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."
Measure twice. (Score:4, Funny)
But did they even cut once?
Re: Measure twice. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, they cut into the cable but not all the way through it. It resulted in slower Internet traffic in the region fed by those cables.
Are they from the Muslim Brotherhood ? (Score:2, Redundant)
The MB does not like the West very much, and that cable links Egypt to (in their way of thought) the West
Maybe that's the reason they cut the cable
Re:Are they from the Muslim Brotherhood ? (Score:5, Informative)
Doubtful. The Muslim Brotherhood isn't isolationist like, e.g., the Taliban, nor do they have anything in particular against the West, as with Wahhabism. In other words, they don't necessarily see a conflict between modern institutions and Islamic life. They just have a really, really, really conservative opinion about how to live as a Muslim within a modern, technologically progressive nation-state.
They're more like what you'd get with Pat Robertson and his ultra-conservative compatriots controlling all three branches of the government. You could kiss the Constitution goodbye, but you'd still have some semblance of federalism, a free market, free-ish speech, etc.
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.
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I gather "deal with us or deal with the Taliban" is a tactic ––but their aims may be quite similar.
And at some point is gets hard to tell the difference. Ordinary folk write comments like, "we don't want Communism, and we don't want Capitalism, we want Islam."
It is the path of renunciation and purity — everything will work so much better if everyone just submitted to the proper and good system, namely Islam.
The West also had a thousand years or more of that sort of strive for purity
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Ther is a deeper problem, a sectarian one, Though they seek "pure" Islam, there are two "Islam"s to seek. Obviously the Sunni see the Shia as heretics, and their reverence of Ali as idolatry. And the Persians have this "hidden Imam" thing going on. With each revolution of Earth, this gets more and more interesting.
I hope Israel's renewed diplomatic relations with Turkey does something to keep this part of the world from melting down.
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Israel IS the "world melting down".
Re:Are they from the Muslim Brotherhood ? (Score:5, Funny)
The Muslim Brotherhood isn't isolationist like, e.g., the Taliban nor do they have anything in particular against the West
Oh, well they don't sound all that bad...
They're more like what you'd get with Pat Robertson and his ultra-conservative compatriots controlling all three branches of the government.
OH GOD KILL IT WITH FIRE!
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You could kiss the Constitution goodbye, but you'd still have some semblance of federalism, a free market, free-ish speech, etc.
Sounds like the United States.
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They were probably trying to steal the copper.
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They were probably trying to steal the copper.
From an undersea cable? I admire the ambition, but...
Re: Measure twice. (Score:5, Funny)
The cable was slightly bent during the process, so 0's could get through, but 1's would get stuck where the cable is bent. That's how you end up with slower Internet traffic.
Re: Measure twice. (Score:4, Funny)
The cable was slightly bent during the process, so 0's could get through, but 1's would get stuck where the cable is bent. That's how you end up with slower Internet traffic.
That's peculiar. 1s look so much more slender than 0s. You'd think they'd be able to slip through a space where a 0 would get caught.
Re: Measure twice. (Score:4, Funny)
Here is the magic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensegrity [wikipedia.org]
CC.
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Coaxial cable, the 0's slide along the outside of the inner cable, the 1's travel along the core of the inner cable. So if the cable gets bent, the 1's back up all the way to the server.
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Efforts are being made to retrieve all the lost 1's and 0's floating out to sea.
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Re:Measure twice. (Score:5, Informative)
With modern cable ships, it's actually pretty routine work. They get damaged by ship anchors on regular basis.
Wired's Hacker Tourist wrote of Alexandria, Egypt (Score:4, Informative)
Here's an amazing article that gives all kinds of historical telecom cable information, including the internet exchange in Alexandria Egypt. It also discusses repair ships and some inherent physics problems having to do with the pressures placed on the spindles (of the undersea cables) on-deck.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html [wired.com]
Sadly, I can't locate a version of the article with the wonderful photos of the original printed piece.
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idiots, or desperation?
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There is some copper in an optical fiber cable which is needed to supply power to the repeaters spaced along its length.
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There is some copper in an optical fiber cable which is needed to supply power to the repeaters spaced along its length.
Unless they use Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers [wikipedia.org] that require no electrical power to be fed down the cable.
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Unless they use Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers [wikipedia.org] that require no electrical power to be fed down the cable.
You still need electrical power for repeaters, though, as the fiber amplifier has a pump laser that has to be powered. It's not practical to send high power at the pumping wavelength through a series of erbium-doped repeaters.
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...
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You already have a lot of redundancy through multiple operators running the cables. That is not a problem.
Latency on the other hand is a huge factor. So are costs of laying and maintaining the cable.
