Fifth Cable Cut To Middle East 676
You may have noticed a number of stories recently about undersea cables getting cut around the world. Apparently the total is now up to 5, but the scariest part of this is that Iran is now offline. You can also read Schneier's comments on this coincidence. Update: 02/06 17:42 GMT by Z : As a commenter notes, though the country of Iran is obviously experiencing some networking difficulties, it is not offline.
Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:5, Insightful)
-Auric Goldfinger
But who is the enemy?
Iran has NOT "offline" (Score:5, Insightful)
One router in Iran -- the one that happens to be used by Internet Traffic Report [internettr...report.com] -- is unreachable. As are dozens of single points on the internet in many states in the region.
A quick perusal of, e.g., newspaper web sites in Iran [onlinenewspapers.com] finds every one I have tried working fine, including all state-run media. As is the web site of the Government of Iran [www.iran.ir] and numerous other government and press web sites physically located in Iran. See for yourself. [google.com] (And yes, I am aware that simply ending in
I know all of you are just itching to believe it's a US information operation (I love some of the articles..."a secret Pentagon strategy called 'information warfare'" -- uh, guys, I hate to break this to you, but it's not a secret) to cut Iran off from the internet in advance of the secret Iran invasion that Bush -- er, Cheney -- is oh-so-obviously planning.
No one ever said that one ship damaged all the cables. What was said was that a single ship probably cut two cables in a particular area off Egypt. But that has been called into doubt in that location. Unfortunately, it isn't clear exactly where some of the cables have been damaged, so simply because one area didn't have a ship doesn't mean it wasn't possible for it to be damaged elsewhere.
Even if someone is cutting the cables, as telecom and undersea cable experts believe is unlikely, it would be better to actually consider the facts of the situation, instead of feeing the conspiracy mill with garbage like "Iran is offline" when it clearly isn't? How about waiting until the cables are raised to see what kind of damage has been caused?
But if you want to believe one guy's blog post that "Iran is offline", which ends with:
Or, we could perhaps consider that "[m]ost telecommunications experts and cable operators say that sabotage seems unlikely." [iht.com]
Or, we could perhaps believe the facts, which is that Iran is not "offline", as I have illustrated above.
It seems that the premise to this story -- namely, that Iran is "offline" -- is patently incorrect. So, since that is untrue, what are the motivations of people who want to believe this is a prelude to war?
That lying about it somehow serves a greater purpose?
Oh, and by the way, for all you pushers of the Information Warfare theory, keep in mind that it runs both ways. I wouldn't be surprised before Iran picks up on the conspiracy stories and starts promoting that itself. What a great way to detract attention from its continuing defiance of the world community -- no, not just the US -- on its nuclear processing.
Re:What they are thinking. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's just an attempt to get traffic (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think s/he has anything.
Except that Iran has NOT gone "offline" (Score:5, Insightful)
So when the basic, sole premise and of the story is wrong, and by extension the clear implication, where do we go from there?
riiight. (Score:5, Insightful)
what. the. fuck?
the author clearly has his tinfoil underpants and armadillo hat on. I mean come on, whilst I realize that almost everything can be turned into a conspiracy theory this is too much. Accidents happen all the time and I remember reading that some of this outage is due to routing maintenance. Occams Razor, to me the facts as reported seem simpler then some ulterior motive and cable cutting gear.
Re:Iran has NOT "offline" (Score:2, Insightful)
True - Why limit it to one ship, when we have the whole US fleet to choose from?
Look, I don't normally believe in conspiracy theories (they take too much work to implement, and usually you can explain the same outcome by a lot of people all acting out of simple greedy self-interest). But we've gone how many decades with undersea cables only rarely taking damage, and now we have five, which just happen to affect a region of the world in which we have a strategic interest, all cut within two weeks???
Take the blinders off, friend. Even if the US didn't do it, someone (cough cough Israel cough) did, and deliberately at that.
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:5, Insightful)
Cables get cut all the time, news at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
list of [iscpc.org] ships [iscpc.org]
Re:Iran has NOT "offline" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep in mind, too, that these cables aren't, for the most part, state owned assets like radar stations or bridges - they are the private assets of companies and conglomerates, who have invested many billions in their installation. Those conglomerates are able to pursue the US for damages much more effectively than, say, Iran.
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:2, Insightful)
You are an idiot.
Statistically, tinfoil hat *IS* required (Score:1, Insightful)
It is statistically unlikely for a single cable to go down. No surprise there, as these cables cost dozens of millions apiece so they're engineered for permanence. Two in the same week is unheard of, unless there's an underwater earthquake. It doesn't take a PhD in statistics to understand that 5 cables do not get cut by normal processes in the same week or two, EVER. Under any circumstance at all.
