Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions
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Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions
#2As an Egyptian, this is seriously bedan[1]. Though it's not surprising that some people would do something like this, the article doesn't provide much context/information. I could provide many personal anecdotes of people cutting telephone lines, throwing nails and spikes in the streets and doing other diabolical shit for no good reason.
-- [1]: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bedan
Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions
#3How did they get the backhoe running down there?
Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions
#4what were they using to cut those wires? thats not a cat5 down there.
Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions
#5It's something I think we'll see more of in the future and speaks to the power of the masses having a direct connection to the outside world - that there are parties who recognize that to pursue their agenda they need to disrupt Internet access.
Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions
#6what were they using to cut those wires? thats not a cat5 down there.
They thought there might be copper wires in there that they could sell for scrap. :P
Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions
#7Interesting that the Egyptian Army and Reuters are friends on Facebook. Though I suppose the Army must have a page on FB for recruitment purposes. Are they really using FB as an official information sharing portal about news like this?
Looks like a recruitment tool: https://www.facebook.com/Egyptian.Armed.Forces
Official page? http://www.mmc.gov.eg
(compare that to http://www.army.mil which looks like a news site)
Possible that because of the instability recently Eqyptian authorities think Facebook is more capable of serving web pages than their own sites? Why is an Army spokesperson talking about an event handled by the coast guard?
The ISP, Link Dot Net, does not have any English information about the event on their web page: http://www.link.net/English/Linkcorp/News+and+Events/
Apparently last week another Egyptian ISP had an issue as well: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/67894/Egypt/Pol...
Nothing on their webpage: http://www.tedata.net/eg/en/About-Us/News-And-Events
Also discovered that a lot of Egyptian websites have not had any updates to their news pages since late 2012.
Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions
#8BBC [1] says this was the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable. The cut (according to the SEA-ME-WE_4 wiki page [2]), lead to a degradation of internet speed by 60% in several countries including Pakistan and Egypt.
How large are these cables? Looks like about 2.7in [3], so it easily fits in the palm of your hand [4]. To get an idea of what this looks like, check out a photo of a similar deployment [5].
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21963100
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEA-ME-WE_4
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable
[4] http://blog.zulyusof.com/?p=135
[5] http://news.priyo.com/tech/2011/08/06/bangladesh-experience-...
Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions
#9It's something I think we'll see more of in the future and speaks to the power of the masses having a direct connection to the outside world - that there are parties who recognize that to pursue their agenda they need to disrupt Internet access.
But who? The cables are Egypt Telecom- the monopoly carrier. So cutting it hurts everyone inside Egypt.
Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions
#10Interesting that the Egyptian Army and Reuters are friends on Facebook. Though I suppose the Army must have a page on FB for recruitment purposes. Are they really using FB as an official information sharing portal about news like this? Looks like a recruitment tool: https://www.facebook.com/Egyptian.Armed.Forces Official page? http://www.mmc.gov.eg (compare that to http://www.army.mil which looks like a news site) Po…
> Why is an Army spokesperson talking about an event handled by the coast guard?
You will have noticed that when a guy is filmed at the Pentagon handing out bad news, it's whatever PIO is up next, not an officer for that branch of the service.
Speculation: the Egyptian armed forces have the same sort of deal with the press. The Army guy was just the PIO on duty at the time.