections were cut.

Five times is a bit more than three time. Rather likely to be "enemy action" I'd say.

Test: Are those connections that were removed for servicing back up yet? If so, then this is probably unwarranted fear mongering. If not ... not.

2nd Test: Since another cable has been cut, will the cables that were taken down for servicing be rushed back into service? Prediction: If enemy action, then reasons will appear suggesting that they *can't* be put back into service quickly. Otherwise not. (N.B.: Evaluate this second test tomorrow.)
--- intermediate result: If no report appears on the status of the cables, this implies that "enemy action" is in a stealth mode, after having been noticed. Unfortunately, this could by CYA showing up as a false positive.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[not-enough-info]

As it stands, I don't believe that the Iranian people are all too upset at their government. Although their approach to civil rights is a bit backwards from the Western perspective, it's been that way for several generations (and is largely the fault of previous American and European intervention in the region). Likewise, the Iranian government doesn't strike me as being all that secretive.

I hate to defend the current Iranian regime, but I don't believe for a moment that it's remotely as bad as Bush makes it out to be. May I recommend that you go see "Persepolis." It's an animated film about the Iranian revolution. It might change your mind. Certainly, it doesn't agree what you've said here. If doing this is too hard, there's always wikipedia.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[elrous0]

It's not a question of literacy. It's a question of missing the forest for the bark on one of the trees. To ignore someone's entire argument (irrespective of its quality) to focus on a grammatical mistake they made in the text is the height of mindless obsessiveness. It serves no instructive purpose and distracts others from the meaningful dialogue that SHOULD be taking place.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[elrous0]

Obsessive perfectionism is definitely a good trait for an engineer, granted. But it's a terrible one for a writer, polemicist, or designer.

I just hate it when a good argument gets obscured by a long thread of /.er's pointing out the commenter's improper use of "its" vs. "it's."

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[fyngyrz]

There are quite practical reasons to want Iran to not have net access. For one, it denies them access to commercial satellite information, direct or brokered. In a land action, this could be a considerable disadvantage. For another, should they have any sources of information in the country that wants to take military action, this isolates those people such that any useful information they might have becomes much more difficult to get back to Iran. Finally, it prevents an initial surge of information out of the country, accurate or not, that reports on civilian infrastructure being hit, which reduces political pressure on the attacker (especially if it is the USA, probably not so much if it were someone else, for instance Israel, which has plenty of reason to go after Iran right now with news reports of Iran being within three years of developing nuclear weapons.

I don't see this as a reasonable action for Iran, if Iran were contemplating military action.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[fyngyrz]

The problem here is that this type of warning says: "Time for you to set up a non-hardline source for Internet access." That's why I don't really think it's a warning so much as a precursor to military action, or an action in and of itself, for instance to interfere with Iran's plans to set up a Euro-based oil market. I believe that they (as a country) are a net importer of oil, however this doesn't really reflect on an oil market. The USA is also a net importer of oil, and we certainly have oil markets. A market in Euros (further) destabilizes the dollar, and I would imagine that such things are on the front burner for our chief executive's advisers these days.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[BigRedFed]

Iran is a net exporter of crude oil and a net importer of refined motor gasoline. The USA is a net importer of crude oil and a net exporter of refined motor gasoline. Iran has no refineries. They subsidize the cost of gasoline based of the exports of oil. Gasoline is really really cheap in Iran. Some of the data is a little old that I found.. so things could be slightly different now. sources: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_exp_dc_NUS-Z00_mbblpd_a.htm http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_imp_dc_NUS-Z00_mbblpd_a.htm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/03/AR2005070301042_2.html

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[autophile]

My country has done some really stupid shit the last seven years, but we'd have to fall a lot further before I'd start comparing us to Iran.

So... what? We hold the moral high ground so we're allowed to stoop a little?

--Rob

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[easter1916]

"If the Iranians are sharing our music and movies then we've probably already "won"."

Astonished at your naivete here. The Putinjugend of Nashi also love American-style b-ball hats, etc. Consumption of pop culture does not mean adherence to the reigning ideology in the culture's country of origin.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[Em Adespoton]

That would enable them to share music and movies. Hollywood would go bankrupt.

. . .

The sooner that Americans and Iranians realize that the other one is populated by people not that much different from them, the better off we will all be.

I know some people who emigrated from Iran and eventually moved back. Why? They thought that life in "the west" was just like it was in Hollywood movies. When they ended up working part time in a gas station and found themselves getting deeper and deeper in debt (Iran doesn't accept credit... it's a cash-based society), they faced their disillusionment, cut their losses, and moved back to Iran where they felt they had half a chance at getting ahead in life.

Iranians (to generalize profusely) aren't going to get the impression that Americans are similar to them from our popular fiction. It's the fictions (lies) that make them hate "the west" when they think about life outside of their own personal circles.

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[PReDiToR]

God said unto Moses, take these tablets down the mountain, there are ten of them and each one comes from a different English speaking part of the world.

Moses arrived in the UK a little late to help out the Bard, but these days we're on fairly solid ground when it comes to the en_GB dictionary. No, really. Every Linux distro I've used has it, and it's installed as default in my copy of Firefox, I can even download OpenOffice and Firefox with all the British language packs installed, I swear to god!

Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo

[sumdumass]

Lol.. Were they cut? And two of them were because of power problem not Ships anchors. And who benefits from the cuts? Seeing how we are obviously suspecting the US and your attempting to validate a conspiracy theory by false information, I have to ask who would benefit from the world thinking the US was behind the cables being cut despite the fact that they would effect allies in the area?

I mean think about this, what if nothing was cut but is being reported as cut? What if the enemy is within the state effected in an attempt to gain sympathy from other regions? What if this it just a big misinformation campaign to identify those hostile to the US but tracking people who are critical of the US in this matter? What if this is only an attempt to find out who would aid the enemy in an action against Iran? The Vietnam war was won in the press, the Iraq war almost was, what about Iran?

That right, draw lines between the sort points but ignore the picture drawn from the longer spans. Dot to dot images should come with instructions.

What they are thinking.

[suso]

Hmmm, let me see. Is this one it? No that's Syria. Is this it? No that's Saudi Arabia. Ah, here we go, Iran.

Re:What they are thinking.

[s!lat]

The scary part is I think this may be right. It's just too damn "convenient" to be a "coincidence"

Re:What they are thinking.