So, while you're being partly rational in your response, you're also not addressing the issue. It can't be dismissed.
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting how this is happening during the primary election cycle in the US, now, isn't it? And no, Iran isn't totally cut off. But if more cables get cut, what would that tell the astute observer?
Re:Iran has NOT "offline" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:1, Insightful)
The Republican administration believes torture is OK, as long as they're the only ones who get to sodomize prisoners. I fail to see how "we can molest cables if we want to, but nobody had better touch our cable unless we tap our feet three times under the stall door" fails to fit into their hypocritical worldview.
Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Real Economic Stimulus (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What they are thinking. (Score:1, Insightful)
Iranian Oil Bourse [wikipedia.org]
January 2008 Iran's Finance Minister Davoud Danesh-Jafari told reporters the bourse will be inaugurated during the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution (February 1-11) at the latest."
On the other hand, the knocked-out cables also affected Egypt, UAE, India and a bunch of other countries. This may not be accidental. In the event of a military strike on Iran, a whole bunch of people might want to simultaneously get rid of their dollars. Q: Where would the dollars go? A: Gold, Euros, and non-American, foreign securities. (after the dollar depreciates and stabilizes at a new low, the American stocks and bonds can be bought for a premium.)
So, who has these assets that can be exchanged for dollars? How would these transactions occur? (I guess satellite/land communication are possible, but they will be jammed up for days because of re-routed traffic.) How are these exchanges technically implemented? several ways, eg:
Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication [wikipedia.org]
Does this mean a military attack against Iran is imminent? Perhaps not -- It could be a threat. But, this could be bad, not just for Iran. Curiously: it seems that threat extends to a lot of brown-type-looking people in or near the Middle East.
Re:Iran has NOT "offline" (Score:2, Insightful)
Thanks for the support, but I could have answered that question before I ever posted (fortunately my karma can take the occasional hit): Because I mentioned Israel.
If I had left that word out as the in-all-seriousness second most likely source of (or partner in) this sabotage, I probably would have made a +5. Most people, however, just can't grasp the idea that you can hold the political state of Israel in utter contempt for its actions, without expressing antisemitism.
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:5, Insightful)
A responsible citizen, yes, would want the Iranian people to take matters into their own hands, and make sure that their government leaders are accountable and responsible.
On the other hand, if you're an American politician trying to sell a war, Fear Uncertainty, and Doubt play very well to your cause on both sides of the table.
As it stands, I don't believe that the Iranian people are all too upset at their government. Although their approach to civil rights is a bit backwards from the Western perspective, it's been that way for several generations (and is largely the fault of previous American and European intervention in the region). Likewise, the Iranian government doesn't strike me as being all that secretive.
I hate to defend the current Iranian regime, but I don't believe for a moment that it's remotely as bad as Bush makes it out to be.
Here's An Idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Not that I think that's what's happening... far too obvious, in a supermarket-checkout-line-pulp-techno-thriller kind of way. I'm sure they can (and have) tapped such lines in a less clumsy way.
But how many companies are equipped for these kinds of repairs? It would be fairly easy to predict which one(s) would be used and stock them with agents. Dunno.
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:2, Insightful)
You can hurt their economy BIG way, and you dont have to come even close to them, all you need is sub or ship and knowledge of cable locations. Neither is very hard to come by.
Investment of few mil$ dollars, results priceless.
Chaptha: Piloting (hehehe)
I need some reference please (Score:5, Insightful)
So, what is the statistical probability of an undersea cable having a minor, major, or catastrophic issue? If it's once a week, then perhaps we have an anomoly of location, not an anomoly of frequency.
I remember seeing some Discovery Channel show on how they end up fixing those cables, and it was rather interesting. I also have some fuzzy memory of how there are multiple boats designed to do this kind of repair work, and they are usually busy out at sea fixing *something*. I get the feeling (this is where my plea for verification comes in), that 5 cuts may not actually be TOO unusual.
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:5, Insightful)
You are positing a hertofore unshown level of intelegence and understanding of the complexities of the mindset of countries other than the USA in the USA's current leadership. I respectfully suggest that they are more likely to try the direct approach, despite the accilary effects strengthening their enemies position. This seems to meet with the past record of those leaders actions.