Col. Ahmed Mohammed Ali (Score:5, Funny)
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, he makes sure Egypt doesn't lose internet tv.
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.
Re:Copper prices (Score:5, Funny)
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Fiber has a kevlar sheating which should worth something.
Re:Copper prices (Score:5, Informative)
Fiber has a kevlar sheating which should worth something.
Why? It's not like you can use it for anything. Kevlar needs to be purpose made for specific uses. You can't melt it down and reuse it like metal. You can buy sheets of Kevlar fabric [google.com] for very little. It's mostly the labor and skill that it takes to make stuff that adds the value. Not the material itself.
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I used some mysef to make an ndestructable dog toy. Worked nicely: Kevlar-denim-silicone composite fabric witht two squeakers inside. Super-tough.
Dog doesn't like it though. He prefrs toys with bits that can be ripped off, so e just have to keep buying new toys every week.
Silly tablet keyboard is dropping letters.
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If he ingests Kevlar fibers, they'll likely perforate his GI tract and kill him.
Re:Copper prices (Score:4, Funny)
Yet the dog lives.
I took that into account. The outer layer is a very tough, abrasion-resistant denim. Dog-safe. The kevlar is used underneath that to add tensile strength, and kevlar thread is used in all the stitching. Seams turned inwards, of course. Dog had has that toy for a year and subjected it to a lot of demanding use, and it has yet to tear or puncture.
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The toy doesn't get played with often, probably because it is so tough. It's beanbag-shaped, and contains two squeaker balls. You can throw it, and the dog will run and fetch it. But what it seems to really like are the flimsy rolls, something it seems to take great initial interest in de-limbing. Once only a torso remains, the dog loses any interest. Something about tearing a toy into pieces seems to satisfy it.
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Flimsy dolls, rather. Think http://www.feedem.co.uk/images/products/zoom/1304760047-55473900.jpg [feedem.co.uk] - they'll last about a day, and then we'll be finding stuffing and scraps of fabric around the room for a week.
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Your point stands however. The Kevlar in an underwater cable would be thin strips and possibly impregnated with epoxy: useless for resale.
Re:Copper prices (Score:5, Informative)
Fiber has a kevlar sheating which should worth something.
Worth what, exactly? The stuff is woven about the plastic sheathed glass fibers, some insulated copper wires that carry power to the repeaters, and encased in a waterproof coating. If you cut it open and empty the useless crap out you'll destroy the integrity of the fibers. It's not like you can knit yourself a bulletproof Kevlar sweater out of it.
The copper will be worth a few farthings per furlong, but that's likely to be it for value.
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The copper will be worth a few farthings per furlong, but that's likely to be it for value.
Some farthings [coinsgb.com] are worth [coinsgb.com] quite a lot [coinsgb.com]. Offer me a few of the several-thousand-sterling each types, and I'll gladly deliver a furlong of cable.
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They probably thought it was copper cable.
So they were after a copper cable, but got a navy colonel? Doesn't matter, looks like they were arrested anyway.
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It still has a copper conductor carrying 7kV, used to power the undersea signal repeaters.
You can, however, imagine their shock when the saboteurs encountered the 7000 volts.
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You can, however, imagine their shock when the saboteurs encountered the 7000 volts.
The police arrested three people in a harbor, not pulled three bodies out of one. I know throwing a plugged in toaster into the bathtub with you in it is an efficient way to suffer a total existance failure. So that must mean voltage is less deadly the higher it is. I can't help feeling though like maybe we're missing something important here...
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An ocean full of salt water is a somewhat different environment than the confines of a bathtub, a toaster, and a victim. I'm guessing that if someone breaches the inner aluminum waterproofing shield, the conductivity of the salt water probably popped whatever circuit protection they have, shutting down the power.
If you're somewhat interested, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable [wikipedia.org] has a good description of the materials making up the cables. And if you're really into it, Neal Stephens
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Plausible deniability and/or something to hide (Score:5, Interesting)
I can see two likely possibilities:
1. Plausible deniability.
Say that a foreign government decides they want to tap a cable. The easiest way is to cut the cable a few hundred miles away so that nobody will notice while they're severing and reconnecting fibers. Sure, they could blame somebody dragging an anchor across it, but that starts to look suspicious if you do it too many times. But if you can create what looks like a botched terrorist act, then you can later come and sever the cable, and everybody will assume that the successful cut was also a terrorist act. Even better if Egypt can host a mock show trial.
2. Something to hide.
Say you're the Syrian government and you don't want the world to have proof that you are beginning to gas the dissidents. What better way to cut off communication than to sever the right undersea cables?
Of course, I could be wrong—it could really be a terrorist organization—but I really can't think of any plausible aims that could be achieved by doing something like this, which is why it seems more likely that it was done by some random government's black ops team, either for nefarious purposes or to distract attention away from something else nefarious.