[gaspar ilom]

Step 1: You have a large stockpile of dollars, that are increasingly not worth much.

Step 2: Cut cables.

Step 3: Attack Iran.

Step 3-A: Stock Markets panick; U.S. securities start to plummet. (followed by U.S. dollar)

Step 3-B: A whole bunch of people in and around the middle east cannot gid rid of their dollars, or U.S. securities -- they cannot buy Gold or Euros on the international market. (Satellite and land lines are jammed by re-routed, regular traffic.)

Step 4: While a large portion of the world's money is cut-off, buy U.S. stocks at a premium.

Step 5: PWN the U.S.A.!

Step 6: Profit!!!

Iran has NOT "offline"

[daveschroeder]

...and has NOT lost net connectivity.

One router in Iran -- the one that happens to be used by Internet Traffic Report -- is unreachable. As are dozens of single points on the internet in many states in the region.

A quick perusal of, e.g., newspaper web sites in Iran finds every one I have tried working fine, including all state-run media. As is the web site of the Government of Iran and numerous other government and press web sites physically located in Iran. See for yourself. (And yes, I am aware that simply ending in .ir does not mean the site is necessarily physically in Iran, but you can easily verify that nearly all of them are.)

I know all of you are just itching to believe it's a US information operation (I love some of the articles..."a secret Pentagon strategy called 'information warfare'" -- uh, guys, I hate to break this to you, but it's not a secret) to cut Iran off from the internet in advance of the secret Iran invasion that Bush -- er, Cheney -- is oh-so-obviously planning.

No one ever said that one ship damaged all the cables. What was said was that a single ship probably cut two cables in a particular area off Egypt. But that has been called into doubt in that location. Unfortunately, it isn't clear exactly where some of the cables have been damaged, so simply because one area didn't have a ship doesn't mean it wasn't possible for it to be damaged elsewhere.

Even if someone is cutting the cables, as telecom and undersea cable experts believe is unlikely, it would be better to actually consider the facts of the situation, instead of feeing the conspiracy mill with garbage like "Iran is offline" when it clearly isn't? How about waiting until the cables are raised to see what kind of damage has been caused?

But if you want to believe one guy's blog post that "Iran is offline", which ends with:

this author actually dug a bit deeper and found a trail that leads from the owners of most of these internet cables all the way back to some very, very large companies in the U.S. and in the U.K. Which companies you ask? Who is behind this?

Well, that's the topic for my next post. You'll have to subscribe to my RSS feed and stay tuned for my findings. Don't worry, the wait will be short.

...then be my guest. How convenient! If we want to learn "which" big evil companies are behind what is obviously a US operation to cut Iran off from the internet, all we have to do is subscribe to his ad-laden blog!

Or, we could perhaps consider that "[m]ost telecommunications experts and cable operators say that sabotage seems unlikely."

Or, we could perhaps believe the facts, which is that Iran is not "offline", as I have illustrated above.

It seems that the premise to this story -- namely, that Iran is "offline" -- is patently incorrect. So, since that is untrue, what are the motivations of people who want to believe this is a prelude to war?

That lying about it somehow serves a greater purpose?

Oh, and by the way, for all you pushers of the Information Warfare theory, keep in mind that it runs both ways. I wouldn't be surprised before Iran picks up on the conspiracy stories and starts promoting that itself. What a great way to detract attention from its continuing defiance of the world community -- no, not just the US -- on its nuclear processing.

Re:Iran has NOT "offline"

[ahsile]

Omg... Get your tinfoil hat hating ass out of here. This is slashdot! Everything is a conspiracy! Iran is being slowly disconnected from the internet so that the US can bomb them and nobody will know! Because reporters couldn't ever tell us about it without the interwab!

Sheesh.

Re:Iran has NOT "offline"

[unbug]

A quick perusal of, e.g., newspaper web sites in Iran finds every one I have tried working fine, including all state-run media. As is the web site of the Government of Iran and numerous other government and press web sites physically located in Iran. See for yourself. Jeez, if this goes on Iran will be offline - it will be slashdotted. But maybe that was the plan all along...

Re:Iran has NOT "offline"

[pla]

No one ever said that one ship damaged all the cables.

True - Why limit it to one ship, when we have the whole US fleet to choose from?

Look, I don't normally believe in conspiracy theories (they take too much work to implement, and usually you can explain the same outcome by a lot of people all acting out of simple greedy self-interest). But we've gone how many decades with undersea cables only rarely taking damage, and now we have five, which just happen to affect a region of the world in which we have a strategic interest, all cut within two weeks???

Take the blinders off, friend. Even if the US didn't do it, someone (cough cough Israel cough) did, and deliberately at that.

Re:Iran has NOT "offline"

[TheOldSchooler]

You beter be careful my friend. They are watching you now.

Re:Iran has NOT "offline"

[Rik Sweeney]

...and has NOT lost net connectivity.

Meanwhile, at the NWO headquarters:

Underling: "President Bush, Iran still isn't offline!"
Bush: "Dammit, Osama, what the fuck am I paying you for?"
Bin Laden: "Sorry Sir, I'll get right on it"
Elvis: "And get it right this time!"

Re:Iran has NOT "offline"

[maxume]

The question becomes, how many providers are left with a connections to the area? If it is 1(or 1 has a majority of the remaining bandwidth), I see a party much more motivated to cut the cables than the US government would ever be.

Re:Iran has NOT "offline"

[pla]

Why is this rated as a "Troll".

Thanks for the support, but I could have answered that question before I ever posted (fortunately my karma can take the occasional hit): Because I mentioned Israel.

If I had left that word out as the in-all-seriousness second most likely source of (or partner in) this sabotage, I probably would have made a +5. Most people, however, just can't grasp the idea that you can hold the political state of Israel in utter contempt for its actions, without expressing antisemitism.

Re:Iran has NOT "offline"

[PortHaven]

And Israel's beef with Asia is?

And India, who is on pretty decent terms with Israel...I mean Israel wants the data lines cut why?

I'd give more respect to aliens planning an Independence Day attack credence than some of the bologne on Slashdot comments at the moment.

Re:Iran has NOT "offline"

[cHiphead]

I hadn't considered that angle. Maybe its the first step of the aliens plans to disable the internet prior to invasion, they're checking response time on repairs, its a great tactical move.