Please (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I can't believe you people still defend Iran (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think that the poster you replied to was really suggesting that having an Internet connection in Iran meant an idyllic unfettered freedom of information for its populace; instead, not having any glimpse into the outside world makes the citizens more susceptible to hatemongering propaganda, stilted views, and the like. To think that cutting off an Internet connection to Iran would actually improve political tensions would be naive.
I was also a bit disturbed that war seems to be the only alternative to sanctions. If the U.S. didn't routinely traipse into the Middle East and assert itself violently, would we have fomented as much hate as we receive now? Israel, Desert Storm, the Iraq conflict... it's enough to make Arab states feel pretty threatened. They can't compete with the scale of the United States military, but a nuclear device sure gets our attention and would make us think twice. I'm not necessarily debating the utility of our past military offensives, but to say that outright war is the only alternative to sanctions strikes me as pretty simplistic!
Perhaps we're arguing the same point, however: we've stirred up such a hornet's nest in the Middle East now that perhaps it really has come to suppression via sanctions or via war. I just wonder what that area of the world would look like if we had been less meddlesome and more supportive in the first place.
The measure of a theory of behavior (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's take the goal of "cutting off Iran's information before an attack by the US". Does cutting the cables in this manner "further that goal"? Yes, it does. However, given that goal, would the US military consider this its best action? Hell no! If the US Military wants to cut off your internet, they're not going to give you a lead time of several days; they're going to cut off all your links within minutes, possibly seconds of each other.
Are extremist Middle Eastern groups cutting off the cables to cut off Western influences? They would lack the capabilities to cut all cables at once, but I also suspect they'd know this was a brutally short-term situation. Most such people seem to believe that standard authoritarian government techniques are a better choice. I can't quite rule this one out as thoroughly, but it would have to be an awfully small, insular group to think this is the best choice.
The problem with the standard metric of "does it further this goal" is that it leaves you with an excessive abundance of theories, which can't all be true, but can't be ruled out by that metric. Every event further numerous goals and sets back numerous other ones. You really need to be looking at what people consider their best actions; that tends to be much more constrained and much more accurate. Less fun if you need to see conspiracies everywhere though, but that's the price you pay for caring about truth.
And so on. So far, I haven't really heard a good conspiracy theory yet, so I'm still judging natural event as the most likely, pending more information.
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ever.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that cable "cuts" (actual term = "disruptions of service") happen ALL THE TIME. There's nearly always a half-dozen or more ongoing major incidents. There's enough spare capacity on parallel and diverse cables so that most folks don't notice a change in service. It's when there are simultaneous cuts on several parallel cables that people really notice. As an example, the cable breaks after the tsunami in Asia.
So, let me restate your hypothesis #1:
Hypothesis 1: The same number of cables get disrupted in the past two weeks as in the prior month. This time, they're all in the same vicinity.
That does actually make a bit more sense, eh?
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:5, Insightful)
I know your just being a wiseass, but if the Iranians are sharing our music and movies then we've probably already "won". Our culture is one of our most important exports and at the end of the day it's going to be a hellva lot more effective at bringing change into that country then bullets will.
The sooner that Americans and Iranians realize that the other one is populated by people not that much different from them, the better off we will all be. Seeing our culture is a huge first step towards realizing this goal.
Re:I can't believe you people still defend Iran (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe we should have left them alone to begin with. If we go to war again there, it'll be another mess, since we'll just install another bloodthirsty dictator like we always do, and thousands upon thousands will die, at our hands.
If we want to avoid war, we just need to mind our own fucking business. How hard is that?
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:5, Insightful)
I won't defend torture, but there is a bit of a difference between going after outsiders and using your thugs to intimidate the local electorate. Get back to me when we start using extraordinary rendition against domestic political opponents.
My country has done some really stupid shit the last seven years, but we'd have to fall a lot further before I'd start comparing us to Iran. If you lived in Iran you might not even be able to point out the bad stuff that your Government has done. We can still do that here.
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:5, Insightful)
All the executed homosexuals [ukgaynews.org.uk] and women beaten [wordpress.com] for not maintaining the appropriate veil angle on the street say "hi."
Oh, so do the journalists [hrw.org] killed in detention [hrw.org] by the regime. [amnestyusa.org]
So do the children being kids being executed [stopchildexecutions.com] by the regime.
So does Amnesty International [amnestyusa.org], while we're at it...
Oh, and so do the local Christians, Zoroastrians, Bahai, and Jews, who are routinely persecuted by the regime (you can do the search yourself, I'm getting nauseated looking at these links).
Look, I understand people don't like GWB, but to insinuate that the US is somehow responsible for human rights violations in Iran, or has a somehow comprable record on human rights is insane.