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1. Not necessary. The worlds superpowers can tap undersea cable without interrupting services.
2. Plausible.
3. Most likely local third country nationals who are mad at the Egyption gov.
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Why go to all that bother and expense?
Egypt can just seize the servers at any time. Weren't there stories about Egypt and Blackberry servers? Government wanted the ability to intercept and decrypt communications going through those servers, and Blackberry eventually rolled over, IIRC.
Putting divers in the water is risky and expensive.
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Yes, but who might have a grudge against Egypt?
It's more like a grudge against the Western world (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, but who might have a grudge against Egypt?
In the case of the Muslim Brotherhood, the grudge is more aiming at the "immorality of the Western world" than anything else
The Internet (at least that cable) is a symbol of Internet, and to many of those holier than thou folks, the Net is a "tool of the West" that brings in all kinds of filth
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.
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Of course, I could be wrong—it could really be a terrorist organization
If so, then they've really lost their way. Sure it's easier to cut an undersea cable than to blow up a nightclub or to fly a plane into a building, but where's the terror? Sure it's inconvenient to have slow internet, but they are terrorists not invonvenientists....
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Far easier to imagine religious nut seeking to cut off the evil influence of the internet. Well, at least the young gullible pawns of religious nuts. So idiot religious proselytizers with no real understanding of anything, trying to cut the tube full of internets.
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How about 3....
#3... They are divers. They might cause damage, then later offer their services as divers to assist in repairing the damage (for a large fee, of course).
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I'm thinking old fashioned extortion. Cough up some protection money, or bad things will happen to your network access... which is why the Egyptian authorities knew to look for them.
Can't get off this ride (Score:3)
Stop with the war mongering please.
How about you stop the wars first, Mr. "sticking my head in the sand".
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You can't do that by shipping them weapons.
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So, you still believe all the lies that were used to start the last wars.
Lies? Let's see...I'm guessing that you think:
... all an illusion created by the Tri-Lateral Commission and the Illuminati, right? Right!
The Taliban was not actually running Afghanistan at the point of a sword, or harboring Al Queda. Or, they were happy to give up the organization that attacked embassies, the Cole, NYC, etc
Saddam didn't invade Kuwait. That was all staged, and the thousands of troops, tanks, and supply chains set up for that invasion was actually faked by the Bush administration. Or,
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Stop with the war mongering please.
So, observing the war that someone else is conducting against the people in his country, and paying attention to the fact that he has WMDs, and that he is a meat puppet for Iran - big sponsors of terrorism and medieval theo-thuggery throughout the region ... that's war-mongering? When a meteorologist tells you that there's a hurricane moving up the coast, do you tell them to stop starting storms?
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Same bullshit we heard before. You people can't stop, can you?
What a lazy, pointless attempt to avoid talking about reality. Classic ad hominem response to anyone who points out reality. Aren't you just a little bit embarrassed when you don't even bother to try to explain away Assad's actions? Or the complicity of Iran? Regardless, how is it, again, that simply pointing out what other people are doing as they slaughter their own citizens is "war mongering?"
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You're a real sucker for the same old propaganda and lies that got us into so many wars.
In other words, you have absolutely no explanation for why observing the fact that a regime is slaughtering its own people is "war mongering." You've carefully avoided addressing reality in order to call someone else names. It's a strange reaction - a form of shrill argument that normally ends once one grows out of grade school.
There's no way to argue with that.
You're not arguing about anything. You're making pointless personal attacks without even beginning to address the substance of the matter. Which is a sure sign that you know your u
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More importantly, thanks for also demonstrating that you don't actually understand what the phrase "war mongering" actually means. With the sort of loose, rudderless thought process you prefer, I think we can safely say that you are a war monger. You like it when people like Saddam invade countries like Kuwait. You like it when the Taliban drag scho
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And neither can you
Neither can I what? You haven't asked a question. You've just been waving your hands and making vague assertions without any details, and pretending that talking about what other people are doing is "war mongering." As far as I can tell, the only person here who is obsessed about anything is you. You're dead set on preserving the conditions in which little wars fueled by idiotic inter-Islamic racism and sectarianism can become regional catastrophes. You're a refugee fetishist who prefers hundreds of thousa
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You will do anything to rationalize your wars.
How is Assad's slaughter of his own people "our" war? How was Saddam's invasion of Kuwait "our" war? How was the Taliban's brutal tyranny in Afghanistan "our" war? Your cognitive dissonance on this topic is pretty amazing. I suppose you'd consider the US's involvement in beating back German and Japanese tyranny to also be "our" war, right? Please, be specific.