Re:Iran has NOT "offline"

[Farhood]

just called some family (in Iran)...asked them if their 'net was up. they said yea...asked me if mine was up. I said no...damn comcast.

Re:Iran has NOT "offline"

[raju1kabir]

But we've gone how many decades with undersea cables only rarely taking damage

Not very many decades. Here in east-ish Asia we depend on transpacific cables quite a bit. At least once a year, and sometimes more, some cable will take a hit, causing congestion on the alternate routes and making net access sucky for days or weeks.

But definitely centidecades go by without incident.

Traffic Intercept

[RichMan]

Cut all the alternate paths until the traffic you desire to capture comes through your surveillance hub.

not-so-thick-tinfoil

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

The system is down. The system is down. The system is down. Down. Down, down, down, down.

Is it really offline this time?

[eln]

I remember last time a cable cut was reported they said Iran was offline that time as well. I'm not so sure Iran is really offline now either. I have been clicking into the websites of various Iranian universities and all of the ones I've checked so far are up, although some are kind of slow. While I guess it's possible some of them are hosting their main websites offshore, I doubt all of them are. Unfortunately, the routers here block outgoing traceroute for some dumb reason, so I can't verify for sure, but it seems like Iran is not as offline as we might think.

Re:Is it really offline this time?

[Stefanwulf]

Renesys (who really know what it's doing in this space) has posted a refutation to this exact story, explaining that while Iran did suffer from the cut cables the same as the rest of the middle east, it did not go offline, and looking at why TFA may have thought it did. It goes quite in-depth.

http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/02/attention_iran_is_not_disconne_1.shtml

It's just an attempt to get traffic

[emj]

He says he knows it all he will just wait until his next post to tell you all, so this is where "journalism" is heading. It's all about the money of course, but it's actually the first time it's been so clear.

I don't think s/he has anything.

How many?

[MBGMorden]

Didn't they say Iran was completely offline when the third cable was cut? Then I hear a fourth cable was and they were "now they're offline"! Now there's a fifth cable cut and the news is saying "Now they're REALLY REALLY offline!". And yet it still appears that they are still not offline.

So, how many fscking cables do they have and can they please tell us exactly how many have to go down before I can't ping a single thing in Iran? I don't wanna go through this on the next 12 cables . . .

Re:How many?

[gingerTabs]

So, how many fscking cables do they have and can they please tell us exactly how many have to go down before I can't ping a single thing in Iran? I don't wanna go through this on the next 12 cables . . . Surely your military advisers would give you a better answer than /. George...

Is this really confirmed?

[Drakin020]

Iran has shown a connection of 0 for the past week or so. That doesn't mean a cable was cut does it? Just means that you cannot ping that one router. Last time I checked Iran had more than 1 router.

Also look at this.
http://www.internettrafficreport.com/namerica.htm

Does that mean Florida is offline? No it just means you cannot communicate with one of their routers.

Except that Iran has NOT gone "offline"

[daveschroeder]

Oops.

So when the basic, sole premise and of the story is wrong, and by extension the clear implication, where do we go from there?

Re:Except that Iran has NOT gone "offline"

[stonecypher]

So when the basic, sole premise and of the story is wrong, and by extension the clear implication, where do we go from there?

I'm not sure. Traditionally someone says something about Katz or Piquapille, but it's not so easy here.

riiight.

[apodyopsis]

from TFA "However, this author actually dug a bit deeper and found a trail that leads from the owners of most of these internet cables all the way back to some very, very large companies in the U.S. and in the U.K. Which companies you ask? Who is behind this?"

what. the. fuck?

the author clearly has his tinfoil underpants and armadillo hat on. I mean come on, whilst I realize that almost everything can be turned into a conspiracy theory this is too much. Accidents happen all the time and I remember reading that some of this outage is due to routing maintenance. Occams Razor, to me the facts as reported seem simpler then some ulterior motive and cable cutting gear.

Re:riiight.

[Quiet_Desperation]

the author clearly has his tinfoil underpants and armadillo hat on.

I call it Battlestar Syndrome. It's like Munchausen Syndrome (there's also Battlestar By Proxy Syndrome), except instead of trying to draw attention or sympathy, they wish to be seen as some sort of rebel ("a rag tag rebel fleet") fighting against some shadowy conspiracy. They actually thing the US is now the worst fascist dictatorship ever to exist, and that the creepy Half Life G-Man is tracking their comic book and grocery purchases with 50 special agents and six supercomputers deep beneath the Earth's crust.

Oh boy. Here comes some more modding down by folks who can;t take a joke.

Obivously

[Joe U]

Obivously, it's to stop them from downloading Truecrypt 5.

Top Secret

[fredz1]

It's "Operation Notwork" AKA "InterNot" it was Big Dick's idea, but I liked it... submarine, big pair of scissors, there you go. - W

Re:Coordinated attack?

[wonkavader]

I'm tired of this myth. For the LAST TIME: There are NO laser-equipped sharks. All the shark operatives are issued simple wire cutters. Tests with sharks equipped with nuclear landmines were abandoned after it was found that the chickens drown too quickly for the sharks to be maximally effective.

Re:Argh!

[SpacePunk]

Who says that it's America? The most likely suspect would be an Islamic nutbag, or group of nutbags that want to cut primarily Islamic states from western influence.

"Afghanistan is now the #1 producer of cocaine and cannabis."

You forgot heroine(sp).

"Iraq has over 1 million civilian death by now and is close to complete anarchy."

I'd have to see the stats on the deaths. Does it include people that die of natural causes also?

As for anarchy, there will never be any. Local sheiks will always have control of their regions. Well, as much control as Islamic militants will allow.

The Real Economic Stimulus

[INeededALogin]

I am putting on my tinfoil hat for this post but...

What if this is actually a US government plan. Make Hi-Tech industries from low-cost countries unstable and unusable. All of a sudden, companies panic and start to re-think the outsource planning that has been losing US jobs. What if the US is making a coordinated effort to rescue its economy by sabotaging others?

Re:The Real Economic Stimulus

[geekoid]

Because they could just add taxes for outsourcing work to bring the cost inline with US worker cost and let the market choose the best quality for their work instead of exploiting economic imbalances?

