New Baltic Data Cable Plan Unfolding 65
jones_supa writes "Details are shaping up of a plan for a new government-backed high capacity data cable between Germany and Finland, routed through the Baltic Sea. The project to significantly upgrade Finland's international data transfer capacity has long been high on the government's list of priorities. It could improve the country's competitiveness in ICT technologies and digital services. Following a meeting of the cabinet's economic policy committee on Wednesday, Pekka Haavisto, the minister responsible for state ownership steering, told the press that the state will take part in the venture as a partial owner. The estimated cost of the undersea data cable project is around 100 million euros. Haavisto said that roughly one third of the costs could be paid by the state, another third by institutional investors and the remainder by private companies. So far, all data transmission to Finland has taken place via the Øresund Bridge, that is through Denmark and Sweden."
Re:Does it secure Finland-Geman comms from NSA/GCH (Score:4, Insightful)
And as a useful side effect to stops GCHQ and NSA from spying on all those communications between Finland and Germany. Well at least until they manage to tap the fibre optic underwater without Germany noticing the signal reduction.
*If* above ground lines can be tapped the US Navy will figure out how to tap underwater lines. They've been doing that sort of stuff for many many decades. I expect that the British and Russians have a similar capability. Deep, dark, cold water does not provide the protection most people assume. Deep waters hides those who would tamper with the line. That bridge currently being used may provide better security since it is observable.
Re:Does it secure Finland-Geman comms from NSA/GCH (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
It is going to be a bitch sneaking a US nuclear submarine into this particular area.
That's why we have SEAL Delivery Vehicles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEAL_Delivery_Vehicle
Re: (Score:3)
you would have better luck with german style smaller subs, I doubt those delivery vehicles have that long of a range to make it through from the entrance to the baltic sea to the cable.
though subs in the baltic isn't really unheard of, but if they just encrypt the link at the ends and take the keys over with a ferry every now and then, that way it gets pretty expensive and pointless to tap it there(even if hw for performing on the fly encryption might be expensive as well).. also, they would pretty much ha
Re: (Score:2)
you would have better luck with german style smaller subs, I doubt those delivery vehicles have that long of a range to make it through from the entrance to the baltic sea to the cable.
Uh, what? They're small enough you can deliver them from practically anything oceangoing.
Re:Does it secure Finland-Geman comms from NSA/GCH (Score:4, Informative)
I long ago ceased being proud of the (imaginary) neutrality and foreign politics of my native Sweden, and sadly find it easier and easier to explain why over a decade ago I decided to leave Sweden and its great health care, education, welfare, beautiful nature and so forth.
Re: (Score:3)
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/01/gchq-europe-spy-agencies-mass-surveillance-snowden [theguardian.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, no. Since we know from the Snowden leaks that the Swedish FRA is in cahoots with NSA and GSHQ, anything that passes through Sweden will automatically be scanned. A new undersea cable that bypasses Sweden thus has infinitely better chances of being secure.
No. Being spied on by Finland and Germany's spy agencies is not really more secure than being spied on by Finland, Sweden and Denmark's spy agencies. And its not like Germany wouldn't supply interesting things to the USA, at best they won't allow mass surveillance. Finland too probably.
Re: (Score:3)
A new cable is great for the local ping and bandwidth costs but offers the same security as any cable in any part of the EU - none.
Re: (Score:2)
Finland is having a huge discussion right now about two facts:
1. Intelligence service cannot perform such functions as they would be strictly illegal.
2. Intelligence service is not funded sufficiently to enable such surveillance even if it was legal.
It comes from decades of being in between two evil empires during cold war, when it didn't make sense to have a big intelligence agency - both adversaries far outstripped its abilities anyway. So instead if focused on a small core of functions, such as counter e
Re: (Score:2)
Terve terve!
Why not we go through Russia and not have NSA/GCH worry? We get trojans and botnets, but no NSA/GCH paska.
Kiitos!
