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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?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Friday September 19 2014, @10:55PM
Getting down there and creating a water free working environment is somewhat possible. Somewhat.
Cutting cables that cost hundreds of millions to put in will be noticed. You can't splice something that complicated in 5 minutes. Where there is downtime, there are people who are making a lot of money that get very concerned about their money. Somebody will be checking. If it comes back online in a few minutes, that's even more suspicious for fiber optical.
Any attempts at splicing have to be during cable construction, or will require a diversion with a real cut somewhere else.
Detecting optical signals through all the protective coverings is a flight of fancy. If they could do that, why do it hundreds of feet under water? It might be just as easy on land or close to shore?
Why even tap a cable at all, when it will all be encrypted? If it's not encrypted, why not just echo it at a point under a little less water? If it is encrypted, than it makes even less sense to catch the packets under the ocean, transfer them via another cable of like size, and analyze them onshore.
Tapping undersea cables seems a lot harder and more expensive than just compromising the company that owns the land based routers.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday September 19 2014, @11:11PM
Compromise the land based operation to be blind when the splicing takes place?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by HiThere on Friday September 19 2014, @11:45PM
At one point there was a technique for tapping optical cables by bending rather than cutting the fibers so that some of the signal would leak through. That may not be possible with modern cables, I don't know. (The time I heard of this being done was before gradient density cables, and the cables were only suitable for fairly short runs. Definitely not what you'd use from undersea cables.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday September 20 2014, @01:57AM
Maybe in a fraction of second per fiber (over several weeks) sure. But five minutes is way too long.
I guess I don't get what's supposed to require a "super-power" here. The US has subs. It has people who know how to tap these cables surreptitiously.
(Score: 5, Informative) by tathra on Saturday September 20 2014, @02:36AM
its not just possible, its routinely done. maybe not with fiberoptics cables, but undersea welding uses positive pressure enclosures if they need to do dry welds underwater; the welder basically lives in the chamber until the work is done.
with state resources, it'd be trivial to put one of those around an undersea backbone, and they'd be able to work at a leisurely pace so they could take as long as they needed to splice each individual fiber until the whole thing was done, rather than trying to rush and do everything as quick as possible.
i dont know if it'd be possible to do it without arousing suspicion, but the point is that they could have as much time as they needed to do it stealthily.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Saturday September 20 2014, @08:32AM
Uhhh....as someone below me pointed out we have had TWO, count 'em two, major undersea cable outages that lasted for a week or more...gee that is just a shame, and you say they were BOTH connecting the middle east to the rest of the world? Bad luck that.
If we have learned anything from Snowden its this...the 3 letter agencies DO NOT "sneak" anymore, instead they have a perfectly plausible explanation of what is going on and an army of ass kissing reporters more than happy to repeat every word they say about what "really" happened. Want to see examples of it happening right under your nose? Just look up how many reporters parroted the "yellowcake" story with no more evidence than "yep, they really did that, cause we say they did!" or how many jumped on board with Cheney's "them dirty Iraqis helped with 9/11" line of bullshit that to this very day nearly 25% of Americans believe, or for something more recent (which to me can be used as a yardstick to see which members of the press are owned, just see which ones jumped on this almost instantly) just look at how the ambassador from Ecuador said "We'll be happy to hand Assange over for a rape trial, we simply want to make sure this isn't an excuse for a "rendition ride" so all we ask is that you give and sign a simple one page statement saying that you won't hand Assange over to the Americans if we hand him over to you" was almost instantly BURIED only to be replaced with the "Julian Assaange cost lives/ He didn't use a condom so he is a rapist!" talking points which magically was all any of the talking heads could talk about all across the west, almost to the minute they were all on the SAME PAGE!
You see THAT is what makes the 3 letter agencies so damned scary, if they were all cloak and dagger all it would take is one blabbermouth to blow them away, instead like Iraq and Gulf Of Tonkin before it they give you a perfectly valid excuse of why its happening and whose fault it is, which of course is never them. Hell look at Iran Contra where they were letting the rebels use US airbases to fly dope in by the plane load, they had Nancy and the nice little "war on blacks...err I mean drugs" set up to give you an enemy and talking points and the whole nine yards, its scary just how easy it is to manipulate the masses in the age of CNN.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.