Lots Going on…

Fourth Cable Cut, No Ships in Area at Time of First Cuts

Internet services in Qatar have been seriously disrupted because of damage to an undersea telecoms cable linking the Gulf state to the UAE, the fourth such incident in less than a week.

I was about to congratulate anchors on their good fortune, but, this came out:

No ships were present when two marine cables carrying much of the Middle East’s internet traffic were severed, Egypt’s Ministry of Communications has said, contrary to earlier speculation about the causes of the cut.

There’s no such thing as coincidences. Whatever is going on, it is highly suspicious.

Senate to Vote on FISA Extension

Vote is set for this afternoon. If passed, it will provide “legal underpinning of warrant-less wiretapping programs” like the one below. I’ll be posting about this later. I highly suggest you watch PBS Frontline’s “Spying on the Home Front.” You can watch it online–throw it on while you write an e-mail that will be data-mined.

Bringing it all Together

Turns out the NSA has attempted to tap an undersea cable in the 1990’s:

Using a special spy submarine…agency personnel descended hundreds of feet into one of the oceans and sliced into a fiber-optic cable. The mixed results of the experiment–particularly the agency’s inability to make sense of the vast flood of data unleashed by the tap–show that America’s pre-eminent spy service has huge challenges to overcome if it hopes to keep from going deaf in the digital age.

Details of the NSA cable-tapping project are sketchy. Individuals who confirm the tap won’t specify where or when it occurred. It isn’t known whether the cable’s operator detected the intrusion, though former NSA officials say they believe it went unnoticed. Nor is it known whether the NSA has attempted other taps since. Efforts to intercept all sorts of signals–ranging from military radar to international phone calls–are among the most highly classified U.S. government operations. Leaking information about interception methods is a federal crime punishable by imprisonment.

Around the Web Monday Morning

• China plans to halt rain during Beijing Olympics
• Bhutto Fingers Bin Ladin Son From the Grave
• Sy Hersh: What did Israel bomb in Syria?
• Barreling into Recession: How the end of cheap oil burst the American bubble

Presumably, you mean to say that no surface ships were in the area. True?
I might sound like a broken record - but… Iran has three Helo class submarines in the area and would benefit in several ways by disrupting phone and internet communications of Western leaning countries in the region. Not the least of which is Iran’s need to stifle it’s domestic unrest. The record indicates that Iran is controlling and restricting the internet within its borders. Thus it makes sense that the Iranian citizens would find a way to utilize other close by networks and that the government would do what it could to slap down that option.