Re:Does it secure Finland-Geman comms from NSA/GCH (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course they can tap underwater links, we even know the companies that do it, but can they do it without the Germans detecting it, and will the Germans encrypt the link anyway?:
Glimmerglass make a range of covert taps and software interception equipment:
http://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/docs/glimmerglass/275_transparent-signal-access-and-monitoring.html
http://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/docs/glimmerglass/274_electronic-blitz-intelligence-ops-are-poised-to-gather-move.html
http://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/docs/glimmerglass/55_glimmerglass-cybersweep.html
That bridge route traverses Sweden which is one of the countries compromised by NSA surveillance, CIA political shaping. So Finland probably won't trust the Swedes to be loyal to Europe more than the US.
See 'Britain and Sweden block EU investigation into NSA spying":
http://www.dailydot.com/news/britain-uk-sweden-block-spying-investigation/
Re: (Score:2)
The Finns have their own intelligence service that wants to expand [yle.fi]. They want to model their powers after what the Swedes have done.
Re: (Score:2)
Some do, some don't. There's a pretty big discussion about the topic right now, and there's no consensus within the organisation or parliament about the issue at the moment.
Re: (Score:2)
Underwater fibre will be tapped shortly as a matter of routine. This is what US/UK submarines do.
This does however circumvent Sweden, meaning their fairly recent law making it completely legal to tap all of internet traffic going through the country is not going to be as effective. And it helps reliability as well as latency, as Finland currently serves as a major transit point for Asian, and more specifically Russian traffic (which is often stated as the biggest reason for Swedish law).
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Submarine cable provided by the NSA. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
They won't be storing it all.
At a guess, I expect they record all traffic with source or destination addressed of a specific IP (government official's home computers, that sort of thing), and also extract just summary data from certain protocols (All port 25 traffic will be checked to see if it's SMTP, and if so source/dest addresses and subjects captured, and possibly message bodies.) There's no point capturing, say, all facebook traffic when they can obtain it directly from Facebook's servers anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
You don't store it all, just the stuff you're interested in.
Also, do you have any idea of the displacement of a submarine? They could be retrofitted to hold one hell of a storage array.
Seriously, these are not even close to valid objections.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Even back then they had submarines with room for nuclear missiles in them. You could certainly remove the armaments from an "ordinary" attack sub and fill the space with an array. It would be nontrivial and expensive, but they're spending our money.
Why under the sea? (Score:1)
Why can't they just put more wires on the bridge. I don't see how it is advantageous to drop it under the sea when that makes carrying out maintenance and repairs so much more expensive. And that's before we get to instances of espionage. Both sides of the pond have snooped on telco lines with submarines before.
Re: (Score:2)
The bridge between Germany and Finland?
Re: (Score:3)
Haven't you seen it? It's huge.
There are more jumpers are the Finnish end though.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you missed a geography lesson.
going through a land+bridge route would need going through either russia and the baltic countries or a long way through sweden and denmark.
a bridge from finland to germany would literally be the biggest engineering project ever performed on earth.
Re: (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANTAT-3 [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ODIN_(cable_system) [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAT-14 [wikipedia.org] (note WikiLeaks news)
Low peering costs and wonderful bandwidth ensure all regional telcos have few options and the NSA gets every packet.
The Bridge (Score:2)
It's about Russia, Sweden & the US (Score:5, Insightful)
According to the Swedish news, Russia sends a good deal of its internet traffic via Sweden to the outside world. They say that the Swedish link is faster and cheaper. Meanwhile the Swedish equivalent of the NSA, called FRA, is spying on Russian traffic (legally) and it sends valuable info on to the US (legality unclear).
Finland:
1) Build a new data link that circumvents Sweden's NSA-friendly surveillance
2) Make it only slightly more expensive than the current data link via Sweden, but tout your net neutrality
3) Sell boatloads of capacity to Russia
4) Profit
Re: (Score:2)
Finland is not exactly pro Russian ... (Score:2)
Finland will spy on Russian traffic just like Sweden. Finland will also probably share interesting things with the US, the only question is whether all traffic will be monitored by the US.
