Satellite IDs Ships That Cut Cables

1sockchuck writes "Undersea telecom cable operator Reliance Globalcom was able to use satellite images to identify two ships that dropped anchor in the wrong place, damaging submarine cables and knocking Middle East nations offline in early February. The company used satellite images to study the movements of the two ships, and shared the information with officials in Dubai, who impounded the two vessels. The NANOG list has a discussion of where Reliance might have obtained satellite images to provide that level of detail. Google News links more coverage of the developments."

I hate to say I told you so...

And here [slashdot.org] I was being made to feel like a regular fool for not being 99.99% positive (as "proven" by Bayes' theorem, no less) that the U.S. government (or others) were intentionally disrupting internet services to presumably stop the Iranian Oil Bourse [wikipedia.org].

I'll never understand how a technical-minded group such as slashdot that prides itself on objectivity and generally mocks blind faith can, at times, get so easily carried away.

-Grym

Jerks...

The cable was damaged because of jerks and force of the ship, the official said.

JERKS!!!!

Some more details coming in now....

Indian officer held for undersea cable damage

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/indian-officer-held-for-undersea-cable-damage/63234-3.html

Somehow it must be Israel's fault

The conspiracy nuts are pitiful. I used to think they were all on the right, but now I know there are just as many if not more on the left.

Re:Somehow it must be Israel's fault

There are more conspiracy nuts on the opposite of whichever side has systematically abused their power for sinister gain, dissolving long-held protections, destroying systems and bucking customs for their own confusing purposes in direct opposition to the obvious right thing to do, or the interests of their employers (us). When they do it openly in many different areas without explaining themselves, and there is a well-funded, small group of idealogues behind them, who insist on an absolute right to their own secrecy(they claim the entire Executive Branch may choose whether to testify to court or Congress), and secrets keep leaking out (like suspending the 4th amendment in 2002) from disgruntled ex-employees...

It's very difficult to have ANY sort of imagination, not just the tin-foil hat kind, and avoid wondering about at least the possibility that the current administration is involved in several large, sinister conspiracies which the public doesn't know about yet. We have literally dozens available that are already in the public sphere.

This is why 9/11 conspiracy nuts will never die, even if they can't convince skeptics like myself who pick at the technical details. The thing their stories agree on - that those presently in power either caused or could have prevented the attack - fits like a glove into what we know about the administration's goals pre-attack and their actions post-attack. If the Democrats used an attack(cause unknown) to drastically change the country, get rid of all the constitutional rights you hold dear, fulfill a bullet point in preexisting plan to grow the military industrial complex, wage an aggressive war longer than WW2, set us up for at least the possibility of the destruction of our democracy, steal elections, and generally act like a bad Disney villain, there would be a hell of a lot of Republican conspiracy theorists after 8 years as well.

Your political beliefs should not inform your reasoning, it should be the other way around.

Re:Somehow it must be Israel's fault

Well I will tell you this much - it's only a true fool who believes that "conspiracies never happen" and everything govt/intel says is true.

Indeed, conspiracies happen all of the time - any time more than one person gets together with another and plans to do something. It's also one of the msot common criminal charges in the US.

I still think that the odds of how this happen with so many cables in such a short time span is suspicious. Does that mean it wasn't an accident? Anything is possible, but some things are more likely than others and keep in mind that those groups or agencies who do these sort of things specialize in damage control, cover stories, and manipulation of the public.

All I am saying is that you really don't know, and for people to act like it's "case closed no questions remain" over this press release is kind of short sighted. It really doesn't change a thing. If this was done intentionally there would be a cover, likely a couple of layers of cover.

Nanog Thread

GMane is a *far* easier interface to read than whatever nanog's official archive uses:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.operators.nanog/54752 [gmane.org]

Images might not have to be that sharp.

If you take the layout of the deck and then compare it to ships in port at known times and locations it would be easy to ident. ships even with a meter resolution. The color and organization of shipping containers has got to be nearly as good a fingerprint even form space.

Man, are those guys good, or what?

Just think - the CIA/NSA/current administration somehow managed to purchase foreign-flagged ships of the line from arguably 'enemy' countries, hiding said purchases from both those governments, our own goverment, and the rest of the world, and then they somehow managed to get them to drop their anchors in just the places needed to cut the proper cables lying submerged on the seabed. They pulled all this off successfully - until YOU managed to figure it out.

Brilliant!

Huh? Occam who???

Re:Man, are those guys good, or what?

Phase 1: Wait until ship stops near cable

Phase 2: Send stealth submarine to cut cable

Phase 3: Blame ship, produce satellite images for proof

Phase 4: Profit

Re:Man, are those guys good, or what?

