Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 10 submissions in the queue.
posted by janrinok on Friday September 19 2014, @07:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the unless-they-were-'accidentally'-broken dept.

The Register has found itself subject to a certain amount of criticism for this author's skepticism ( Richard Chirgwin http://www.theregister.co.uk/Author/2242 ) regarding whether the NSA has been snooping on optical fibre cables by cutting them.

Glenn Greenwald's recent “NSA cut New Zealand's cables” story is illustrative of credibility problems that surround the ongoing Edward Snowden leak stories: everybody is too willing to accept that “if it's classified, it must be because it's true”, and along the way, attribute super-powers to spy agencies.

In running the line that undersea cables were cut, Greenwald is straying far enough from what's feasible and credible that his judgement on other claims needs to be questioned. It seems to The Register almost certain that neither Glenn Greenwald nor Edward Snowden have actually held a submarine fibre cable in their hands.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/18/spies_arent_superheroes/

Do you think that it is credible that these undersea fibre cables were tapped when it is easier to tap onshore installations?

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday September 19 2014, @08:01PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Friday September 19 2014, @08:01PM (#95628)

    So your cable is armored, deep, under power (still waiting to hear how you repair the insulation and still extract your splice), and far from a place where you could route the tapped data for analysis?
    On top of that, power readings give you the real-time status of the link, allowing your target to notice a tap insertion? And they don't respond to Secret US Govt orders?

    Easy!
    1) Prepare land tapping equipment.
    2) Oops! Anchor! the cable monitoring is down!
    3) Splice at easily accessible land location faster than they can do their repair splice underwater.
    4) Route to nearby house for processing.

    Just because the interruption is underwater doesn't mean that the tap will be. It's more likely a misdirection. Think of the technical difficulty of having your splice poking out of an undersea cable...

    Alternative way
    1) Hack into ALU/Cisco box at the end of the cable, create hidden route to other equipment that $shell_company is legitimately running in the same CO.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +4  
       Insightful=3, Interesting=1, Total=4
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Theophrastus on Friday September 19 2014, @08:16PM

    by Theophrastus (4044) on Friday September 19 2014, @08:16PM (#95638)

    please consider modding-up one-up. that's a very sensible approach.

    yet i have a nerdy wonder about a less sensible approach (reminding me of an *old* Howard Hughes submarine recovery scheme). design a tethered robot submarine/RMV which has a clam-shell maw to grip the cable in a pressurizable cuff. RMV also has a standard docking ring. so:
    (1) glomp.
    (2) dock with submarine
    (3) cozy dry access to cable
    (4) signal your land operative to create a diversion (blow-up a transformer on a sub-station which powers the cable)
    (5) quickly apply optical taps
    (6) waterproof
    (7) release
    (8) it's miller-time

    • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday September 19 2014, @10:09PM

      by mhajicek (51) on Friday September 19 2014, @10:09PM (#95683)

      You forgot:

      (9) Profit!

      --
      The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek