Apparently, Ships Can Drag Anchors from Egypt to Malaysia

— Misc

[UPDATE – 02/12/08 – The Complete Guide to the 2008 Internet Outage has been finished. It contains the most up to date information including detailed images and explanations to help unravel this cable mess. Please check it out here]

[UPDATE – please be sure to check out part two of this post: Submarine Cables, Subsidiaries and Subversion, where you can find out information on who might stand to gain from these outages.]

Alright. Grab your foil hats if you must, but there’s some things that need to be said here.

While working hard at my job today I was stunned after I read engadget’s report that another large submarine internet cable had been severed. This comes after the news that other cables had been severed reducing the internet, phone, and television capabilities of many countries to nil. As of this writing, there are still reports that Iran is without internet connectivity according to InternetTrafficReport.com. EDIT Many readers have written in to inform me that Iran is, in fact, not entirely offline and that InternetTrafficReport.com is a terrible source. However, there are still millions of people without service. Thanks for keeping me in line.

It seems, that something is not quite right here. Just when I am starting to doubt my gut instinct, the Khaleej Times reports that it is in fact 5 submarine cables that have been damaged:

“Quoting TeleGeography and describing the effect the cuts had on the Internet world, Mahesh Jaishanker, executive director, Business Development and Marketing, du, said, “The submarine cable cuts in FLAG Europe-Asia cable 8.3km away from Alexandria, Egypt and SeaMeWe-4 affected at least 60 million users in India, 12 million in Pakistan, six million in Egypt and 4.7 million in Saudi Arabia.””

According to their reports, there was another cable severed that went unreported. So, here’s the list that they had of the 5 different cables:

“These are SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4) near Penang, Malaysia, the FLAG Europe-Asia near Alexandria, FLAG near the Dubai coast, FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran and SeaMeWe-4, also near Alexandria.”

As I said: 3 was quite a few. 4 is pushing it. 5 starts to make you wonder. In case you aren’t familiar with that part of the world, here’s a map that I made which shows the approximate locations of the “cuts” in the underwater cables: [UPDATE: I have completed the Google Maps version which includes all the new damages and links to the sources:]

We’re supposed to believe that these were most likely caused by an anchor from a ship fighting a storm. This author finds it hard to believe that this anchor was drug behind a boat from Egypt to Malaysia.

So everyone is scrambling to try and figure out why this would happen. Here’s some of the possible reasons that I have found while looking around the internet:

  • U.S. Government
  • Israeli Government
  • Aliens
  • Underwater Monsters
  • The Cloverfield Monster
  • Rudy Giuliani

However, this author actually dug a bit deeper and found a trail that leads from the owners of most of these internet cables all the way back to some very, very large companies in the U.S. and in the U.K. Which companies you ask? Who is behind this?

Well, that’s the topic for my next post. You’ll have to subscribe to my RSS feed and stay tuned for my findings. Don’t worry, the wait is over.

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  • Random Internet Person

    Iran isn’t without internet. That’s just one router that’s down. Supposedly.

  • Dave

    …

    Who ever said it was the same ship?

  • pushd

    This guy said what I was thinking: “The idea is, you cut the cable at point ‘A’, and make it look like it was an accident (ship anchor, etc). Then, before they fix the cable, you trot on down the cable a few (tens of) miles to point ‘B’ and cut the cable there, too. But now you splice in a repeater that copies everything sent over that cable and sends it …to you! When the cable is fixed at the original spot, comm traffic starts up, and no one is the wiser.”

    http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=440700&cid=22288410

  • Rob

    See, this is why we need Telecom immunity!

  • Bob Jones

    You forgot Chuck Norris.

  • jones

    Though I would not put my money on it,
    you could make your list of perpetrators
    more complete by adding fundamental
    terrorists / interest groups against
    globalization from the area. Also
    if a dicatator”ship”, likes to limit
    the flow of information to the people
    in order to better control them,
    limiting their information sources
    to change their perception of reality
    is also plausible, though also less likely,
    but worth mentioning.

  • I’m assuming you’re trying to get flamed.

    Noone said it was a single ship that dragged the cables from Egypt to Malaysia. Furthermore, they also stated that it was *probable* that this was the cause, for that particular region (i.e. Egypt).

  • Tim

    I still think it was Rudy Giuliani

  • John Keels

    Personally I think some smug CIA or NSA agents are chuckling in their little submarine about this.

