Fourth cable cut reported in Middle East

Dale Amon (Belfast, Northern Ireland/Laramie, Wy) · Middle East & Islamic · Science & Technology

If you are of a conspiracy orientation, you are going to love this report I just picked up off a network admin mail list:

A fourth submarine cable in the middle east was damaged Sunday between Haloul, Qatar and Das, United Arab Emirates.

This is in addition to the damage affecting FLAG, SAE-ME-WE4, FALCON cables.

After reviewing surveillance video of the area, Egypt’s ministry of maritime transportation is reporting no ships were near the FLAG or SAE-ME-WE4 cables 12-hours before or after the cable damage near Alexandria, Egypt. The reason for outage of the cables has not been identified yet.

Did anyone notice the NSA black-ops sub leaving the area (I should add a smiley here… I think)?

More information can be found here. There has also been a suggestion this report may be an ‘echo’ of a previous report caused by mis-communication across language barriers. I have no idea myself.

We now cue the Secret Squirrel theme and search for our tin hats as ‘The Galloping Beaver’ asks: “Where is the USS Jimmy Carter?”

Michael Jennings

February 4, 2008 at 11:07 pm

Clearly, it is the beast from forty thousand fathoms.

Dale Amon

February 4, 2008 at 11:22 pm

Or perhaps clever advertising for the Friday opening of “Cloverfield”?

February 4, 2008 at 11:25 pm

Just in case anyone *is* a conspiracy theorist… Iran’s connectivity is virtually unaffected. Syria has pretty much fallen off the net though, or so I have heard.

Ian B

February 4, 2008 at 11:56 pm

Ed Balls is a three times Bilderberger.

Just saying, y’know.

Dishman

February 5, 2008 at 1:59 am

The minimum requirements for pulling that off as sabotage aren’tvery high.

Adding a splice is a bit more difficult, of course.

February 5, 2008 at 3:14 am

So if they’re using breaks as cover for splicing in taps, wouldn’t they do it over a longer time period so as not to raise conspiracy-type suspicions of the very type this post discusses?

Midwesterner

February 5, 2008 at 3:12 pm

I seriously doubt there is any tapping going on. AFAIK, fiber optics are heinously difficult (impossible?) to tap without adding a router. And adding a router would certainly appear to effect echo times and be detectable. It would be far easier to tap them at the existing router points. No, if there is anything going on, it is deliberate bottlenecking. And I kind of doubt any need for that.

It is either secret warfare between little guys (highly unlikely) of just plain ‘Who me? I wasn’t anywhere near there!’ boo boos.

February 5, 2008 at 6:27 pm

If anyone is interested, here is a report from someone at FLAG on the cable repair schedule:
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FEA Segment D – The Cable ship CS Certamen is now expected to arrive at the Alexandria repair ground on Wednesday 6^th February. A Permit for the repair is currently being expedited with the Egyptian authorities.

FEA Segment M – The cable ship CS Asean Restorer has been booked for this repair. It is currently out on an APCN repair and with current plan will be ready to start any work on our cable on or after 11th Feb. We have the OTDR traces from Penang and see that the fault is around 28km out from the station.

FALCON Segment 7b (Bandra Abbas ??? Al Seeb) – E-Marine continues to await the permit to enter the Iranian waters and current forecast for the ship to start a work is around 19^th February.

FALCON Segment 2 – Fault 1^st February 41km from repeater, which is between the first two repeaters out of Dubai toward Muscat (Al Seeb). The ship has left Abu Dhabi and is on route to the repair ground. The repair is expected to start in the next 12 hours (weather permitting).

FALCON Segment 7a – Fault 1^st February between BND (Bandar Abbas, Iran) and KWI (Kuwait), we are waiting for ship to go out and it maybe fixed before going out the fault on 7b ??? to be confirmed.