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(Reuters) Brazil and the European Union agreed on Monday to lay an undersea communications cable from Lisbon to Fortaleza to reduce Brazil's reliance on the United States after Washington spied on Brasilia.
At a summit in Brussels, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said the $185 million cable project was central to "guarantee the neutrality" of the Internet, signaling her desire to shield Brazil's Internet traffic from U.S. surveillance. According to other sources, the construction is scheduled to begin in July.
A joint venture between Brazilian telecoms provider Telebras and Spain's IslaLink Submarine Cables would lay the communications link. Telebras would have a 35 percent stake, IslaLink would have a 45 percent interest and European and Brazilian pension funds could put up the remainder.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by monster on Tuesday February 25 2014, @11:45AM
Yes, tapping undersea cables is possible. It is also expensive, much more than putting some spying equipment in a closet in a datacenter.
You may not be able to avoid tapping altogether, but sure you can make it expensive as hell. If you can't defeat the NSA, trying to bankrupt it isn't so bad as a strategy.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheGratefulNet on Tuesday February 25 2014, @12:07PM
how many cables would it take, and by how many non-US government to finally put too high a cost or burden on the spooks so that they can't afford to do it?
sadly, even if every country in the world did this, the NSA's budget is, I fear, big enough to still not be 'dos'd by this effort.
now, if every person in the world started running strong and truly private encryption, that would break the camel's back. but a few countries here and there, I don't think that would cause nsa any loss of sleep at all.
we have let the US get this powerful and in particular, our spook agencies. to pull back that power is probably more than we can manage, easily, right now. I honestly don't know what the fix is, but 'big bullies' never willingly give back power they assumed. and not usually peacefully, either.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by monster on Tuesday February 25 2014, @02:52PM
I think it's not a matter of "bankrupting it so they can't even buy toilet paper", but of "turning their operating costs so high they can no longer realistically request funding to spy everyone, everywhere, everytime". Maybe then some not-so-moron politician would think "hey, this Internet spying thing is really expensive!. Maybe we would be better off with just a few operatives on the ground doing infiltration instead of monitoring everybody's porn downloads"