  • nurkadurkaburka

    hahaha iran suck swe need to nuke tehm before htey nuke us

  • Matt

    Before you go making all these wild claims, you should look at the validity of your source, the internet traffic report. Take a look at http://www.internettrafficreport.com/details.htm According to them, it looks like Florida has fallen into the Sea and Germany must have exploded… One source being unreachable in an entire country is not justification for the claims that you are making… Yes I do agree that things are a little fishy with all these breaks…

  • First off, only four cables have been cut. The other was powered down for some reason.

    Secondly, Iran isn’t offline; the router Internet Traffic Report monitors is. Big difference.

    Four cables cut and a fifth offline is awfully strange, but get the facts right.

  • Daniel

    Here it states, that germany is off too. That is total nonsense.
    http://www.internettrafficreport.com/europe.htm

  • vk

    Anyone thought of the possibility of Terrorists??

  • Concerned

    Someone in Iran’s government probably discovered Goatse and ordered the cables cut.

  • yourblogsucks

    Its not Giuliani, otherwise it would have been 9 internet cables cut with a bandwidth loss of approx. 11%.

  • Thanks for all the feedback about internettrafficreport.com. The fact remains that there are still millions of people throughout the middle east and Asia that are without service.

  • vince

    The picture above shows all the cuts in a more or less straight line. Reminds me of the
    1. the command and conquer particle cannon swath

    2. the swath taken by an eclipse (although its in an opposite direction to ones the a real eclipse takes, see link below)
    http://www.hermit.org/Eclipse/2006-03-29/

  • Anonymous

    It was Xenu

  • who_cares

    Really who cares if these countries lost internet, phones, and tv. I still have all mine, and really thats all i care about

  • > Anyone thought of the possibility of Terrorists??

    Why? Anyone terrified?

  • Baby Jezu

    http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0QUY/is_2004_July/ai_n6142317/pg_1

    Apparently, there is a history of cutting cables before commencing war.

  • Anonymous

    “# Concerned Says:
    February 6th, 2008 at 10:05 am

    Someone in Iran’s government probably discovered Goatse and ordered the cables cut.”

    Actually I was informed by someone inside the government that it was not Goatse, but it was actually 2 girls 1 cup.

  • GMoney

    It is not the terrorists. They have tried to cut the cables many times, but their camels keep drowning, and the air bubbles in their turbans won’t let them sink to the bottom. I think it was the CI…………………………Transmission has been interrupted. Please ignore previous text.

  • Steve-o

    OMG! It really IS a series of tubes!

  • From Star Wars:

    First step of invasion is interrupting all communications…

    And we all know how much Iran is a thorn in Uncle Sam`s greedy paw.

  • Is anybody here honestly suggesting that “terrorists” are doing this? Are you fucking kidding me? Yes, they have access to box cutters and can created IEDs and also have access to old Russian AK-47s, but they do not have access to a fleet of submarines that can cut a telecom line buried on the sea floor!!! And even if they did, why would they be cutting of Iran?!? Somebody is actually buying Neocon bullshit. How very sad.

  • Why dont they use the satellite?

  • Aminorex

    Only the first two suspects on your list are rational suspects, as defined by motive, means and opportunity. Both Israel and the US have submarine fleets and are in a state of military hostility to the other nations of the world.

  • Aminorex

    On what factual basis do you claim that Iran is not disconnected from the Internet? The claims of vocal readers? That’s pretty weak. You must remember that many sites with .ir domain names are not hosted in the physical bounds of Iran. In order to determine that a site within the physical boundaries of Iran was connected to the Internet, you would need to get a traceroute response from an address which was demonstrably owned by an Iranian national entity, for which a preceeding hop was known to be an international exchange link adjacent to Iran, with no intervening hops known to be outside of Iran.

  • hyperqube

    Yeah, it’s sad that with five cables cut, people are stupid enough still stupid enough to believe neocon lies. definitely something is up.

  • Banana Fart Pants

    Um, I’m going to go with Bob on this one. Have we explored the possibility of Chuck Norris?

  • astera

    why would they be cutting them for a war? if they where wouldnt they all be in more of one general area, unless somebody is going to war with all the middle east.

  • You can never forget Chuck Norris. Never. If you do you’ll remember him as the very last thing you ever remember as he roundhouses you from a sitting start.

  • Dizzley

    I vote for Dr Evil –

    it’s a good prelude to blackmail isn’t it? For say… $200 million ?

