Two telecom cables in the Mediterranean are cut

Damage to cables knocks out Net access to much of Egypt, disrupts back offices in India, and slows service for some Verizon customers.
The New York Times

The story "Two telecom cables in the Mediterranean are cut" published January 31, 2008 at 6:30 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[Enrique.Ruiz]

Could the U.S. be behind this? Eavesdropping

Last year another cable was cut leaving Pakistan without internet for a week.

A U.S. submarine (U.S. Jimmy Carter) placing an eavesdropping device on the cable could have done this. Look at this link:

<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2005/050218-uss-carter.htm" target="_newWindow">http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2005/050218-uss-carter.htm</a>

The NSA network can conduct eavesdropping of satellite communications, but undersea cables require more direct action.

[Tui Pohutukawa]

Interesting

Thanks for the link.

[sanenazok]

Three years ago

The link you provided is from Feb. 2005...how's that relevant to an outage THREE years later?

[n3td3v]

Fiber Cut On Purpose

the intelligence services cut the cable so they had an excuse to have an emergency team go and fix it.

while the emergency team are down there some intercept technology will be placed onto the fiber line for eavesdropping purposes.

cutting the cable was the only way a team would have a legitimate reason to be working on it.

[grossph]

proof

Conspiracy theorist abound, but have any of the theories even been proven...no they are all theories and can't be proven because they don't exist....

[sanenazok]

worst possible way

Doing something like this would be the WORST possible way to get intelligence off of Internet traffic. US and other governments, most NOTABLY those in the Middle East, already have all the tools needed to eavesdrop on web traffic.

[sanenazok]

Fiber cut on purpose

Someone who was on hold with an off-shore'd tech support for a bit too long dove in and cut the cable on purpose.