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Oxford Internet Institute Creates Internet "Tube" Map

First time accepted submitter Jahta (1141213) writes "The Oxford Internet Institute has created a schematic of the world's international fiber-optic links in the style of the famous London Tube map. The schematic also highlights nodes where censorship and surveillance are known to be in operation. The map uses data sourced from cablemap.info. Each node has been assigned to a country, and all nodes located in the same country have been collapsed into a single node. The resulting network has been then abstracted."

14 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. Submarine cable map by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's missing a few cables -- the Submarine Cable Map has more
    (and with the proper names as well)

    1. Re:Submarine cable map by ModelX · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's also imagining direct connections in south-east Asia that actually route via Hong Kong and Singapore. Haven't they run traceroute? This tube map seems to be an artistic project compared to the submarine cable map.

  2. Surveillance + Imprisonment != Censorship? by NoKaOi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The US has the "surveillance" symbol and the "imprisonment" symbol. Shouldn't that equate to censorship? "We're gonna watch everything you do, and we're gonna imprison you if we don't like what you're doing by calling it 'terrorism' or a 'national security threat,' but no, we're not censoring you, you can say whatever you want!"

    1. Re:Surveillance + Imprisonment != Censorship? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Goodness no! Remember, citizens of the free world, it works like this:

      Godless commie chinese and those fanatic heathen arabs we buy oil from? "Censorship" and "Surveillance".

      The Good Guys? "Content Filtering" and "Lawful Intercept Capabilities".

      I'm glad we cleared up that misconception.

    2. Re:Surveillance + Imprisonment != Censorship? by necro81 · · Score: 2

      Try living in mainland China for a few years, or one of several countries in the Middle East, or The Sovi...er, I mean Russia, and then come back to the USA and talk about the relative levels of censorship.

    3. Re:Surveillance + Imprisonment != Censorship? by Mozai · · Score: 3, Funny

      I'm reminded of an old joke from Poland:
      "Oh, we have freedom of speech just like in America! Freedom after speech, not as much."

      Times have changed.

  3. "censorship" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Don't see a little "censorship" logo on GBR, despite IWF, court orders requiring denial of access to whole file sharing web sites (not just infringing files), a torrent of laws restricting the sort of speech permitted on the Internet (and anywhere else), etc.

    And GBR is the only European country with known Internet surveillance - orly?

    This map really isn't very good.

  4. The map is Biased by phayes · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The data used to create it is from Reporteurs sans Frontières. France's DGSE performs the same mass surveillance of the internet & telephone data as the US & UK but nobody talks about it because:
    A: It's legal here for the government to snoop on anyone they want. Foreign nationals, French citizens, whatever...
    B: The government has a level of control over the press not present in the US/UK and discourages reporters here from talking about it.

    RSF knows that this is the case but somehow France is conveniently left off the list of surveillance states? Suuurrree...

    On a side note:
    I have moved much of my home browsing over to a tablet. Beta is now being foist upon me even when logged in and the /?nobeta=1 URL trick no longer functions. Way to go slashdot, I've been a regular for close to 2 decades but now only visit when sitting down in front of a PC/Mac. Still losing readership? I'm an example.

    --
    Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
  5. Censorship and surveillance missing by Bender+Unit+22 · · Score: 2

    Many european countries practice both censorship and surveillance.

  6. Stylised & very simplified by Teun · · Score: 4, Informative
    I saw a comment on the importance of the Hongkong and Singapore exchanges for Asian communications, in a similar vein the AMS-IX is totally missing, one of the world's largest Internet exchanges and peering points.

    But it's still an interesting map on a very interesting website!

    --
    "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
  7. Re:How do you gauge censorship ? by Sique · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It isn't. It's called censorship if someone else is hiding information from you or denying access. If you don't use Mozilla because you don't like the head honcho for what reason ever, it's called free choice.

    --
    .sig: Sique *sigh*
  8. US has imprisonment badge - BS by towermac · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You can't go to jail in the US just for illegal use of the internet. You can for looking at kiddie porn, or threatening somebody, but those things were illegal before we had an internet. You can freely read about Marxism, Nazism, Al-Qaeda musings... with no fear. If they caught you being part of Al-Qaeda through the internet, they would have caught you before, through the telephone, post, or surveillance. Ed Snowden has shown us that lately the NSA goes too far in surveillance, but that's not the same thing (yet), as a Cuba and the like.

    Nobody is in jail here for reading or posting political views.

    The imprisonment badge on the US is BS, and was the whole purpose of making this political statement of a silly map.

    1. Re:US has imprisonment badge - BS by towermac · · Score: 2

      Yes, I read about Carter. It appears to be a gross overreaction by the Texas authorities. Although technically, he did threaten to shoot kindergartners and other violence. He's had a restraining order against him before.

      A Canadian reported him. He was not caught by surveillance. Your example is bogus.

  9. Re:Mandatory by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

    Sort of like intestines, right? But it requires guts to say it in public.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20