Justice Dept warns Biden NOT to install underwater communication cable between US and Cuba
Translated excerpt, with translator’s comments:
From our Bureau of Cold-Hearted Party Poopers with some assistance from our Bureau of Warnings Likely to be Ignored
Ay! Remember the ice bucket challenge? It seems that one branch of the US government had it mind yesterday when it dumped a truckload of ice on Jar-Jar Biden’s budding romance with Castro, Inc.
Installing a communications cable between the U.S. and Castrogonia would be an unacceptably high security risk, said the Justice Department.
Will this have a negative effect on Thaw.2 ? Will Jar-Jar and his emissary Emily Mendrala heed this warning? Probably not. This budding romance seems to be turbo-charged. Nothing is likely to stand in its way.
All you need is love, dove; love is all you need, love is all you need . . .
The US Department of Justice recommended that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) deny a permit requested by the ARCOS-1 USA Inc. cable system for the installation of the first submarine telecommunications cable that would directly connect the US with Cuba, arguing “national security risks” and “a counterintelligence threat.”
“The cable landing system in Cuba would be owned and controlled by Cuba’s state telecommunications monopoly, Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A. (ETECSA)”, which would mean that the Cuban government “could access confidential data from the United States that crosses the new cable segment through its control of ETECSA,” warns a statement released by the Department of Justice this Wednesday.
“The Government of Cuba has long posed a significant counterintelligence threat to the United States by virtue of its espionage and other intelligence activities directed at the United States,” the document adds, stressing that Cuba’s relations with other ” foreign adversaries” such as China or Russia pose a risk if such a connection existed.
“As long as the Government of Cuba continues to be a counterintelligence threat to the United States, and is allied with others who do the same, the risks to our infrastructure are simply too great,” said Deputy Attorney General for Homeland Security Matthew G. Olsen.
The official pointed out that, however, the United States “supports the existence of an open, interoperable, secure, and reliable Internet throughout the world, including in Cuba,” but stresses that “unfortunately, the Cuban government does not share that opinion.”
The note concludes that submarine fiber optic cable systems are a fundamental asset for national security, since they carry most of the world’s Internet, voice and data traffic between continents, and that the landing of a cable in Cuba “presents unacceptable risks to the national security of the United States and law enforcement interests that cannot be mitigated.”