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone knows that proper spelling and grammar are essential to effective communications.
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:5, Insightful)
I love /. Anytime I need to be reminded that I am surrounded by a self-styled "intellectual elite" that is functionally illiterate, I only have to read a few posts. And I don't even have to bait, since most of them do it naturally.
Why do people insist on believing that being semi-literate is a sign of their inherent superiority?
Oh, and "there", "their", and "they're" are three different words, with significantly different meanings. Learn to tell them apart, and people won't have to believe that the American Public School System (as if there were such a thing) has failed in its (purported) design purpose.
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I can't believe you people still defend Iran (Score:3, Insightful)
Iran used to be a DEMOCRATIC nation, one of the first to do so. But they didn't want to bend over for the US. So the US supported the overthrow of that government to put the Shah into power. The Shah was a ruthless dictator who was sort of like Saddam, only less cuddly.
When the people finally rose up against the Shah and took back their country, they made it very clear that the US was not welcome. Well, we can't have that now can we? So we helped put yet another ruthless dictator into power, Saddam Hussein. We gave Saddam military support and weapons to help fight a proxy war for us with Iran. That was quite a bloody mess. And that eventually lead Kuwait and the Iraq wars. More death and destruction.
Don't worry, the US still has Iran beat in regards to the killing people. They're amateurs compared to the US.
If you think the Iranians dislike their government, they dislike the US a whole lot more. If one thing can be said for the Middle East, its that they have long memories. We've been screwing over that area of the world for the better part of a century now, and I think it is easy to see that the remember all to well the actions of our past.
~X~
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:2, Insightful)
Who cares if you look like a fool on Slashdot, you're probably far too busy to care, what with reading your bugtracker and fixing all those spelling and grammatical errors in your oooh shiney! new GUI? You know, the one that won't compile because you typo'd a function name or declared a variable that you misspelled later on.
You just go ahead and bait people. Better still
English isn't the easiest language to learn, but pointing out common errors is one way to teach people.
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:3, Insightful)
The obsessive perfectionist trait is probably good for programmers, engineers, scientists and other nerdy areas.
But there are plenty of sloppy people around producing sloppy work.
name calling (Score:4, Insightful)
Dismissing every "conspiracy [wikipedia.org]" as automatically false is an act of profound stupidity.
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:3, Insightful)
The USA has broken it's long tradition, and it's a hard to wash your hands clean. Whether the torturees are domestic victims or foreign, it doesn't matter. The US government has sanctioned tortured, has been seen to re-define the terms of the Geneva convention with weasel words (courtesy of Rumsfeld), has been seen to bully, intimidate and degrade prisoners. And the kidnappings? Who's to say what's happening these days in the USA? Everyone is under restraint orders, orders that one can't even talk about. Phones are being tapped, habeas corpus has gone AWOL.
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:5, Insightful)
Five times is a bit more than three time. Rather likely to be "enemy action" I'd say.
Test: Are those connections that were removed for servicing back up yet? If so, then this is probably unwarranted fear mongering. If not
2nd Test: Since another cable has been cut, will the cables that were taken down for servicing be rushed back into service? Prediction: If enemy action, then reasons will appear suggesting that they *can't* be put back into service quickly. Otherwise not. (N.B.: Evaluate this second test tomorrow.)
--- intermediate result: If no report appears on the status of the cables, this implies that "enemy action" is in a stealth mode, after having been noticed. Unfortunately, this could by CYA showing up as a false positive.
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:3, Insightful)
I just hate it when a good argument gets obscured by a long thread of /.er's pointing out the commenter's improper use of "its" vs. "it's."
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:4, Insightful)
There are quite practical reasons to want Iran to not have net access. For one, it denies them access to commercial satellite information, direct or brokered. In a land action, this could be a considerable disadvantage. For another, should they have any sources of information in the country that wants to take military action, this isolates those people such that any useful information they might have becomes much more difficult to get back to Iran. Finally, it prevents an initial surge of information out of the country, accurate or not, that reports on civilian infrastructure being hit, which reduces political pressure on the attacker (especially if it is the USA, probably not so much if it were someone else, for instance Israel, which has plenty of reason to go after Iran right now with news reports of Iran being within three years of developing nuclear weapons.
I don't see this as a reasonable action for Iran, if Iran were contemplating military action.
Catch 22 (Score:3, Insightful)
Since a censored post is, by definition, something you are not going to see, proving that there is no censorship by example is... is... Well, you said it best:
> You are an idiot.