Re: (Score:2)
We finns aren't pro anything. We fought russians, we were bombed by brits. And we had to fight Germans as a part of our peace deal. During cold war, our politics were to convince both sides that it's far better that they leave us alone. Considering that russians had plans to tank rush us, while US had plans to destroy the country using tactical nukes if that happened to prevent infrastructure being used by Soviets, you'll find that mots finns are very much neutral. Being the only country in the molotov-ribb
Re: (Score:2)
... stab you in the back with nukes ...
Making the Russians *think* you may respond to a tank rush with nukes is one thing. Doing so is something completely different.
I was all prepared to ask if the Finnish word for "bluff" is xxxxx but then Google translate says the Finish word is "bluffi". That really undermines the attempt at humor.
Re: (Score:2)
Not answering tank rush with nukes. Attacking key infrastructure with nukes to deny USSR its usage.
Re: (Score:2)
Not answering tank rush with nukes. Attacking key infrastructure with nukes to deny USSR its usage.
No, answering tank rushes, not merely an abstract threat. The infrastructure identified as *potential* targets for low yield tactical nukes were bridges, airfields and ports and the context imminent capture or after capture in a WW3 scenario. Hell Norway and Sweden were even on board. Norway was going to use its fighters to clear a path for US bombers, and if the US provided a tactical nuke Norway was even willing to deliver it to the Finnish target with one of its fighters.
Again, its a plan, a plan prob
Re: (Score:2)
Let me say this again, because clearly you are not listening due to your predisposition to thinking of NATO as "good guys".
The goal of NATO campaign was not to hit tank rush. It was to largely AVOID hitting USSR/Warsaw pact forces, and hit infrastructure BEFORE tanks arrived. This would accomplish the following goals:
1. Avoid direct conflict with USSR.
2. Destroy infrastructure to deny its usage to USSR.
The reason why they chose to use tactical nukes instead of conventional weaponry for this is because of re
Re: (Score:2)
It was to largely AVOID hitting USSR/Warsaw pact forces, and hit infrastructure BEFORE tanks arrived.
The original Finnish author was clear, the plan was hit targets under threat of **imminent** capture or already captured. Imminent would mean the tanks are basically there.
NATO would need to essentially level key cities very quickly, before USSR tanks reached them.
According to the original Finnish author the targets were bridges, air fields and ports. Leveling cities was not part of the plan. Low yield tactical nukes were to be used to limit damage to local c
Re: (Score:2)
I have no idea which finnish author you're referencing. Kindly cite the author's name.
Notably, I'm a finn.
Your other points:
1. "Imminent" means Red Army will be there shortly. Finland is a neutral country, and NATO would not start a nuclear war with Warsaw Pact over attack on one. This is why tactical, rather than strategic weapons would be employed - and they would need to be employed before Red Army arrives. This way neither side gets into a nuclear war with one another, and yet another independent state
Re: (Score:2)
I have no idea which finnish author you're referencing. Kindly cite the author's name. Notably, I'm a finn.
“Without Mercy” – U.S. Strategic Intelligence and Finland in the Cold War
Jukka Rislakki
http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2011/12/finland-and-american-intelligence [economist.com]
"It remains unknown in what kind of situations the superpowers would have resorted to their nuclear arsenal. By the mid 1960s the use of tactical nuclear weapons had become an increasingly remote possibility despite the fact that the United States had approximately 7,000 stored in Europe. It is unlikely that t
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, Jukka Rislakki. Interesting. It's obviously going to slightly gloss over NATO's actions as it was written for US essay competition, he's quite a bit more neutral in his finnish material.
Regardless, I must admit I haven't read this particular essay of his. I have read several of his writings though, and he's fairly accurate.