Don't be silly!

The correct step three is:
Build a fake Earth in New Mexico with a little model ship on it, and take a picture of it with a normal camera.

Satellites? Pfft. You've bought into the hoax that we've actually sent things into orbit.

Re:Man, are those guys good, or what?

7. Hyperinflation.
8. Buy a micronation sized chunk of the former United States.
9. Dystopian Cyberpunk Future!

Re:Man, are those guys good, or what?

Someone set us up the anchor!

Thank you Mr. Expert

Is it your years in the CIA or your years in the conspiracy nutjob section of the bookstore that make you so knowledgeable?

Re:Coverup

It was Iraq and North Korea!

Except the second ship was South Korean, our ally. North Korea only has a handful of blue water ships. South Korea, electronics manufacturer to the world, has many.

When in doubt, "Korean" mean South Korean.

Re:Coverup

I actually retract my statement above. It's not clear whether the ship is North or South Korean at this point. The only entry in the international ship registry [e-ships.net] matching an MT Ann ("Merchant Transport Ann") is a North Korean vessel.

5105 7320069 ANN HMZE6 Oil Products Tanker 22600 1973 12 Korea (North)

However, there's an "Ankuk" on the same list that's a South Korean ship that would also match:

5090 8130033 ANKUK NO. 7 Oil Products Tanker 2474 1982 06 Korea (South)

I'm no expert on ships, so it's possible I'm looking in all the wrong places. Or that there's a translation problem from Korean to English. Maybe somebody else has a better lead?

Re:Coverup

My guess is that it was a South Korean shipping company.

That's quite likely, since South Korea build the most ships in the world.

Re:weird, huh?

And two cables cut by unrelated ships within such a short timeframe? This is soooo conspiracy inducing.

Is it? have you even checked the likelihood of that happening? As a matter of fact, in an average year, around 50 undersea cables are broken. Given that there are 365 days in a year, what is the chance of two breaking in 'such a short timeframe?' It doesn't happen every day, but it's not really out of the ordinary. Check these things before you try to dream up a conspiracy.

Seriously, when it comes to technology slashdot is collectively pretty intelligent; but when it comes to paranoia and politics, slashdot collectively drops down to the IQ of a two year old.

Re:weird, huh?

Well you finally solved it...

1. Create Paranoia on Slashdot
2. Make and Sell Tinfoil Hats
3. Profit

Oblig

I find your ideas intriguing. I would like to purchase stock in your "tinfoil hat" company.

Re:weird, huh?

Applying the standard birthday paradox math, the probability that at least 2 of 50 cuts in a year fall on the same day is 97%. So the weird part is why these particular same day cuts were news. The odds of two cuts on the same day affecting the same country group are lower. It is harder to quantify "country group", however.

Re:Cite your sources

Your wish is the community's command. Here's ZDNet on cable statistics [zdnet.co.uk]

According to one paper presented at last year's SubOptic conference in Baltimore, Maryland, rates of cable fault in water over 1km deep are less than 0.1 faults per year, per 1,000km of installed cable. This implies around 50 deepwater repairs per year, globally. At depths of less than 1km, failure rates hovered between 1-2 per 1,000km in the 1990s, but have been steadily declining. According to a SubOptic 2004 paper, the rate in 2003 was 0.2 fault per 1,000km.

In other words, that's 50 deep-water cuts per year, in addition to some more shallow-water cuts per year.

Another expert puts it this way [zdnet.com]:

He said there are approximately 50 cable cuts a year, 65 percent of which are due to fishing trawlers dragging heavy nets and 18 percent of which are due to shipsâ(TM) anchors. âoeThey donâ(TM)t even track terrorism,â he said. âoeCable cuts are a routine part of the business.â

These statistics don't include power failures and other problems with cables that arise from the land side; if a switching station goes down then the cable goes dark, even if it's still intact.

Re:Cite your sources

He said there are approximately 50 cable cuts a year, 65 percent of which are due to fishing trawlers dragging heavy nets and 18 percent of which are due to shipsâ(TM) anchors. âoeThey donâ(TM)t even track terrorism,â he said. âoeCable cuts are a routine part of the business.â

A møøse once bit my sister's cable...

Re:Cite your sources

>>It's the responsibility of the Claimant to back-up his claim with references/citations.

Do you have any sources to back up this claim?

Sattelite images make sense to me

When cables get cut, wouldn't you, as a service provider, want to know what ships are in the area? Might not intelligence services take a gander with their satellites to see what is happening in the area?