Cable cutter nutters chase underwater conspiracies The failure of four undersea cables in less than a week is stoking suspicions that saboteurs want to disrupt internet traffic passing between Europe and the Middle East. But there's little more than suspicions to work with since no one has yet to even reach the damaged cables. The first two failures occurred last Wednesday …
"So it looks like the tin foil-dawning contingent will have to jump on another story to feed their conspiracy fetish. This one, it would appear, is coming up empty."
Hang on a second. I thought the whole point of the article is that you will have to wait and see what has actually happened.
Why have you decided that it is "coming up empty"? Just wait until you know some information and leave it at that!!
Jeez. The Sun reporting posing as New Scientist.
In reality everybody thinks that the cable problems are accidents.
The blog traffic and Digg posts are products of a joint conspiracy between the CIA, Al-Qaeda, the estate of Elvis and the Lizard people operating on behalf of the Bavarian Illuminati to raise the general level of paranoia in the world.
This has been an important safety announcement brought to you by the Teapot council.
We're always been treated to Domesday scenarios of "What happens when the interweb fails/gets taken over by terrorists/whatever" but now bits of it have failed its proved to be a nuisance but not exactly the end of the world as we know it.
A bit like the famous 2K bug, really.
"I've seen all kinds of just crazy, crazy postings on Digg," said Stephan Becket, a research director at TeleGeology. "It's completely absurd speculation on the web right now and nobody really knows anything."
Hmm. Network security research now consists of reading Digg? Maybe I ought to sign up and sway the balance a bit... pathetic. I think these Web-2.0-esque 'security' companies are just as superficial and moneygrabbing as their 'social nerdworking' companions.
"said Stephan Becket, a research director at TeleGeology. "It's completely absurd speculation on the web right now and nobody really knows anything." ..... Then give them something that they can Know, Stephan.
Tell them what is being interrupted...... Deep Thought Quantum Communications ....AI Colossus of a CyberIntelAIgent Program with ITs Bases in Space's Spaces. Virtually Impregnable Fortesses. El CID Citadel with CyberIntelAIgent Designs 42 Share as in Gift.
I Kid U Not, Cisco.
<Ping>
It was obviously all done by a BOFH motivated by 1) outsourcing and 2) the amount of far eastern spam.
But where did the equipment come from, you ask:
- http://www.thinkgeek.com/brain/whereisit.cgi?t=knife
Indeed, if you jumped off a boat with this baby:
- http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/tools/8b97/
you'd soon enough be at cable depth.
No. You try and start with the most obvious solution and only start your conspiracy thing once there is a issue with that.
As ever, the problem with the Tinffil-hatters is that they assume a conspiracy until you can prove otherwise, which given that the consiracy is generally a secret, is rather hard to do............
Hi guys, regarding the whole everyone from terrorists to grannies etc....
Yeah you're right, everyone uses the internet. But....
Knowledge is power, wars have been won and lost through information manipulation...the internet stops people from having that level of control...
So why would a terrorist group/political party etc want to cut off internet access? To control what information people have access to.
Just to fuel the whole conspiracy thingy, let me leave you with a quotes...
"Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times in enemy action" - Churchill
No, It's Dr Congo - he's sitting on his thrown atop a flat bed toyota truck, his bois just trying to black out the continent so they can throw a truelly epic party. When connection is restored the whole continent will be empty, just beer bottles, bodies, burnt down buildings and spent ammunition.
I blame the fish...
See US Patent 6771863
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6771863-description.html
"Accordingly, one of the objects of the invention is to provide an underwater fiber-optic cable which solves or alleviates the foregoing problems, and particularly a cable which is relatively light-weight but robust and flexible, and resistant to environmental attacks, such as by chewing fish and other sea life."
England cut transatlantic communications cables that enabled Germany to communicate with the rest of the world at the outset of the war with Germany. Germany then had to use wireless communications that were intercepted by the Allies.
At the outset of the war, the Germans had five transatlantic cables that ran through the English Channel. One went to Brest in France, another to Vigo in Spain, one to Tenerife in North Africa and two to New York via the Azores. The English cable ship Telconia cut them all in England's first offensive action in the war. This left a cable that ran between West Africa and Brazil that was largely American-owned that the Germans could use. In short order the allies ended that source of direct cable communications with the overseas world. Consequently, Germany was forced to use their powerful wireless station at Nauen, just a few miles outside Berlin. From this moment, German messages were routinely picked from the air and began pouring into the offices of British Naval Intelligence. In order to capture this flood of information, four new allied listening stations were established along the English coast with direct wires to Admiral Hall's offices. The positive result from this investment could not be overemphasized.
So 100 cuts per year : hence 1 every 3.65 days ... with the two 1st noticeable cuts on Tuesday the 29th of Jan, the fourth not being on but a power outage.
We're left with (7th of Feb) 9 days and 5 cuts 1 off because of power, take another one off because it is the starting point so altogether 3 new cuts over 9 days so 1 every 3 days ... as opposed to the average 3.65. I'm assuming that any other cut would have been reported during that laps due to the amount of paranoia involved ... but I might be wrong.
Considering that the Mediterranean sea is quite a busy place thanks to Suez and that all the cables seem to funnel thru Suez (http://www.telegeography.com/products/map_cable/images/Cable_Map_big.gif) ...
well it might be easier/likely to cut through a bunch of cables. and perhaps the cables weren't that well maintained.
Conspiracy anyway:
Assuming 5 cuts are the suppa duppa evil enemy's act chose one of the following
1) a swordfish with cemented tungsten carbide tips, created by our good enemy Bin.
2) a EU president that does not want some pictures of him and Carla to leave Egypt
3) a Geordie laid off recently
May be the answer is with the cables not being cut off in this area ... may be it's more a matter of overwhelming than blackout-ing.
COCOA ... that's kind of derogatory to Mac users ...
"The positive result from this investment could not be overemphasized.".... By Jamtits
Posted Thursday 7th February 2008 12:49 GMT ......A Master Control Web would underemphasize ITs Priceless Worth, Jamtits.
And re "It must be a new craze to drag one's anchors in the middle east". The ships of the desert have ever been so anchored in the middle east but there are Alien Fields everywhere to XXXXPlore and TendGrow. Which in Real Time would be AIMessage to such as are Royal in CyberIDEntities ...... Al Mahdi Touched.
And the Flame in homage to the lowly Pilot Light and the Sweetest of Seeds Sown. The Flame of Passion has Ever Lit the Right Way. And it is not Red for Danger for Nothing....... for there is No Known Cure .... Allahu Akbar ....Seventh Heaven with Virgin Sight is not an Affliction though, it is an Affectionate Affectation with XXXXQuisITe Promise Fulfilled. And so Good, IT should be Licensed and Duly Regarded with whatever IT Needs.
In a few day's we'll all be laughing over this, and worried about the real problem. Going 4 days w/o a cable being cut.
"How... How did they fortify the cables in just a few days.... to make them un-cuttable! The carbon nanotube-crystaline-stranglet catalyzation of our cable sheaths by the (insert cult/alien here)."
"The much bigger effect has been the fodder the unlikely number of failures have had on internet bloggers"
That's gibberish. WTF does it mean for a failure to "have fodder on" someone?
I think you probably mean that the effect on bloggers has been to supply them with fodder, but jeebus, this isn't some mere typo, it's complete nonsense. How on earth did it get past subediting?
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