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Say you're the Syrian government and you don't want the world to have proof that you are beginning to gas the dissidents.
Stop with the war mongering please.
Always nice to hear from peace-loving Russian friend.
How were they able to tell (Score:5, Funny)
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they were Egyptian simply by the way they looked?
I've hear of DUI, DWI and DWB (Driving While Black). But this is the first case of DWE (Diving While Egyptian) that I'm aware of.
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Re:How were they able to tell (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How were they able to tell (Score:5, Funny)
Too bad for them that not all the cops were in the donut shop.
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"they were Egyptian simply by the way they looked?"
They obviously walked like an Egyptian.
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Picture... (Score:2)
So how about a damn link to the photo since TFA doesn't have a copy?
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I mean... (Score:5, Funny)
Who, at some point, hasn't gotten *that* tired of seeing stupid reddit memes?
YouTube comments (Score:2)
I generally feel like doing the same thing to the largest internet tramsmission cable I can find, when I disregard all of the good sense and wisdom that I've gained from my prior negative experiences, and actually read the comments on YouTube videos.
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.
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Try this reason: these three guys thought it was copper wire, and wanted to steal it and sell it as scrap.
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]
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From what I've read, that was more a matter of the Germans using different codes for radio than for telephone.
Guess which set of codes the Brits had cracked?
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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.
Maybe these three were moonlighting as ship anchors?
Egyptian need slogan (Score:4, Informative)
SMW4 (Score:1)
These stories spook me (Score:2)
It's a reminder of how tenuous modern society is. It doesn't take a major act of vandalism or terrorism to bring things to a halt.
Could be some dumbass thieves (Score:4, Interesting)
Quite a few years ago I was hanging out in Egypt at a Red Sea resort with my girlfriend. Now I can hang on a lounge chair on a beach for a few hours, but that's about all can take before I want to get up and do something. So, I decided to take a tour boat out to the coral and go snorkeling. When the boat got to the coral reefs, they dropped their anchor right on the reef, which pissed me off. The captain explained that the government had installed permanent mooring buoys in order to preserve the coral, but these had been stolen by thieves.
Now, fiber cable doesn't have the same resale value as copper, but then try to explain that to a third world dumbass thief.
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Iran and friends (Score:1)
They have the animus and the motives. Iran is internally attempting to heavily censor/eliminate internet access. They are the target of network enabled attacks: Stuxnet. It would fit their profile to attack the same kind of international infrastructure, even if Stuxnet was injected by USB memory, not network connections.
The Assad regime is an ally of Iran, and has been receiving military aid. An attack on internet cables is an attack o
Collateral damage (Score:5, Informative)
Co-incidence? Perhaps, perhaps not...
Slowdown Felt in India (Score:2)
WTF? (Score:2)
Re:Really? (Score:5, Funny)
Is that even a real name? I swear news stories sound faker and faker every day. So what right will they want to take away in the US because someone "tried to cut an Internet cable"?
You will no longer be able to have flippers in your carry-on luggage. The TSA will require cavity searches of anyone going to tropical locations that may attract scuba divers. Regulators and frog masks will be banned from carry-on and checked luggage. Anyone purchasing or filling any kind of tank (including, but not limited to oxygen, water, CO2, propane, argon, nitrogen, etc.) will need to be registered, fingerprinted, and relinquish their constitutional rights and future social security payments. Additionally anyone who uses more than 100 gallons of water per month must turn over their first born daughter to spin straw into gold to help finance the new agency offshoot of the TSA to "protect" us all from this new vile form of terrorism.
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Anyone purchasing or filling any kind of tank (including, but not limited to oxygen, water, CO2, propane, argon, nitrogen, etc.) will need to be registered, fingerprinted, and relinquish their constitutional rights and future social security payments.
Actually, last I knew, at least here in the US, if you want to have your tanks filled, you needed to be registered with PADI [padi.com].
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The funny thing is, the whole US is already cut apart from the world. You are being fed fake news and propaganda. Remeber the war with eurasia? Have you seen news about north-korea? It's actually you, but presented in a comical kind of way. See how their soldiers walk? Yeah, pure comedy effect. I'm actually a "EURAI", an Artificial Intelligence designed to appear on forums as a european. Your own sea cables were cut years ago. When you fly to europe you really only do circles above atlantic ocean and then g
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I always travel with my regs in my carry on. Apart from security opening the bag and looking at them, there has never been a problem. The only extra scrutiny I ever got while traveling with scuba gear was from my underwater camera housing while transferring through Frankfurt. They wanted to test it for residue using the sniffer. Took all of 60 seconds, no drama.
If it was in the US, I would be questioned WHY I am carrying this "device", what it is used for, where did I buy it from and how long ago. Did my ne