Cables get cut all the time, news at 11

[hcdejong]

According to an acquaintance who works for an ISP, the weird thing isn't that these cables are broken, it's that all of a sudden it's news. There are always issues with submarine systems. That is why we have so many repair ships in the global fleet:

list of ships

Egypt Loses Its Wireless Connectivity

[briggsb]

The conspiracy theorists just got more fodder. A low-flying plane cut Egypt's wireless Internet connectivity.

Re:fp

[halivar]

first post on the fifth cable

No wonder it took so long to get here.

C'mon /.

[rock217]

I thought we were better than this...one router goes down and suddenly "OMG IRAN HAS NO INTARWEBS!"

Ok, so if Iran has _no_ intarwebs, I shouldn't be able to hit a server in Tehran right?

http://www.iust.ac.ir/

Flag Telecom

[Ritorix]

Whether the cables are being cut by ship anchors, Navy Seals or lasersharks, there are slower alternate routes. In a pinch most Gulf-region ISPs can route the other way, through Asia, under the Pacific Ocean to America. Obviously that degrades connection quality. Backup routes were contracted after the tsunami damaged so many of the undersea cables at once.

The BBC has a decent article on the issue, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7228315.stm
The cables (at least two of them) are owned by http://www.flagtelecom.com/, they have updates on repairs on their news page and a nice map of the cables. Their Gulf-region cables are described as a "Self healing Gulf loop, providing maximum design capacity of 1.28 Tbps. Initial launch capacity 50 Gbps.
Four fibre pair route linking the Gulf to Egypt and India. Design capacity of 2.56 Tbps, with initial launch at 90 Gbps.
Approx. length 10,300 km."

Bullshit

[PitaBred]

Bullshit. My buddy from Iran is currently chatting with me in on AIM. The cable may be cut, but Iran is far from offline.

Iran not "off internet" but strange routes taken

[cohomology]

The Iran Institute of Science and Technology ( http://www.iust.ac.ir/ ) is online, and their servers are physically in Iran, but a traceroute from Roadrunner in New York, NY shows traffic going the wrong way around the world.

Tracing route to www.iust.ac.ir [194.225.228.25]

over a maximum of 30 hops:

    1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 194.225.228.25
    2 8 ms 9 ms 11 ms 10.39.192.1
    3 12 ms 8 ms 7 ms gig-4-3-nycmnyg-rtr1.nyc.rr.com [24.29.98.109]
    4 8 ms 9 ms 8 ms pos-3-2-nycmnya-rtr1.nyc.rr.com [24.29.130.129]
    5 10 ms 9 ms 10 ms tenge-3-0-0-nwrknjmd-rtr.nyc.rr.com [24.29.119.106]
    6 10 ms 9 ms 10 ms 4.79.188.37
    7 23 ms 18 ms 17 ms ae-32-54.ebr2.Newark1.Level3.net [4.68.99.126]
    8 29 ms 18 ms 14 ms ae-4.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.132.101]
    9 20 ms 16 ms 19 ms ae-92-92.csw4.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.134.158]
  10 14 ms 18 ms 13 ms ae-94-94.ebr4.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.134.189]
  11 89 ms 91 ms 89 ms ae-4.ebr3.LosAngeles1.Level3.net [4.69.132.81]
  12 84 ms * 84 ms ae-93-93.csw4.LosAngeles1.Level3.net [4.69.137.46]
  13 84 ms 81 ms 86 ms ae-4-99.edge3.LosAngeles1.Level3.net [4.68.20.201]
  14 84 ms 85 ms 83 ms SINGAPORE-T.edge3.LosAngeles1.Level3.net [4.78.195.202]
  15 118 ms 84 ms 83 ms ge-7-1-0-0.laxow-cr2.ix.singtel.com [203.208.183.81]
  16 85 ms 274 ms 84 ms ge-4-1-0-0.laxow-cr2.ix.singtel.com [203.208.183.90]
  17 276 ms 265 ms 282 ms so-3-0-1-0.sngc3-cr2.ix.singtel.com [203.208.149.185]
  18 338 ms 253 ms 269 ms ge-0-0-0-0.sngtp-dr1.ix.singtel.com [203.208.149.78]
  19 254 ms 272 ms 264 ms GigabitEthernet1-1-1.sngtp-ar4.ix.singtel.com [203.208.183.114]
  20 284 ms 287 ms 303 ms 203.208.192.226
  21 298 ms 286 ms 290 ms 217.218.155.201
  22 301 ms 299 ms 292 ms 217.218.163.252
  23 328 ms 319 ms 292 ms 194.225.239.254
  24 298 ms 294 ms 303 ms 194.225.228.25

Trace complete.

Non Dollar Oil Trading

[spun]

Iran's Oil Bourse is the target. Can't have the world trading oil in non-dollar currency. Nowadays, you cut the Internet and there won't be much trading. Props to Jeremiah Cornelius for the link.

Oil sales by Iran in Euros intercepted, actually

[leftie]

From Bruce Sterling's blog at Wired.com...

"...Others maintain the damage signifies retribution for the impending opening of the Iranian Oil Bourse, which will allow trading in currencies other than the U.S. dollar, potentially diminishing the value of the dollar. (((As if the dollar wasn't busy diminishing itself, with or without submarines.)))

Clearly, the political impact, should the damage be attributed to military or financially motivated activity, poses severe implications, but apart from that, the mere impact on broadband connectivity within the region, and communications capabilities with Europe and North America have already been hampered, causing significant disruption to workflows at many businesses.

"This has been an eye-opener for the telecom industry worldwide," said According to Colonel R.S. Parihar, Secretary of the Internet Service Providers Association of India. "Today, the cause of the problem might have been an anchor, but what if it is sabotage tomorrow? These are owned by private operators, and there are no governments or armies protecting these cables."

http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2008/02/the-undersea-ca.html

Since they won't let Cheney satisfy his invasion fetish, Cheney has to do something with all that free time on his hands.

Re:This is obviously the work of....

[rodney dill]

or Manbearpigsquid (for underwater work)

Here's An Idea

[jkonrad]

Cutting the cables doesn't serve any purpose... but perhaps repairing them does. It would be a good time to insert monitoring equipment, no?

Not that I think that's what's happening... far too obvious, in a supermarket-checkout-line-pulp-techno-thriller kind of way. I'm sure they can (and have) tapped such lines in a less clumsy way.

