Slashdot Mirror
Satellite IDs Ships That Cut Cables
1sockchuck writes "Undersea telecom cable operator Reliance Globalcom was able to use satellite images to identify two ships that dropped anchor in the wrong place, damaging submarine cables and knocking Middle East nations offline in early February. The company used satellite images to study the movements of the two ships, and shared the information with officials in Dubai, who impounded the two vessels. The NANOG list has a discussion of where Reliance might have obtained satellite images to provide that level of detail. Google News links more coverage of the developments."
And here I was being made to feel like a regular fool for not being 99.99% positive (as "proven" by Bayes' theorem, no less) that the U.S. government (or others) were intentionally disrupting internet services to presumably stop the Iranian Oil Bourse.
I'll never understand how a technical-minded group such as slashdot that prides itself on objectivity and generally mocks blind faith can, at times, get so easily carried away.
-Grym
When cables get cut, wouldn't you, as a service provider, want to know what ships are in the area? Might not intelligence services take a gander with their satellites to see what is happening in the area?
The last report I saw into this suggested that it was the US because Iraq and Israel (the two main friends of the US in that region) were not impacted. This could either have been a test run for something else or a crafty excuse to re-route traffic from that region via the US (as actually happened) where the authorities have more chance of snooping on it. The reports into this were also pretty specific that sat data that was analysed at the time showed no vessels in the area of the break for 12 hours either side of the break.
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What seems incredible is that video footage of that resolution was available for those particular places at that particular time. It looks like we are all filmed 24/7, everywhere in the world. Which requires an incredible amount of resources (sattelites, cameras, bandwith, etc.). Or was it by chance that these spy sattelites were pointed to these areas? Or is it something like 1 photo/hour/place in the world?
Actually, it's:
1) Send a submarine to wait at a cable
2) Send by a ship that "accidentally" damages the cable, a couple of miles away
3) While the cable's broken, cut it AGAIN with the submarine and install a tap while nobody will notice the outage (since there's already one, anyway)
4) When the cable company repairs the breakage caused by the ship, your tap's installed
5) Spy^H^H^H Profit
The one ship that did get released only paid 60 grand to get out of hock. I can't imagine that covering the cost to repair the cable, let alone the loss incurred by the cutting of the cable.
I wonder how much that cost the internet providers... one would assume that whoever they leased the pipe from had to be given an alternate service, paid for by the company owning the cables that were cut, since they were likely under contract to provide the service. That can't have been cheap. Unless they used another line they owned, but still you'd think they would have to compensate their customers somewhat for the severe degradation of services and the downtime?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.