Who will there be left to speak for you? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're missing the point, which is that Padilla was illegally jailed for over two years and his rightful request for habeas corpus was denied. SCOTUS refused to clarify whether holding Padilla was legal, thus making his case a clear cut example of the illegal detainment and torture of an American citizen. Furthermore, what you're saying is that because Padilla was suspected of terrorism, jailing him illegally was OK.
My point is not that Padilla was innocent. My point is that terrorism is carte blanche for the executive to illegally detain Americans, to fabricate charges against them, and to increase penalties upon conviction. In the meantime, people like you will look at Padilla and see someone they don't quite like and decide that it's all OK.
In my opinion, it will only be a matter of time before someone finds themselves on the wrong end of what you call "normal, peaceful political channels," as did many in their peaceful protest [wikipedia.org] of the 2004 Republican National Convention. Your thinking implies that rule of law is a privilege to be extended only to American citizens who behave in the proper manner, people who look a particular way and who have a particular kind of past.
I believe that rule of law should apply not only to all American citizens, but that it should also be extended to all people detained by the United States.
Re:Who will there be left to speak for you? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not missing the point. I'm pointing out the fact that you and the previous poster are talking apples and oranges. As the poster said, get back to us when you can talk about an actual domestic political opponent extradited for torture. Some less than plush treatment and some overzealous police work around some street protests are not the same thing as rounding up Howard Dean and sending him to Syria.
We can also compare how the two countries might deal with people like Padilla, but if you think it's so cut and dried, you might go look up what happened during WW2 to some German saboteurs caught in the US [wikipedia.org]. I agree that rule of law should apply to everyone (regardless of your misinterpretations), but I think you have a distorted view of what the law actually is, and how it gets interpreted and executed.
Let's examine your claim of non-rule of law. Your link says that originally, an appeals court decided among contradictory precedents (Ex parte Quirin vs. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer) that he had a right to habeus corpus. But the Supreme Court rejected the petition due to technical problems with it (if that's not rule of law, what is), so the case was never really decided. After the petition was refiled, his detainment was ruled to be legal. It goes on to state that the "Military Commission Act of 2006 does not apply by its terms to José Padilla," but by the time it was a law, he'd already been indicted and transferred to the civilian justice system.
In any case, you've once again proved how different we are from Iran, which was the real point.
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:3, Insightful)
So... what? We hold the moral high ground so we're allowed to stoop a little?
--Rob
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:3, Insightful)
Astonished at your naivete here. The Putinjugend of Nashi also love American-style b-ball hats, etc. Consumption of pop culture does not mean adherence to the reigning ideology in the culture's country of origin.
Re:We have met the enemy, and he is the moderator. (Score:4, Insightful)
While I agree that one can find moderators pursuing an agenda here, I don't think it is organized, quite the opposite. Also, never attribute to malice what you can rationally interpret as incompetence. Slashdot's moderation system is badly broken, to the point where reading slashdot at anything but -1 results in disjointed conversations, nonsensical, context-free posts, and dependence upon some very poor judgment (for whatever reason.) The smiley was honest; I only read at -1, so moderation doesn't affect my experience at all. If it affects others with regard to my posts, they are either reading slashdot in an extremely naive manner (depending upon the moderation to guide them) or they aren't smart enough to follow what I'm trying to tell them anyway, so nothing much lost there. In the latter case, meh, in the former, they'll figure it out soon enough when they get mod-bombed, or some thread they are trying to follow develops unexpected voids.
The most severe problems occur when an editor, not a user, goes on a moderation jag; you can spot this by seeing a series of posts (many of which may be several days old) from one poster that is larger than five posts (the max number of mod points given to a "regular" user) get hammered within just a few minutes. Easiest to spot on your own account, of course, but if you're following someone else closely, you can see it there, too. Slashdot insists they don't need to change the moderation system or poke (or replace) editors; I've had a little correspondence with Rob Malda about this and the laissez faire approach is quite up front.
The reason I don't post as AC is because by posting under my UID, my comments are collected for others to peruse if they find that useful. For that matter, *I* find it useful.
Pulease! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Iran has NOT "offline" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Goldfinger meets Pogo (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean think about this, what if nothing was cut but is being reported as cut? What if the enemy is within the state effected in an attempt to gain sympathy from other regions? What if this it just a big misinformation campaign to identify those hostile to the US but tracking people who are critical of the US in this matter? What if this is only an attempt to find out who would aid the enemy in an action against Iran? The Vietnam war was won in the press, the Iraq war almost was, what about Iran?
That right, draw lines between the sort points but ignore the picture drawn from the longer spans. Dot to dot images should come with instructions.