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Mediterranean Undersea Cables Cut, Again
miller60 writes "Three undersea cables in the Mediterranean Sea have failed within minutes of each other in an incident that is eerily similar to a series of cable cuts in the region in early 2008. The cable cuts are already causing serious service problems in the Middle East and Asia. See coverage at the Internet Storm Center, Data Center Knowledge and Bloomberg. The February 2008 cable cuts triggered rampant speculation about sabotage, but were later attributed to ships that dropped anchor in the wrong place."
dropped anchor in the wrong place.
As it turns out, that is a pretty serious offense ... the last time I dropped anchor in the wrong place, I ended up in the drunk tank at the county jail with both indecent exposure and drunk in public charges.
My work here is dung.
If they used an axe to cut the lines, would that be construed as illegal hacking of cable?
Shadowy American intelligence services recovering all of their snooping gear before Obama gets into office...damn shame.
All that hassle to cause commotion and outages by putting it there in the first place, and less than a year later they gotta get it back. Many years from now we will find its remains scattered across the ocean floor.
Sorry boss. Must not have gotten the email.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
The article's timing of the outages (SeaMeWe 3&4 within minutes, FLAG half an hour later) and the relative proximity of the cable courses suggests either anchor drag or someone who cares enough to make it look that way.
Or Godzilla
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
"dropped anchor" is the new "weather balloon"
Just don't jump to conclusions.
I just bought my new mat though....
"Sea Me We 3 and 4"
Sounds like two girls one cup. I suspect radical feminist sabotage this time.
I understand that the Somalis have recently started going legit with some of their most recent acquisitions...
I imagine that the price would be something in the area of one tanker full of crude oil with Saudi registration... repainted to look like a Jewish fishing trawler of course.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
We dont have them.
As far as you know.
You know too much. Go quietly with the men in black who will shortly be knocking on your door..... now.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Did anyone notice on their map of the Med that Sicily is mislabeled as Malta?
Malta is a much smaller island that lies roughly south by southeast of the southeastern corner of Sicily, about 1/4 of the way between Sicily and Libya.
With maps like this, I think we can attribute the cuts to a backhoe operator digging where the map said to ;)
"Once is an accident, twice is coincidence..."
Need I remind everyone what a third incidence would point to?
Fool me-- you can't get fooled again?
Cthulhu needed something to floss his teeth with.
Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.
So I guess THIS is what the RIAA meant when they said they would get ISP's to agree to start cutting off user's Internet access rather than suing millions of people...
Third is oral? I forget my bases.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Or Godzilla
Godzilla? Do you have no faith in science at all? ...noting the location it is far more likely to be a kraken.
My webcomic
Might explain the *DRASTIC* reduction in spam the last couple of days?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I was piloting one of those new British subs with Windows on it and I kinda got spooked when Clippy popped up and fired a torpedo by accident right at the cable. Damned animated paperclip.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
"Once is an accident, twice is coincidence..."
Need I remind everyone what a third incidence would point to?
A trincidence?
You forgot the reverse vampires.
I need my daily conspiracy fix, damn it!
It was Gov Blagojevich sent by PE Obama to
extort money from mid East governments to fund an invasion of Finland.
"Nice cable you got here, how much is it worth to you?"
Either that or Col Mustard in the library with the candle stick.
You know too much. Go quietly with the men in black who will shortly be knocking on your door..... now.
The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.
A bad statistical model for predicting cable outages?
Not that conspiracy theories aren't a whole lot of fun and all, but as I'm yet to see a terribly credible motive*, "people are too optimistic about how good their tech works" is a pretty reasonable explanation.
(*: Remember, for a motive to be credible, it has to not merely "explain" the actions, but explain why the perpetrator thinks this is the best thing they could do with their time, or at least credibly close to the "best thing". Nothing I've seen even comes close to that standard.)
Hey! Your lips.... They.... moved.... but... I herd.... nothing....
I bet the coastline where the cable comes out of the water and onto land is shallower than that!
Umm... just how deep do you think the Mediterranean Sea is?
Apparently 20,000 leagues.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
Hello, Basils phone here.
Basils phone has no coverage in this Mediterranean dump. So when Basils boss called to warn him about not dropping anchor, Basil didn't get it.
Now Basil gets to explain to his family why their packets are being dropped. Then shrug in futility as they reply about their packets already being at the market.
I suggest you read "Blind Man's Bluff", which explains how we used such a sub to tap a russian undersea cable to great effect.
Of course, when the russians finally discovered the breach and dug up the cable, they were somewhat amused to see the giant plaque on the side of the bug proclaiming it to be "Property of the United States of America."
Considering how old that technology now is, I'm sure that by now they have even more advanced toys to play with.
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
Nuff said.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Good post, but I think I can summarize it quickly for the typical /.er.
Shit happens.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
And let me tell ya', Sammy don't like cable.
I can sympathize with the poor bastard, he's probably a Time Warner customer too.
The enemies of Democracy are
There's a more credible explanation.
The terms "Internet" and "Web" are interchangable.
Internet 1.0 (Web 1.0) runs through tubes.
Internet 2.0 (Web 2.0) runs through cables.
Get it? We did them a favor. They don't have to deal with loads of Ajax-laden brochure-ware sites for a while. I wouldn't mind if someone cut OUR cables!
Learn about Photography Basics.
The first time it happened, it was "fishy" but it was fixed and we moved on. Now it is the second time in a relatively short time. The WORLD needs to investigate this and expose the perpetrators to the light of public media. If it was the U.S., I would like to know and why. If it was someone else, I would like to know who and why. This is stupid as hell and we shouldn't tolerate it!
...oh look at that on TV, another news story... what was I talking about again?
From your description, I'm guessing it's a washing machine.
http://www.iscpc.org/publications/About_Cables_in_PDF_Format.pdf [iscpc.org]
URL approved by the Department of Redundancy Department...
- T
It's hardly a big secret. There have been the USS Parche and the USS Jimmy Carter to name just two.
Why the data-snooping sub wasn't named the Nixon, I'll never know!
You can't take the sky from me...
1000m is doable with current public nuclear missile submarines.
What, you mean the general public is allowed to buy nuclear missile submarines, awesome!
Perhaps the sub is made of irony?
Program Intellivision!
I'm more worried because it raises the prospect of private nuclear missile subs. As though ones running Windows weren't bad enough.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.