Egyptian Forces Capture 3 Divers Trying To Cut Undersea Internet Cable 166
Egypt's Naval forces claim they have captured three scuba divers who were trying to cut an undersea Internet cable in the Mediterranean. Col. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said in a statement that the divers were caught while “cutting the undersea cable” of Telecom Egypt. Internet services have been disrupted since March 22 in Egypt. From the article: "The statement was accompanied by a photo showing three young men, apparently Egyptian, staring up at the camera in what looks like an inflatable launch. It did not have further details on who they were or why they would have wanted to cut a cable."
Copper prices (Score:5, Insightful)
It did not have further details on who they were or why they would have wanted to cut a cable."
They probably thought it was copper cable. It sells for a pretty penny as scrap right now you know. Imagine their shock when they were told by the cops it contained only "worthless" fiber.
Eerily reminiscent of 3 cable cuts in 2008 (Score:5, Insightful)
During a week in 2008, three undersea cables were cut off of Egypt. At the time (and still) the cuts were attributed to ships dragging anchors -- although the fact that there were three cuts so close in time was, and remains, hard to believe.
So, now we see people intentionally cutting a cable. Hmm.
During the second world war, there were teams of saboteurs who were tasked with cutting telephone cables across France, in preference to almost any other target, because it was much easier for the British to intercept radio messages than telephone messages. I can't imagine any other reason for this.
Re:Plausible deniability and/or something to hide (Score:5, Insightful)
Tapping fiber is not so easy, as it's photonic. The cuts would be seen by optical time domain reflectometry on the other side. Doing it underwater is ugly. #1 isn't so easy.
Hiding something, like a service outage while you're about to do something evil is somewhat plausible, save that it's no longer possible to actually shut down ALL of the communications going out of a country, just a large bulk of it. Why would Syria, Israel, or even the Eritreans try to cut the cable? I think #2 is equally implausible.
Re:Are they from the Muslim Brotherhood ? (Score:5, Insightful)
They are not isolationist in the sense that they are happy to support foreign Jihadi organizations, like Hamas, CAIR, al Qaeda, et al. They are certainly isolationist when it comes to Western - read Infidel - influences on Egypt - that's a part of what those 'Arab Spring' revolutions were all about.
Really, the last thing that we need is apologists here for a Jihadi organization that's the parent organization of terror groups like Hamas and al Qaeda, and trying to paint them as being nicer than Wahabis or the Taliban. The only difference between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Wahabis is that the former believes in the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence, whereas the latter follow the Hanbalis. But to non-Sunnis, it's a distinction without a difference.
Re:Eerily reminiscent of 3 cable cuts in 2008 (Score:4, Insightful)
"although the fact that there were three cuts so close in time was, and remains, hard to believe."
I debunked this conspiracy theory at the time. I can't be arsed to do it in such detail again, but the gist of it was that using the ITU's stats on cable cuts 3 cuts in a week wasn't out of the norm and submarine cables tend to get cut all the time (at least once a week). It's a more common occurrence than people realise.
Couple this with the fact that Egypt has the Suez canal which is one of the busiest (or even simply the busiest?) shipping lane in the world and there's really nothing hard to believe about that sort of incident at all.
I know some people get excited when they see a chance for conspiracy but I'm afraid the world is often much less exciting. Much as I might be amused by the idea that this woman is part of a crack commando unit for example, I think she really was probably just looking for salvage:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13158351 [bbc.co.uk]
Re:Measure twice. (Score:4, Insightful)
The last time I researched this (admittedly some time ago) they did send the pump laser signal down the fiber like this [uoregon.edu]. There were two choices - send the pump signal down the same fiber as the signal, or down a different fiber that was physically joined/merged with the signal cables(s). It looks like that didn't work out, since Wikipedia agrees with you [wikipedia.org]: Repeaters are powered by a constant direct current passed down the conductor near the center of the cable...