That can easily backfire. I remember the last time this happened people pointed to an ITR page showing that a router in Iran being inaccessible as evidence that all of Iran was offline and that this could only mean that a US invasion was imminent. Meanwhile, if you actually went to the domain under which that router sat, you'd find The Iranian University of Science & Technology (http://www.iust.ac.ir/), up the whole time.
I think people will see doom and gloom wherever they want to see it.
Didn't you get the memo? The latest terrorist plans inlude clogging your tubes, raping your dog and drinking all your beer. Nothing is safe anymore, nothing.
I'm in Saudi Arabia. It's near dial-up on a 4mbps DSL link. Though loading sites seems to have more trouble making connection than downloading on an established link (if you've used a satellite connection, it's like that). Our Sysadmin sent this today:
A first appraisal at 7:44 am UTC gave an estimate of the following impact on the voice traffic (in percentage of out of service capacity):
- Djibouti: 71% out of service
- Egypt: 52% out of service
- United Arab Emirates: 68% out of service
- India: 82% out of service
- Lebanon: 16% out of service
- Malaysia: 42% out of service
- Maldives: 100% out of service
- Pakistan: 51% out of service
- Qatar: 73% out of service
- Saudi Arabia: 55% out of service
- Syria: 36% out of service
- Taiwan: 39% out of service
- Yemen: 38% out of service
- Zambia: 62% out of service
I'm in Jordan, one of the countries serviced by the Sea Me lines (though for some odd reason it's not listed in the reports online), and several hours I called my ISP to complain about < dial-up rates on my 2mbps ADSL line. They told me that the telcom company had informed them of cut lines in the Aqaba region, and that they were re-routing traffic as we spoke.
Net speeds are back to normal now, though response times are still a bit off.
Your elipsis suggests you find that suspicious, but why?
The second time in less than a year sounds suspicious, but the time you are thinking of was in late January. Is it really any more suspicious to happen again 11 months later rather than 12? It's only a cognitive bias that makes "one year" sound like a much longer time than "11 months". Also consider that this would be the same season and thus similar weather conditions and fishing seasons, and that the accepted conclusion about January's event was that particularly bad weather conditions at the time caused a large number of ships in the Mediterranean to drop anchor, the dragging of which is a common cause of cable cuts.
That it is multiple backbones and they broke simultaneously sounds suspicious, but these cables are all located quite close together, close enough that it's possible they could be severed by the same event. No coordination or intent is necessary.
That it is the Middle East sounds suspicious, but who is the suspect, and what is the motive? The fact is that this is more of an inconvenience than real harm to anybody, and doesn't appear to benefit anybody, either. If it was a US action, why does it primarily inconvenience US allies and economic partners? If it was a terrorist act, why has nobody taken responsibility for it?
"Undersea cable damage is hardly rare--indeed, more than 50 repair operations were mounted in the Atlantic alone last year, according to marine cable repair company Global Marine Systems." -- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20152/?a=f
I see no reason why these cables would be any different, though as noted in the same article, the fact that there are far fewer means that each cut is more significant (and thus newsworthy). The rest of the article is fairly grounding, too.
Jeez, I think you're overanalyzing my comment a little. I wasn't implying any particularly conspiracy theory, I just wanted to point out there were a lot of similarities to another recent event, and it seems possible that's not a coincidence.
