Can you cut the cable?
Internet and phone communications between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia have been seriously disrupted after submarine cables were severed.
It is thought the FLAG FEA, SMW4, and SMW3 lines, near the Alexandria cable station in Egypt, have all been cut.
A fault was also reported on the GO submarine cable 130km off Sicily.
Experts warned that it may be days before the fault is fixed and said the knock on effect could have serious repercussions on regional economies.
What would be the point, you ask?
Online jihadists have already used YouTube, blogs and other social media to spread their propaganda. Now, a group of internet Islamic extremists is putting together a plan for “invading Facebook.”
“We can use Facebook to fight the media,” notes a recent posting on the extremist al-Faloja forum, translated by Jihadica.com. “We can post media on Facebook that shows the Crusader losses.”
Oh. I dunno.
Mr Rogers says; Can you say satellites?
Sure. I knew you could.
I wonder how often seabed cables get messed up. There were several in the Indian Ocean a few months ago, but I don’t ever recall hearing of any problems before that. Perhaps there were, but never made the news, just routine problems to be routinely fixed.
However, some speculated that some sort of military or spy agency may have been involved in the earlier problems.
Let’s hope it is the good guys (not limited to the U.S., by the way!) if that is the case.
Interesting news may come to light when various folks are forced to switch to alternate comms.
Of course it COULD be nothing to get excited about.
Move along, nothing to see here.
The objective of the raid on Cienfuegos was to cut the cable with Spain in 1898.
If you put in a submerged device to limit internet traffic, what is the appropriate name: Waterwall? Seawall? Or just use phosphorus, and keep it as Firewall?
Gotta be a Tom Clancy novel in this.
Well… the cable cut has affected on our guys/gals in the AOR. I got a (VERY short) note from SN1… currently at Balad AB… this morning saying e-mail and access to non-military web sites has been suspended pending repair of the cable cuts.
Or Lex Novel Part Deux
Ya know what really bugs me about this? Cutting comm cables on the seabed is no mean feat. I know the Med isn’t all that deep, but going down to whack a cable in two isn’t a matter of ‘Hey, let’s you and me put on tanks, go blow bubbles for a bit, and see if we can’t screw with a whole bunch of folks’ telephone systems’.
As the NYPD bubbas on ‘Law and Order’ would say “I’m likin’ Ivan for this one.”
To pull off an op like this in multiple deep water sites is pretty sophisticated business. I don’t see Jihadists of any sect having the wherewithal to do this, no matter how much money they throw out. There are only a small handful of countries on the planet that have the proper means with which to surreptitiously cut such cables, and escape without being noticed.
Oh, and we happen to be one of them…
I googled on the topic, and it turns out that a cable gets cut every three days somewhere on the planet, and that they are repairing Atlantic undersea cables 50 times per year, for example. In other words, they break all the time, and being a cable repairman is a steady line of work. Surprised me. The Middle East has little redundancy, so they get screwed royally when theirs break. Cool wiki on it…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable
And this is a cool animation on how they lay them down and repair them in the middle of the ocean, in case you want to buy one for your own use.
http://www1.alcatel-lucent.com/submarine/how/index.htm
SMS Emden had fun cutting cables and fitting terminations of carefully-calculated restistance and inductance to the stumps, in 1914. (so they couldn’t tell where the cut was)
Oh, and Neil Stephenson recently wrote a right thick novel which had to do with submarine cables, and other considerations.
Which reminds me; why are Filipinas considered so ultimately universally sexy, everywhere and at all times? I just don’t get that.
The Times is reporting another cut, 3 of the 4 cables linking Asia to the USA.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/technology/2008/12/is-the-internet.html