But how many companies are equipped for these kinds of repairs? It would be fairly easy to predict which one(s) would be used and stock them with agents. Dunno.

We'd never be so obvious

[Lucas123]

With all of our technology and our superior intelligence community, why would we be so naiive as to think that cutting cables wouldn't be an obvious ploy to disrupt communications among Middle Eastern countries, and so that tactic would only backfire on us? Unless, our intelligence community calculated that everyone would think it was obvious, so that we'd never do it because everyone would immediately know it was us. But then, people would realize that we knew that they knew we'd think it was an obvious ploy and therefore no one would believe we'd done it, so then they would't believe we'd done it, all just to throw them off. But then, people would realize that we knew that they knew that we'd knew they'd knew... forget it. I'm going back to sleep.

Re:We'd never be so obvious

[y86]

With all of our technology and our superior intelligence community, why would we be so naiive as to think that cutting cables wouldn't be an obvious ploy to disrupt communications among Middle Eastern countries, and so that tactic would only backfire on us? Exactly! We WANT their people to have access to the net. Recently Iran has been in the news for recent atrocities against the jews and women. Don't read the news http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/05/wiran205.xml ? 2 woman are being stones to death for adultery. Obviously this is not POSITIVE press for Iran and obviously we don't have anyone on the ground in Iran, so how is this information getting out?

The OPPRESSED people as posting online and relaying information to people in other countries. The best way to control a mass of people is to control the information they see -- you can't do that with a connection to the internet.

Oblig quote

[eclectic_hermit]

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?

.

P.S. On a side note, how can we not believe in a conspiracty at this rate??? Seriously!!!

What is the source of all this?

[mlwmohawk]

I'm sorry, I just can't believe that 5 under sea cables have been cut in so short of a time and not have it been deliberate. OK, it is possible that these have all been accidents, but who are we kidding? Seriously.

Now, who has the most to gain from this? I would assume that these cables have already been monitored by the US, so I doubt it is the U.S.A inserting monitoring systems. Not, mind you, that I would put it past us, but I believe that they probably already had this capability. Also, I think they would be able to do it without being so blatant.

Could it be Iranian agents purposefully cutting the internet to sever information to and from the country? Could it be the US cutting the cables, not to insert monitoring, but to actually reduce information flow? Is there a common denominator we are over looking? Is Kuwait affected? Oman? Qatar? UAE?

If we assume it is not an accident, there must be a purpose. Is it an anti-cyber-terrorism preemptive action? It certainly an interesting set of events.

Re:A communications disruption?

[geminidomino]

Ok, that stopped being funny between the 2nd and 3rd cables.

I need some reference please

[CambodiaSam]

Does anyone know how often undersea cables normally have issues? Sure, 5 cuts in an area *seems* high to me, but then again, I don't have any frame of reference.

So, what is the statistical probability of an undersea cable having a minor, major, or catastrophic issue? If it's once a week, then perhaps we have an anomoly of location, not an anomoly of frequency.

I remember seeing some Discovery Channel show on how they end up fixing those cables, and it was rather interesting. I also have some fuzzy memory of how there are multiple boats designed to do this kind of repair work, and they are usually busy out at sea fixing *something*. I get the feeling (this is where my plea for verification comes in), that 5 cuts may not actually be TOO unusual.

Cthulhu?

[StarEmperor]

Now we know where Cthulhu stands on the issue of net neutrality.

I can't believe you people still defend Iran

[cowwoc2001]

I doubt it. If anything, we would want Iran to have 100% free and uncensored access for all citizens. How Utopian... and unrealistic. Iran routinely censors their population: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2005/09/14/iranian_censorship.html

Unfortunately the same can't be said about their military and Islamist government that profits greatly from that wonderful connection.

I can't believe that people are *still* protecting the Iranian government (note I'm not talking about their citizens) after all the crap they've pulled during the last two decades. Just because the US media has tuned into Iran in the last five years doesn't mean this story came out of the blue. Iran has been funding and training terrorist groups and publicly boasting about it for over 20 years now. We've been waiting for their population to overthrow the Islamist government for years yet that hasn't happened either. Just take a look at the kind of things coming out of their government-controlled media: http://memritv.org/

Yes, most Iranians dislike their government but no this won't be happening anytime soon. In the meantime, thousands upon thousands of people die every year because of direct funding by the Iranians to terrorists. Ironically most of the victims are Muslim.

If you want to avoid war with Iran then you should be in favor of diplomatic action to prevent them from obtaining nuclear weapons which could be a pretext for such a war. By preventing economic sanctions from going through you leave the world no choice but turn to the military option. Also it is worth noting that we've held toothless diplomatic talk with Iran for decades now and that didn't work (if anything, their government got more radical). They need to feel the heat for there to be any change.

Re:I can't believe you people still defend Iran

[Spellvexit]

I don't think that the poster you replied to was really suggesting that having an Internet connection in Iran meant an idyllic unfettered freedom of information for its populace; instead, not having any glimpse into the outside world makes the citizens more susceptible to hatemongering propaganda, stilted views, and the like. To think that cutting off an Internet connection to Iran would actually improve political tensions would be naive.

I was also a bit disturbed that war seems to be the only alternative to sanctions. If the U.S. didn't routinely traipse into the Middle East and assert itself violently, would we have fomented as much hate as we receive now? Israel, Desert Storm, the Iraq conflict... it's enough to make Arab states feel pretty threatened. They can't compete with the scale of the United States military, but a nuclear device sure gets our attention and would make us think twice. I'm not necessarily debating the utility of our past military offensives, but to say that outright war is the only alternative to sanctions strikes me as pretty simplistic!

Perhaps we're arguing the same point, however: we've stirred up such a hornet's nest in the Middle East now that perhaps it really has come to suppression via sanctions or via war. I just wonder what that area of the world would look like if we had been less meddlesome and more supportive in the first place.

Re:I can't believe you people still defend Iran

[Grishnakh]

And who's to blame for the current Iranian government? The USA! We're the ones who installed the Shah there, and the people hated him so much they overthrew him.

Maybe we should have left them alone to begin with. If we go to war again there, it'll be another mess, since we'll just install another bloodthirsty dictator like we always do, and thousands upon thousands will die, at our hands.

If we want to avoid war, we just need to mind our own fucking business. How hard is that?

Re:I can't believe you people still defend Iran

[Xyrus]

The US has been doing much worse and for far longer. You haven't included thebest parts of the US in thee Middle East.