That said, Cold War plans, while "not certain", are fairly well known. Like most things of the time, these things were open secrets, if for no other reason than to give them preventat
Re: (Score:2)
Worst case scenario would mean that Finnish army would collapse within weeks of the conflict and go into guerrilla warfare mode, which would mean that cities and their infrastructure would become controlled by Red Army. That means that destruction of any city infrastructure would be a key NATO priority. This would have to be done in a way that would be quick enough to inflict necessary damage before Red army was in the cities to avoid NATO vs Warsaw Pact war. That means using tactical nuclear weapons.
The article seems pretty clear that targeting of normal city infrastructure was not part of the plan. Only infrastructure of military value: bridges, airfields, ports, etc. Certainly some civilians may be close to these. However the use of tactical nuclear weapons, weapons of low yield, suggests that civilians were in fact considered. If there were truly no consideration of civilians or the desire to destroy all city infrastructure then strategic nuclear weapons, the high yield city killers, would have been
Re: (Score:2)
As noted initially the article in question is written for a US essay competition. As a result, it dodges the nastier parts about NATO quite nicely.
Realities of the Cold War on the other hand were pretty clear. NATO and Warsaw Pact avoided direct conflict with one another at all costs, to the point of claiming that their people dying in proxy wars were actually "vietnamese", "koreans", "afghan" or "free agents" and so on. If you wish to look to see how little NATO cared about civilians during cold war, Vietn
Re: (Score:2)
As noted initially the article in question is written for a US essay competition. As a result, it dodges the nastier parts about NATO quite nicely.
That is a gratuitous assumption. I grew up in the cold war. The evil uncaring nature of the "other" side was always grossly exaggerated. I expect that NATO was exaggerated by politicians to help promote the neutral stance of the country. Note that the Finish military, those in the best position to evaluate NATO, seemed to be some of the more pro-NATO folks in the country.
Realities of the Cold War on the other hand were pretty clear. NATO and Warsaw Pact avoided direct conflict with one another at all costs, to the point of claiming that their people dying in proxy wars ...
The situation in Finland seems about as far from a proxy war as there can be. No internal conflict with pro-NATO and pro-Warsaw pact facti
Re: (Score:2)
No offense, but we were the poster child for Cold War proxy war site. We were playing both sides, and both sides were actively playing on our territory. Our companies like Nokia were used to both build up telephony infrastructure for USSR as well as spy on it by US (a fairly known scandal that popped up recently, where US required Nokia to insert various spying tools into telephony network elements it build for USSR or otherwise face crippling sanctions). The only reasons we didn't was because we successful
Re: (Score:2)
No offense, but we were the poster child for Cold War proxy war site. We were playing both sides, and both sides were actively playing on our territory.
Who were the Finnish proxies that were fighting or willing to fight? It seems to be more of a NATO v WP fight on Finnish soil. That is something very different.
Re: (Score:2)
We had our white vs red civil war. Whites won, but a whole lot of reds lived through it and stayed in the country. This in turn helped to ensure that we always had a "pro soviet" wing and "pro nato" wing, to the point where soviets created a fake government out of reds that left for USSR during winter war.
Management of these forces was one of the balancing acts needed in finnish politics for decades.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not when held under wraps obviously. But as seen in modern conflicts of Libya and Syria, even a small amount of tension can explode when sufficiently fed from outside. In Syria, all it took was drought that led the hardcore conservative farmers to start protesting, which pushed the small snowball that eventually became an avalanche of civil war, managing to go through phases that didn't resemble one another at all, like the much publicized youth protests, and much less publicized like takeovers of key infra
Re: (Score:2)
To be specific, most of the Russian traffic comes from Moscow and St. Petersburg, which if you look at the map are located fairly close to Finland which is not a "hostile NATO state" like most of the Eastern Europe is today.
The problem is that Finland has no other links to Central Europe except for one going through Sweden at the moment, and Sweden has openly become US/NATO bitch in recent past. Russian biggest search company Yandex is one of the big investors in this submarine cable. It's pretty much conne