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Russian ship loitering near undersea cables

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Re: Russian ship loitering near undersea cables

#41

Post by 6502nerdface »

ageofwant wrote: post #29

Ships do not "loiter" in international waters. "Loiter" implies the loiterer is violating some rights the accuser imagines himself to have. Russia may be simply legally installing its surveillance equipment on cables it found in international waters. There's no 'loitering' involved here. I invite you to study the speeches of Anson Chan, less you believe that this irritating political weasel-wording we are so used to…

"Loiter" is especially used in military and strategic contexts to mean simply holding position. No implication of violation or anything. Aircraft loiter over a waypoint, etc.

Re: Russian ship loitering near undersea cables

#42

Post by leggomylibro »

gcr wrote: post #31
leggomylibro wrote: post #5

Neal Stephenson wrote a bit about this in Cryptonomicon; laying new undersea cable is both expensive and time consuming, but the cost of cutting existing ones is fairly low. So if any sufficiently-funded individual, corporation, or nation-state wanted to hold a gun to the world's head, cutting undersea data cables wouldn't be a bad way to do it. The problem is, you can't make that kind of threat in a subtle way, so t…

Neil Stephenson wrote a heck of a whole lot about undersea cables in 1996. Highly, highly recommended. https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

Oh yeah, I forgot about that article - I think that it's actually printed in the back of some ebook versions of Cryptonomicon now. It's a great read.

Re: Russian ship loitering near undersea cables

#43

Post by rosser »

xXx_swat21_xXx wrote: post #30
guelo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You provide no evidence why one scenario is far more likely than the other. There are much more direct ways that Russia is winning favour with those governments such as fighting Syria's wars for them or signing a gas pipeline deal with Turkey.

If Russia was tapping Syrian cables... they'd do so on shore. They don't need to do it at the bottom of the ocean; it's the same way the United States taps cables in many allied countries. It is rumoured that Russian SIGINT tipped off the Erdogan government of the coup, not American SIGINT, which would suggest that Americans were complicit with the coup. To win further favour with the Erdogan government Russia would…

I think you may have misunderstood the grandparent comment's use of the word "evidence".

Re: Russian ship loitering near undersea cables

#44

Post by Y201K »

leggomylibro wrote: post #42
gcr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neil Stephenson wrote a heck of a whole lot about undersea cables in 1996. Highly, highly recommended. https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

Oh yeah, I forgot about that article - I think that it's actually printed in the back of some ebook versions of Cryptonomicon now. It's a great read.

Also in his book of essays, Some Remarks.

Re: Russian ship loitering near undersea cables

#45

Post by kbart »

clock_tower wrote: post #39
themodelplumber wrote: post #16

Russia is doing a lot of fearmongering in the run-up to the US elections. I stumbled across some agitprop on Twitter yesterday, where I read that Russia was recalling all students who were studying abroad. Out of curiosity (to say the least) I tracked down the source article, which was a) not available in English, and b) just Russians criticizing privileged Russians who sent their kids abroad to study. Looking around…

What amazes me is that they think that getting the far right in power in the West is going to be good for Russia. Because, you know, things went so well for Russia the last time these people were in power...

Actually it did went ok for Russia - they got half of Europe and became one of world's two dominating powers.

Re: Russian ship loitering near undersea cables

#46

Post by dwaltrip »

smoyer wrote: post #37
themodelplumber wrote: post #16

Russia is doing a lot of fearmongering in the run-up to the US elections. I stumbled across some agitprop on Twitter yesterday, where I read that Russia was recalling all students who were studying abroad. Out of curiosity (to say the least) I tracked down the source article, which was a) not available in English, and b) just Russians criticizing privileged Russians who sent their kids abroad to study. Looking around…

And yet American citizens were unable to influence either party enough to have them submit a viable candidate.

Or, the interplay of all relevant existing processes and system dynamics do not easily facilitate "viable candidates"[1] from being nominated.

Of course, this doesn't tell us what is need to repair these processes and system dynamics. Hopefully we eventually achieve some new breakthroughs in governmental systems in the coming decades.

[1] insert personal definition of "viable candidate" here

Re: Russian ship loitering near undersea cables

#48

Post by habitue »

Does anyone else feel like if there's enough evidence that a public site is noticing this ship loitering, that intelligence agencies the world over are plenty aware of it already? What are the chances this website has a "scoop" here that governments aren't aware of? If the intent of this site isn't to make government agencies aware of the loitering, what is the goal? What should members of the public do with such information?

Re: Russian ship loitering near undersea cables

#49

Post by parceltape »

habitue wrote: post #48

Does anyone else feel like if there's enough evidence that a public site is noticing this ship loitering, that intelligence agencies the world over are plenty aware of it already? What are the chances this website has a "scoop" here that governments aren't aware of? If the intent of this site isn't to make government agencies aware of the loitering, what is the goal? What should members of the public do with such inf…

I don't think it was intended as a call to action. Do you think all non-actionable information is worthless?

Re: Russian ship loitering near undersea cables

#50

Post by Bdiem »

15thandwhatever wrote: post #7
leggomylibro wrote: post #5

Neal Stephenson wrote a bit about this in Cryptonomicon; laying new undersea cable is both expensive and time consuming, but the cost of cutting existing ones is fairly low. So if any sufficiently-funded individual, corporation, or nation-state wanted to hold a gun to the world's head, cutting undersea data cables wouldn't be a bad way to do it. The problem is, you can't make that kind of threat in a subtle way, so t…

I'm less concerned about denial of service via cutting cables, and more concerned about the tapping of cables for wholesale data snarfing.

Is that a realistic threat model? What does the technology look like to tap into 800Gbit/s of fiber traffic - under water?
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