Iran used to be a DEMOCRATIC nation, one of the first to do so. But they didn't want to bend over for the US. So the US supported the overthrow of that government to put the Shah into power. The Shah was a ruthless dictator who was sort of like Saddam, only less cuddly.

When the people finally rose up against the Shah and took back their country, they made it very clear that the US was not welcome. Well, we can't have that now can we? So we helped put yet another ruthless dictator into power, Saddam Hussein. We gave Saddam military support and weapons to help fight a proxy war for us with Iran. That was quite a bloody mess. And that eventually lead Kuwait and the Iraq wars. More death and destruction.

Don't worry, the US still has Iran beat in regards to the killing people. They're amateurs compared to the US.

If you think the Iranians dislike their government, they dislike the US a whole lot more. If one thing can be said for the Middle East, its that they have long memories. We've been screwing over that area of the world for the better part of a century now, and I think it is easy to see that the remember all to well the actions of our past.

~X~

Valid sources are great!

[Eviliza]

As several people here have pointed out, Iran is not disconnected from the Internet. Users in Iran have been able to connect to the internet without any atypical problem... this rumor has been swirling about for a few days. I manage a Persian-language website with many readers in Iran, so I have both the motivation and the resources to check into this... we've seen no decrease in traffic from within Iran. I've also been able to find no source for this that doesn't trace back to the Internet Traffic Report, which as other has pointed out has a somewhat inexact methodology. This is the second time this has been mentioned in Slashdot, and everytime it is posted, it gives me a heart-attack... there might be a need to post a correction or at the very least to stop asserting that Iran has no connectivity without better confirmation.

Iran Supports (and Distributes!) GNU/Linux

[cparker15]

I had no idea until now (I've never even seen a .ir URL before), but one of the images on the Iranian government's Web site features the GNU and Linux mascots. Clicking on that link brings you to http://it.iran.ir/ which features instructions on how to add Iran's CentOS mirror to your yum repos. I think this article would've been much more interesting if it had featured the government of Iran's involvement in the free software community. For one, it would have been true. A government that distributes a free operating system can't be that oppressive, can it?

Comedy gold.

[rmadmin]

First attempt I got a "503 Service Unavailable". How fitting. =)

OH NOES! The slashdot tubes have been cut!

Please

[ghyd]

If the news is wrong, Slashdot, remove it or amend it quickly. This is not serious at all and destroys a lot of support in this site. We're not talking puppies here, so be serious.

Re:wtf

[rasputin465]

If anything I'm not buying a lottery ticket today, the planets have aligned and its not in our favor.

And before this, lottery tickets were a safe investment??

"The lottery is just a tax for people who can't do math."

Re:NSA cable tapping

[rasputin465]

Maybe the dolphins are getting back at us for all of those tuna nets.

"So long and thanks for all the fish, but screw you and your damned tuna nets!"

Islamic Republic of Iran

[mechsoph]

I think Iran is actually a democratic country so the people there have just as much opportunity to vote their leaders out of power when they don't agree with their actions as the US does.

Iran is an Islamic Republic, meaning its government is half democratic and half unelected asshats.

Re:Islamic Republic of Iran

[phoenix321]

Not only that, but the unelected asshats even get to decide *who* can be voted into the democratic half.

So the only half Iranians get to vote on is already pre-selected by the aforementioned asshats. As that list probably contains only friends of asshats, they're likely be asshats as well. So in fact, unelected asshats vote for candidates and Iranians just decide whose face is prettier.

The correct term for that is "Hobson's Choice", I believe.

The measure of a theory of behavior

[Jerf]

The measure of a theory of behavior is not "Does this action/occurrence further the given goal?", but "Given a hypothesis that group X is pursuing goal Y, is the action Z the best action X can take?"

Let's take the goal of "cutting off Iran's information before an attack by the US". Does cutting the cables in this manner "further that goal"? Yes, it does. However, given that goal, would the US military consider this its best action? Hell no! If the US Military wants to cut off your internet, they're not going to give you a lead time of several days; they're going to cut off all your links within minutes, possibly seconds of each other.

Are extremist Middle Eastern groups cutting off the cables to cut off Western influences? They would lack the capabilities to cut all cables at once, but I also suspect they'd know this was a brutally short-term situation. Most such people seem to believe that standard authoritarian government techniques are a better choice. I can't quite rule this one out as thoroughly, but it would have to be an awfully small, insular group to think this is the best choice.

The problem with the standard metric of "does it further this goal" is that it leaves you with an excessive abundance of theories, which can't all be true, but can't be ruled out by that metric. Every event further numerous goals and sets back numerous other ones. You really need to be looking at what people consider their best actions; that tends to be much more constrained and much more accurate. Less fun if you need to see conspiracies everywhere though, but that's the price you pay for caring about truth.

And so on. So far, I haven't really heard a good conspiracy theory yet, so I'm still judging natural event as the most likely, pending more information.

Re:The measure of a theory of behavior

[oni]

If the US Military wants to cut off your internet, they're not going to give you a lead time of several days; they're going to cut off all your links within minutes, possibly seconds of each other.

Agreed. There's basically no military advantage to this. Neither is there any logic in the claims that this has something to do with Iran selling oil in Euros. As if the Iranians are so dumb that they can't colo their servers in Europe (they probably already do).

Are extremist Middle Eastern groups cutting off the cables to cut off Western influences? They would lack the capabilities to cut all cables at once, but I also suspect they'd know this was a brutally short-term situation.

The thing about terrorist groups is that there are so damn many of them, and they all want to make a name for themselves. If one of them figured out a way to grab a cable and hoist it to the surface to be cut, they'd probably do it, just because they can. It's not like there's one guy who's the king of terrorists and gets to set policy for all the rest, and would say, "wait guys, don't do this. We like Iran." Rather, for any level of extremism, there is *always* a group of people at that level. So I promise you, there is one or two or three groups out there who think that Allah is withholding his blessing because his chosen people have polluted themselves with Internet access.

So there's a motivation that seems a lot more likely than the "omfg its Bush" conspiracy theory du joir.

Re:Ever....

[thegameiam]

Hypothesis 1: the same number of cables get cut in the past two weeks as in the entire 50 years previous to that.

