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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: 2) by frojack on Tuesday February 25 2014, @07:10PM
The article you linked sort of hints that it is very difficult to tap an under sea cable, especially in this day and age when it will be fiber optic.
Fiber does not have an electromagnetic signature that you can read via inductance, the way old copper cables were tapped. You literally have to tap into the cable itself, and echo all the traffic on your own cable, and that means you have to have your own cable nearby or lay a new one. And you have to physically cut the cable to make the splice, and contrive to keep water out of the housing.
About the only time you can do that is before the cable comes into use, because a cable that mysteriously goes dead, and then comes back on line an hour later is pretty suspicious.
These cables will be tapped where they make landfall, or where they tie into pre-existing infrastructure.
The NSA already has plenty of taps in the EU, usually with the approval and assistance of the same governments that are now planning to lay their own cable. Probably in Brazil as well. So we have to assume this is mostly grandstanding, playing to the home crowd, and the cable is justified by traffic load alone.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.