  • noteom

    Look at the tinfoil crowd jump on the US and Israel…

    could be Iran or some other fundi whackos – they want to keep the modern world out, duh.

  • Mark

    Stop the flow of information before any attack. Learned that in Nam. Watch for news about Iran.

  • Ms. Anonymous

    The Egyptian Ministry of communications said that there were no ships in the area at the time of the first two cuts/breaks/whatever the damage. The cables were actually in a restricted traffic area.

    Cables get damaged all the time, but this is just a bit ridiculous. And @ who_cares, the ISPs in the affected countries now have to route much of their traffic through other pipes in Europe and the US — and the extra volume could actually end up slowing our service down here.

    Sumthing wicked this way (or that way) comes for sure.

  • First Mate

    Does anyone know what time the disruptions had occured? I know one of them happened at 8am. Just curious about the level of coincidence. If the times are on the hour or some derivative of that would be one well organized renegade anchor.

  • Annony Mouse

    OK, its a theory, its not great, but its closer than Aliens……
    here goes

    Recently a large cult has been under attack via internet, these people are known for being deranged idiots, they also happen to have an awful lot of money due to exploiting the mentally ill into handing over their lives savings, and their life.

    Is it too hard to believe that the people who willingly pay hundreds of dollars to crawl around on carpet picking up fluff in an attempt to remove the alien souls (hey aliens!!) that cause their problems…….Would try and attack the internet by going for the cables.

    (google search top result for “Dangerous Cult” if you don’t know what im talking about)

    They are also known for exploiting the media by threatening to sue for copyright violations over things that have negative coverage on the them…

  • anon

    i highly doubt that scifags are behind this lol

  • anonymous

    epic LULZ!1

  • Brent

    Yes, that is too hard to believe.

  • so, yeah… the US military cut some of the major traffic lines for the internet in the mid-east slapped a repeated on it so that it sends not one but two copies of what ever it gets to the US and it’s destination…

    SMOKE AND MIRRORS GENTS SMOKE N MIRRORS!

  • Skipper

    # antihostile Says:
    but they do not have access to a fleet of submarines that can cut a telecom line buried on the sea floor!!!

    A brief article about Al Queada’s Navy: http://www.newsweek.com/id/62899
    “Arab intelligence officials say a Tunisian naturalized as a Dutch citizen was sent to Morocco before 9-11 to set up a Qaeda diving school”

    He was expelled from morocco, but they’re trying, and I doubt that they have a developed the “Marine Biology Bug”

  • The moon landing was obviously a hoax, the US did that in Idaho to try and claim that they are better than the Russians.
    Now, they want control of Iran because they are one of the world’s leading oil exporters.
    They think they can get away with it because for one, the general American public (i.e. over-patriotic rednecks) hates most of the Middle East because some angry cultist freaks who happened to be from that region came and crashed into a tower seven years ago.
    So, they’ll probably find this as the perfect cover-up since most of Iran is going amish for the moment, and bomb the living shit out of them.
    Sad. Truly sad.

  • Sinalot

    My mum cut the lines :P

  • Bite Me

    I can’t figure out if you people are stupid or just hate the U.S. so much as to believe that the government had anything to do with it. If you really hate this country so much then move to a country you admire like Iran or Cuba. If you half-wits had any brains you would realize that fundamentalist Muslims would prefer to isolate themselves from the secular world if they can’t kill all of us infidels. Look at the countries affected. Most of them are the more secular Islamic countries. Another way to look at the situation is that U.S. corporations lose revenue when these cables are cut. Really makes allot of sense for the U.S. to damage them right?

  • Wiseguy

    If this is deliberate interference, the only nation with the motive and technology to do it is the US. Think about the region being affected.
    A couple of you have suggested a covert cable splice operation. I think this is quite plausible. And the purpose: to spy on communications to and from the middle-east.
    The US has been working very hard to stop repeats of 9/11 and I think they are now going to extreme measures to intercept communications between terrorist leaders in foreign countries and terror cells that exist in their own country.
    I don’t think this is a prelude to war. However, Internet disruption could one day be an act of war – given the significant commerce and communications that rely on the network.

  • Real Wiseguy

    No, the US didn’t do it. It was Iran. Most of the impacted nations were the Sunnis friendly to the US. And the cuts come right after Iran test fires a new space missile.

    Iran will close the Strait next.

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