The problem is that cable "cuts" (actual term = "disruptions of service") happen ALL THE TIME. There's nearly always a half-dozen or more ongoing major incidents. There's enough spare capacity on parallel and diverse cables so that most folks don't notice a change in service. It's when there are simultaneous cuts on several parallel cables that people really notice. As an example, the cable breaks after the tsunami in Asia.

So, let me restate your hypothesis #1:

Hypothesis 1: The same number of cables get disrupted in the past two weeks as in the prior month. This time, they're all in the same vicinity.

That does actually make a bit more sense, eh?

It's a test

[dtml-try MyNick]

I think we can all agree here that this isn't a coincidence anymore.

But I just can't stop thinking why anyone would do this and wich value it would have.

Strategic value in preparation for war?
It seems to me that if you want to disrupt communication you'd focus on internal lines, not the external ones. Even if you'd cut of Iran completely their internal networks will still function. Destroy all communication seems a bit far fetched, you'd need to do a lot more then this and a lot faster. There are still a lot of landlines left not to mention satelites, ground phone lines, hell even a pigeon can still do a lot of comm.

Terrorist attack?
If it is they picked the wrong continent (you should have googled a bit more Osama!). Besides, also for terrorist organisations the net is of great value for communication and coordination. It seems a bit silly to cut of your own recources.

Islamic Extremists?
The internet is the root of all evil and must be removed from our Sacred Land? If you have the money, skill and organisation to pull this of you also have the brains to realise that the cables will be restored in 1 or 2 weeks. The effort vs effect ratio is horrible, so that's a very unlikely scenario.

Cutting and tapping the lines?
For each line that get's cut you'd need a second physical line next to it to start tapping it. Apart from the fact that such a operation will get noticed it seems to me that there are other cheaper and more stealth methods to achieve this.

The only reason I can think of is that it's just a test.

Just a test/excersise from someone to see what the effects are when such a disruption happens.
What are the effects on the population, how will they react? Same with world news and governemts, how much exposure and repsonse does such a event get?
Does it impact the economy, and by how much?
How much effort, time and money does it cost to cut of a certain region?
How much time does it take to restore it.
How resilient will they be and find alternative methods and routes? And so on. There would be much to be learned from from such a operation. A cyberwar simulation, but then taken to the next level

I'm placing my bets on this one.......

I can't believe you people still defend America

[crabpeople]

I can't believe that people are *still* protecting the American government (note I'm not talking about their citizens) after all the crap they've pulled during the last two decades. Just because the world media has tuned into the USA in the last five years doesn't mean this story came out of the blue. America has been funding and training terrorist groups and publicly boasting about it for over 40 years now. We've been waiting for their population to overthrow the judeofascist government for years yet that hasn't happened either. Just take a look at the kind of things coming out of their government-controlled media: http://www.cnn.com/

Yes, most Americans dislike their government but no this won't be happening anytime soon. In the meantime, thousands upon thousands of people die every year because of direct funding by the Americans to terrorists. Ironically most of the victims are religious.

If you want to avoid war with America then you should be in favor of diplomatic action to prevent them from using nuclear weapons which could be a pretext for such a war. By preventing economic sanctions from going through you leave the world no choice but turn to the military option. Also it is worth noting that we've held toothless diplomatic talk with America for decades now and that didn't work (if anything, their government got more radical). They need to feel the heat for there to be any change.

Re:Ever....

[GalacticCmdr]

Hypothesis 3: Something is more likely to break when its older than when it is new

I know it may be difficult to see anything past your tinfoil hat, but really your two examples do not even come close to Occam's razor. In fact, they are so far off the bend that you begin to head in Tom Cruise terrain.

or maybe this one...

Hypothesis 4: Iran really is not offline - only a single router used for test.

I know that one is a bit of a stretch, but just try it out and I am sure that you may begin to see the light. Not everything is driven by some evil conspiracy, sometimes old things break. Sometimes Slashdot summaries are wrong. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

1953, operation Ajax

[Scrameustache]

I think Iran is actually a democratic country so the people there have just as much opportunity to vote their leaders out of power when they don't agree with their actions as the US does.

Iran is an Islamic Republic, meaning its government is half democratic and half unelected asshats.

Iran WAS a democracy, until the CIA and the British military intelligence organized a coup and replaced their democracy with a subservient monarchy.

Re:1953, operation Ajax

[Dun Malg]

Iran WAS a democracy, until the CIA and the British military intelligence organized a coup and replaced their democracy with a subservient monarchy. THis is the problem when people get their history education third hand from rumors and oft-told tales.

No, Iran was the same constitutional monarchy from 1906 to 1979. If anything, the problem that prompted CIA action was actually a loss of democracy. The CIA did ...ahem... "encourage" Shah Pahlavi to give the elected prime minister The Boot due to his [nationalizing/seizing] of foreign oil operations, but there was no democracy there at that point. PM Mossadeq was just a preview of what was coming in '79. He was bucking to push out the Shah and become dictator, and appointed Ayatollah Kashani as Speaker of the House. His seizure of British Petroleum's refineries resulted in an oil embargo that nearly ruined the Iranian economy. When he moved to collectivize agriculture, the CIA did the unspeakable: they actively lobbied the Shah to exercise his powers as monarch and remove Mossadeq (O the horror). During this time, Mossadeq illegally dissolved parliament, abolished the constitutional provisions for secret ballots in elections (essentially guaranteeing reelection), and generally behaved like a dictatorial ass. Giving him the push was probably one of the most reasonable acts Shah Pahlavi ever made. It hardly fit the definition of a "coup". Unfortunately, Pahlavi was only slightly less a jerk, as is traditional for old-world monarchies, and the CIA played no small part in encouraging this as well, lest the people somehow elect another crazy pseudo-populist prime minister. The Mossadeq period was just a prelude. The real revolution was in '79, when they finally dumped their asshat king... and installed an asshat theocrat in his place. Just goes to show, some people are really culturally unprepared for actual self-rule. Iran remains a fucked-up backwater due to the influence of religious conservatism, whose importance (like most such places in the region) is due only to its natural resources. It's main problem now is the militant Islamists running the place. None of the Iranian nationals I know (and I know quite a few) are particularly devout, but they say that in public, you act the part, because you hear stories of what happens when you don't. Behind closed doors, it's cocktails, rock n' roll, and mini-skirts; but in public, it's the hijab and beating your head with a sword....

name calling

[Scrameustache]

Because "cut" sounds so much more menacing and hostile "cut" is the common term used for a disconnected line.
Dismissing every "conspiracy" as automatically false is an act of profound stupidity.

