[eno_]

Just about EVERYTHING in this article is wrong:

1. You can splice into a submarine cable, but it is difficult to do and easy to detect.

2. There IS power in the cable (unless it is a very short-distance cable, and it used to power repeaters. In fact, the place to "splice in" is at these repeaters since there is no need to splice the fiber at all. Instead, you tap in to the repeater's electronics.

3. You would not "park" a submarine to gather intelligence for more than a very short time. You would run your own submarine cable to backhaul the tapped bitstream.

4. I think all of this crap about tapping submarine cables is a cover story. The way you do it in real life is you bribe someone to let you tap in at a landing point or a SONET switch on land. You backhaul on another lambda to a friendlier place.

[Clock King]

Word! Human intelligence beats the high tech stuff any day. There is simply too much "noise" (useless data) in everyday communications to really sort through. It didn't take high tech to pull off 9/11 or the Madrid bombings.

[quidnunc]

eno_ wrote: 4. I think all of this crap about tapping submarine cables is a cover story. The way you do it in real life is you bribe someone to let you tap in at a landing point or a SONET switch on land. You backhaul on another lambda to a friendlier place.

We've concentrated on tapping undersea cables for some time.

We used to take subs inshore to spy on cable transmissions as far back as when the USSR was still in existance.

Here's a short description of the USS Jimmy Carter and its capabilities, insofar as they're known publically.

http://www.deagel.com/pandora/?p=pm00116002

[Ichneumon]

In fact, the place to "splice in" is at these repeaters since there is no need to splice the fiber at all. Instead, you tap in to the repeater's electronics.

Would you even need to "splice into" the electronics directly? Wouldn't there be enough RF leakage to pick it up just by parking an appropriate antenna next to the repeater?