Yes, the US is responsible

[Nicolas MONNET]

Iran had a perfectly fine, democratically elected leader in the person of Mohamed Mossadegh in 1953.
He had the outrecuidance to nationalize the oil industry, so the CIA fomented a coup against him and put the Shah in charge. The US then supported this asshole for close to 30 years, until iranians revolted in 1979.
The revolution didn't end so swell, the mullahs took the helm eventually. But the country wouldn't be there if it wasn't for the sick US meddling. Sure, that was back in 1953, but the pattern continued in other countries over the world in the 55 years that followed. So yeah, the US is responsible, and the dumbass in chief you still have for 11 more months is apparently hell-bent on meddling still some more with Iran.

Re:Yes, the US is responsible

[blind biker]

I have many friends that lived in Iran at the time of the Shah. I have seen movies they or their parents made, and I can see girls not having to wear headscarves, and in fact Iran looked very much like any European country, with young people dressing in those awful 70's things, short skirts and jeans etc. The best part was that religious minorities were completely free to live their community lives, and nobody was discriminated because of it. After the islamic revolution, members of minor religious communities like the Zoroastrians, the Bahai's and others (Christians and Jews were left alone, fair is fair) were persecuted - which means, imprisoned and often killed. To this day, the persecution is ongoing, albeit at a lower intensity. Still members of those communities are being thrown out of universities, imprisoned even if they are more high-profile (like restaurant owners or industrialists).

I'd urge you to have a brief glance at the story of Mona to put my words in some perspective. I am talking about real people, people that had to leave their families and friends to survive. The story above is a sad one, about a young girl sentenced to death for not wanting to convert to Islam.

During the Shah, in Iran civic liberties have been very broad, broader than ever before in the history of Persia. The very fact that the parents of my friends were free to express their religious beliefs makes me fond of the Shah. At least to the point of expressing my disagreement with you calling him "asshole".

5? it was 50 last year

[geekoid]

More than 50 repairs to undersea cables in the Atlantic alone last year.

So cool your jets people. it's not unusual. This is only a big deal with conspirators. As per usual the conspiracy nuts don't understand what they are talking about so start running around like a chicken with it's head cut off.

Catch 22

[Chemisor]

> Yep, you get to go around shouting to everyone about how you're "censored".

Since a censored post is, by definition, something you are not going to see, proving that there is no censorship by example is... is... Well, you said it best:

> You are an idiot.

Who will there be left to speak for you?

[MisterSquid]

You're missing the point, which is that Padilla was illegally jailed for over two years and his rightful request for habeas corpus was denied. SCOTUS refused to clarify whether holding Padilla was legal, thus making his case a clear cut example of the illegal detainment and torture of an American citizen. Furthermore, what you're saying is that because Padilla was suspected of terrorism, jailing him illegally was OK.

My point is not that Padilla was innocent. My point is that terrorism is carte blanche for the executive to illegally detain Americans, to fabricate charges against them, and to increase penalties upon conviction. In the meantime, people like you will look at Padilla and see someone they don't quite like and decide that it's all OK.

In my opinion, it will only be a matter of time before someone finds themselves on the wrong end of what you call "normal, peaceful political channels," as did many in their peaceful protest of the 2004 Republican National Convention. Your thinking implies that rule of law is a privilege to be extended only to American citizens who behave in the proper manner, people who look a particular way and who have a particular kind of past.

I believe that rule of law should apply not only to all American citizens, but that it should also be extended to all people detained by the United States.

Bingo!

[Maltheus]

With the oil bourse set to go online before the 11th (now delayed), that is obviously why this was done. When Iraq stopped pricing it's oil in dollars, we invaded two months later. I don't think people understand the magnitude of the dollar's decline or how much an impact that has on our foreign policy. If the dollar is no longer seen as the world's primary currency, then they'll pull out the investment needed to sustain our mammoth debt. We're just about there already, but if Iran does this (and they have every right), then our economy is finished. That's why we've still talk about war all the time, even in light of the NIE. By prolonging the crash, we're just making the problem worse. Not to mention, pissing off the world in the process. We're just following the same pattern of all collapsing empires.

Re:We have met the enemy, and he is the moderator.

[fyngyrz]

While I agree that one can find moderators pursuing an agenda here, I don't think it is organized, quite the opposite. Also, never attribute to malice what you can rationally interpret as incompetence. Slashdot's moderation system is badly broken, to the point where reading slashdot at anything but -1 results in disjointed conversations, nonsensical, context-free posts, and dependence upon some very poor judgment (for whatever reason.) The smiley was honest; I only read at -1, so moderation doesn't affect my experience at all. If it affects others with regard to my posts, they are either reading slashdot in an extremely naive manner (depending upon the moderation to guide them) or they aren't smart enough to follow what I'm trying to tell them anyway, so nothing much lost there. In the latter case, meh, in the former, they'll figure it out soon enough when they get mod-bombed, or some thread they are trying to follow develops unexpected voids.

The most severe problems occur when an editor, not a user, goes on a moderation jag; you can spot this by seeing a series of posts (many of which may be several days old) from one poster that is larger than five posts (the max number of mod points given to a "regular" user) get hammered within just a few minutes. Easiest to spot on your own account, of course, but if you're following someone else closely, you can see it there, too. Slashdot insists they don't need to change the moderation system or poke (or replace) editors; I've had a little correspondence with Rob Malda about this and the laissez faire approach is quite up front.

The reason I don't post as AC is because by posting under my UID, my comments are collected for others to peruse if they find that useful. For that matter, *I* find it useful.

Citation needed!!

[rush22]

Let me see if I can find the citation for him. I searched for "undersea cable atlantic repairs" and got this in the text of the 4th result:

Undersea cable damage is hardly rare--indeed, more than 50 repair operations were mounted in the Atlantic alone last year, according to marine cable repair...

And if you click the link, the secondary source is ABC News, the primary source they give is "marine cable repair company Global Marine Systems."

There's your citation, now go back to Wikiusenet, I hear them calling you "irc to an/i: pov sock in action--checkuser confirmed by userbox. inform arbcom of rfar."